What to do if you lost 1/2 your budget?

With the way the economy is going, losing budget money this year is a possibility.

As an athletic director, how would you restructure your program if you lost 1/2 your budget?

What would be your strategy in your restructuring?

hacking into the computer systems of the Highland Games Governing Board and cancelling the contracts with the pipe bands?

I will probably try to find more local sponsorship and try to get the local paper involved in promoting the festival - advertising something unique and special that is going on at the games...something like "Mike Zolk, world class International Strongman and Scottish Games competitor will try to surpass Bill Kazmaier's weight over the bar feats of over 18' and join the worlds strongest men in the halls of glory- all right here in Cortland NY this summer" or like: "Dave Barron will try to throw within 5' of Will Barron in the 28 for distance..."

when people try to spend less - they just need to be sold.

Keep my attitude that I do this because I love it and not for the money, recognition and/or fame.

Then I'd do whatever I had to do to get it done until more favorable conditions come around. 

Mark-

You could slash the judges, announcers, medals, t-shirts, food and drinks if you had to. These are all extras.

Give out a handshake and a stack of beer tickets to each thrower.

Problem solved.

-K

At Loon this year, we had an interesting thing happen.  In the masters competition, the caber was a good Amateur A caber, but it just too light for these guys (Ryan, Ali, Steve, Myles, Baab, ...), and we were ending up with a shootout.  We decided we really ought to have a challenge caber, but hadn't budgeted a prize.  This wasn't really a problem, because we knew we could beg the office for it and get it, but Bill Crawford suggested an experiment:  let's auction off the event to the spectators.

So, Art McDermott (on the mike) asked the crowd who wanted to see these guys toss a really big caber (which Dana Florence had cut for Celtic, the following week).  Who bid $25?  He went this way up to $50 and said, "Oh, by the way, the winning bidder gets a T-shirt signed by all of our athletes."  The price rapidly went up to $100, and we figured that was good enough.  We invited the winning bidder to come down to the field to receive his prize, and six people came down.  That's not six people who were each kicking in $16.67, but six people who each kicked in $100.  Naturally, we gladly obliged with 6 T-shirts.

There's a lesson in this for us all:  if you've got the competitors, there are opportunities for fund-raising sitting all around the field.

As if they weren't already excited, the crowd was well and truly into the competition now.  Every pick, runup, and pull was met with a deafening roar.

And guess who won (hey, who's gonna come through when it's needed?):  Ryan Vierra.  And do you know how he celebrated?  He split the money six ways with the other challenge competitors.

There's a lesson there, as well.

Good Morning,

Good question. I believe that Games need to be run just little a business. Board members need to be very much aware of costs, investments and payback time frames. A good AD must have their arms around the financial aspect of the Games. Sadly some don’t.

Mike, I disagree with you about the medals and shirts. I know you are long past that phase in your career but many aren’t. The reason I would keep them is that they increase the gate. At least two am’s brought 10 people each with them to the Games here last summer. That’s $300 in gate money we got, for two $7 shirts they got for a day’s work on the field. That’s good business.

Faced with a 50% loss of operating capital I would examine what would give me the “biggest bang for my buck” There are many moving parts that make up a Highland Festival

But gladly last year the Maine Games made twice as much as it ever has in one year in its 31 year history. The really funny thing is if the 15 people on my Games Team(people who put on the Games) had taken a part time job and worked the hours they put into the Games prep. We would have made almost 8 times more. For the love of the Games! Bruce

Here is what I would recommend if I had too....

1 - Limit pro field to 5

2 - Eliminate PRO women class (We now host the New England's Womens AM Championship to showcase our women)

3 - Just pay a stipend for travel, and a hotel room instead of pro money

4 - Continue not paying judges and volunteers

5 - Cut the MC

6 - Cut PRO Class

If none of that worked, then just run an open AM event with home made trophies. The best thing I have sitting on my desk at home is a Dirk Bruce made me.

Leroy - Maine AD

In lieu of event medals, give all participating athletes a pin for their kilt.  These should be lapel-sized, so an athlete can put a bunch of them on their kilt.  This avoids the "embarrassment of riches" issue that Mike referred to, where a few athletes get a pile of medals they don't care about, and gives something to all the rest of the athletes who wouldn't get any medals.  Even with a custom design, pins for everyone are cheaper than medals.  You can also give them to everyone who volunteers, and to special spectators (e.g., wheelchair kids).

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1. The big thing is medals I believe. I sell medals to games and there a high cost, and most of the throwers really don't want medals, if they do it's really one 1 medal per event, you can change it to only 1st place if medals are a must.
2. Also I do t-shirts for games, I'm noticing that T-shirt cost can go way down by getting a lesser quality shirt or eliminating the number of colors per screening site. That can save big money in the long run you can have a one color imprint instead of 9 or 10 like I’ve done for the west coast.
3. I think the big things that may happen is festivals will be cutting their budget drastically so the Heavies might be one of the first to go or get effected it’s hard enough getting enough money to pay for the insurance, never mind enough money to pay for judges and staff.

 

I agree with the comments above about approaching the game as a business.

If you can get the accounting information that shows "ins" and "outs" allocated by various areas (piping, dance, entertainments, athletics, Animals, .....), I have found two useful ways of reporting the data beyond just dollar amounts:

(1) dividing the net income for each area by the gate income to get the cost of each area per $1 of gate income. 

(2) if the games has a good head count (not what they tell the press), then you can get a good estimate of average ticket price.  I use that value to determine the number of people that has to come through the gate to cover the cost of a particular area.

Example (not real data):

Athletics Net income -$1500
Piping Net Income -$10,000

Gate Income: $25,000

Athletics cost $0.06 per $1.00 of gate income and
    Piping cost $0.40 per $1.00 of gate income

Head count of 3846 (but the press is told 5,000) people generate an average ticket price of $6.50 -

Athletics:   231 people would have to pay the gate to cover its costs
    Piping: 1,539 people would have to pay the gate to cover its costs

For what it is worth, these methods have generated some good discussion on my games committee.

 

Wayne,

you somewhat missed the point and underline why I made my post at the same time!  The confusion is probably due to my originial wording of "would have to draw" rather than "would have to pay the gate" in my revised post - sorry.

It has nothing to do with viewership... I put forth different ways of expressing the costs of putting on a games so that the chauvinist committee members will hopefully be forced to examine the cost of their area in relationship to other areas of the games.

I had luck with these approaches in generating some real constructive and creative dialog among committee people of my game.  It appeared to suppress some of the believe that one area's superior to another and allowed people to step back and take a big picture approach to the games.

The economic climate over the next several years will probably generate pressure on games to take a long look at stream lining to survive and perhaps these approaches will give others some tools to take that look.

 

l've been thinking about this very same subject and have already decided on a different approach.  Before l turned in my '09 budget, l added on some new items, such as bonus payments to those athletes that set national records at the Claw.  lf the Trustees start tightening up the purse strings, l've got expenditures that l can live without.  lf not, then things will be a little better for the athletes!

Another thought. 

Any Games worth it's salt should have a little something-something stashed away to cover a possible bad year, like a rain-out.  Even if attendance is a little off, due to the economy, there should still be enuf in the kitty to cover another Games one year down the road.  l would advise any Games against cutting back thinking that attendance might be lower.  To me, cutting back is like a self fulfilling prophesy.  People attending a reduced Games are going to remember it in the future and might decide not to return.  lt could be hard to win these folks back!

lnstead, l would advise a Games to go heavy on the "Stay-cation" advertising.  lf it's too expensive for people to go very far from home, then local events should probably reap the rewards.