Mails forthcoming from me, too, FWIW. And, this is, no doubt, a great way to support these events.
And, yes, there's no doubt that debts are owed to these supporters, and the volunteers. I don't want to discount that in any way. In fact, I'm assuming that for the near future, that this will all need to continue for these events to be at future GenCons, etc. But this is all somewhat ancillary to the question that I'm trying to raise.
Further, I'm not really interested in the precise numbers themselves (it's not our business, really). This is not an attempt to pry. And I'm probably terribly off on my estimates anyhow. Who knows? But even with the other estimate here, we can see the problem. A more conservative price estimate of $45 per person is still unsustainable it seems.
In fact, raising the price of anything would have to be in small increments. What you definitely don't want to do is to reduce the interest due to pricing to where the event does less than to sell out. For several reasons. Again, simple economics, when you raise the price, demand drops, meaning that there's some optimum price point where you still sell everything, but get the most you can for it. Actually, the optimum point in the curve might be at less than full capacity, but you don't want to make it an elitist event or one where you have the problem of not knowing how much staff you need.
So, again, it's not a question of what they need to charge to break even, it's a question of what you'd pay, so they have an idea of whether or not they can raise the price. Now, I know we can't get a scientific survey here - in fact, anyone who takes the effort to post here, will probably be more likely to pay more than the average attendee who doesn't post given that they care more, apparently. Still, it doesn't hurt to get an unscientific answer for the people running the show. How much would you pay?
I'd definitely do $25, for instance, and probably $30, and I consider myself cheap (SITCOM - single income, two children, opressive mortgage, AKA House Poor). Especially considering that I'll be expecting improvements in the experience each time as the staff learns lessons, I'll be more and more willing to pay more for the experience. Do others feel like I do? Would you pay more?
As for merchandising, there's some tricky stuff there. As I understand it some of the merchandising already goes to some of the supporters in order to directly defray their costs (I'm going to guess that anything with a GenCon on it goes to GenCon, likewise with Upper Deck). So I'm not sure if they are able to sell more merchandise per se at all. And, again, there's probably only so much that the audience is willing to absorb. For instance, some people will buy a new T-Shirt each year, but some only once. The last thing the event needs is to be saddled with a pile of such inventory that they've paid to produce, but can't move.
Again, the problem becomes the small size of the market. Without more customers exposed, growth becomes impossible.
So, any way to get people to buy more stuff without having them go through the dungeon (or TH)? This seems to be the essential problem in gaining further revenues.
The only other thing that can be done is to expand the product. Meaning, instead of merchandizing more, is there something else that they can sell? For instance, I've proposed entrance into a LARPish area - which has an attendant problem of costing more for the space - but you can see that there are other products that the event could provide, in theory.
Or, is my assumption that they can't just carry on as they are faulty? I mean, does there need to be any expansion? Or will the work from one session carry over to the next, automatically improving things over time? I may be worried about nothing.
Mike