"Better" North American Tour (ended 6/26/16)

[Tusk]

Yeah, I would guess she was close to sell out for many of the venues, I'm surprised at your 180 number for Pittsburgh...was it a smallish venue?

In LA (771) and Chicago were sold out and San Diego, while started out smallish, maybe over 100, by the time it was Haley's turn the floor was filled, the seats were filled upstairs and downstairs, I would guess maybe pushing 400?

I think #TeamHaley and Ole must have run numbers to put her out on tour, I mean they announced a European tour fairly soon after the US announcement, If they didn't think they could turn a profit in the US, they definitely wouldn't have booked all those dates (and travel) through Europe. In LA, Scott told me his (PMJ's) tour manager helped Haley w/ the logistics, and mapping out her tour. I had mentioned the European tour, so I'm not sure if meant that they helped w/ the whole tour, or just the European tour.

PMJ/Scott are now veterans at organizing touring, so I think they have their system down as to where to schedule and appropriate venues.

Lastly, are we sure Haley and her band took flights to their gigs? I thought the implication was they drove to their gigs and stayed at hotels.

[john]

Jack Conte of the (largely) Youtube based duo/group Pomplamoose wrote up his Tour income and expenses a couple of years ago. In 2014 they had over 100 million views of their YT videos. It was a 23 show, 28 day tour.

Pomplamoose 2014 Tour Profits
(or Lack Thereof)

...Expenses

$26,450 Production expenses: equipment rental, lights, lighting board, van rental, trailer rental, road cases, backline.

$17,589 Hotels, and food. Two people per room, 4 rooms per night. Best Western level hotels, nothing fancy. 28 nights for the tour, plus a week of rehearsals.

$11,816 Gas, airfare, parking tolls. Holy shit, parking a 42-foot van is expensive.

$5445 Insurance. In case we break someone’s face while crowdsurfing.

$48,094 Salaries and per diems. Per diems are twenty dollar payments to each bandmate and crew member each day for food while we’re out. Think mechanized petty cash.

$21,945 Manufacturing merchandise, publicity (a radio ad in SF, Facebook ads, venue specific advertising), supplies, shipping.

$16,463 Commissions. Our awesome booking agency, High Road Touring, takes a commission for booking the tour. They deserve every penny and more: booking a four week tour is a huge job. Our business management takes a commission as well to do payroll, keep our finances in order, and produce the awesome report that lead to this analysis. Our lawyer, Kia Kamran, declined his commission because he knew how much the tour was costing us. Kia is the man.

Fortunately, Pomplamoose made some money to offset some of these expenses. Let’s look at our income from the tour:

Income

$97,519 Our cut of ticket sales. Dear fans, you are awesome. We love every ounce of your bodies. You’re the reason we can tour. Literally, 72% of our tour income came from the tickets you bought. THANK YOU.

$29,714 Merch sales. Hats, t-shirts, CDs, posters. 22% of our tour income.

$8,750 Sponsorship from Lenovo. ...If you’re making a living as an indie band, a tour sponsor is a shining beacon of financial light at the end of a dark tunnel of certain bankruptcy.

The Bottom Line

Add it up, and that’s $135,983 in total income for our tour. And we had $147,802 in expenses.
We lost $11,819.

https://medium.com/@jackconte/pomplamoos....mort47iap

The tour was a week longer than Haley's, and aside from the hometown Filmore they played modest sized venues. I couldn't find the gross ticket sales number, which would be useful in assessing the percentage that was their cut.

I had guessed Haley's ticket sales at about 150-160K with some additional income from merchandise. If she got 65% of the ticket sales that would be around 100K from tickets.

---

Lastly, are we sure Haley and her band took flights to their gigs? I thought the implication was they drove to their gigs and stayed at hotels.

Yep, they drove the Sprinter van.

I think her band expenses were higher than your estimate, Tom. Especially considering Jacob was her music director and opened for her. They did pre-tour rehearsals too, where WillieRay came to LA.

#TeamHaley I'm sure costs her in various ways.

In the end, I think she made some profit on the tour. If the ticket sales are higher that would be largely profit, too.

[Tusk]

Also Jeannette, Joel and the hispanic gentleman in this pic (engineer, I forget his name) were the core support traveling w/ Haley. #TeamHaley flew in now and then to some cities to assist. In LA there were at least 3 #TeamHaley there to help man the merchandise booth (They were also present in Chicago)

I have ZERO understanding of what qualifies as a Tax write off, but I have to imagine they'd be able to apply it to some expenses to help absorb the cost of doing business

[john]

I have ZERO understanding of what qualifies as a Tax write off, but I have to imagine they'd be able to apply it to some expenses to help absorb the cost of doing business

Just about every expense associated with the trip is a writeoff. In other words, if you spend 80K and take in 100K, only 20K is subject to tax.

[Tusk]

[Himm2]

Sprinter Van rental looks to be under $300 per day but they were towing a Uhaul trailer for equipment

[Himm2]

I think Pittsburgh might have planned on using their large adjacent 1000 capacity venue which we thought was going to be this when we bought tix:

but they must have had trouble selling tickets to fill that so they moved it into the small corner stage and bar area next door. There was no balcony, a bar that took up a third of the room and scattered tables behind about 8 rows of standing about 20 fans wide. I was at the front railing and I didn't look back to see if it was fully packed or not but I sensed it wasn't. Haley probably felt more at home here though because it was more like what her parents band plays at:

---

When I was up in Canada last week I got a text from a friend that said he was in a restaurant and Haley's version of Can't Help Fallin' In Love" was playing on the sound system...I texted him back: "I'm in the canadian Wilderness and there is a Moose singing Haley's version of CHFinL"!

[Tusk]

[Tom22]

Jack Conte of the (largely) Youtube based duo/group Pomplamoose wrote up his Tour income and expenses a couple of years ago. In 2014 they had over 100 million views of their YT videos. It was a 23 show, 28 day tour.

Pomplamoose 2014 Tour Profits
(or Lack Thereof)

...Expenses

$26,450 Production expenses: equipment rental, lights, lighting board, van rental, trailer rental, road cases, backline.

$17,589 Hotels, and food. Two people per room, 4 rooms per night. Best Western level hotels, nothing fancy. 28 nights for the tour, plus a week of rehearsals.

$11,816 Gas, airfare, parking tolls. Holy shit, parking a 42-foot van is expensive.

$5445 Insurance. In case we break someone’s face while crowdsurfing.

$48,094 Salaries and per diems. Per diems are twenty dollar payments to each bandmate and crew member each day for food while we’re out. Think mechanized petty cash.

$21,945 Manufacturing merchandise, publicity (a radio ad in SF, Facebook ads, venue specific advertising), supplies, shipping.

$16,463 Commissions. Our awesome booking agency, High Road Touring, takes a commission for booking the tour. They deserve every penny and more: booking a four week tour is a huge job. Our business management takes a commission as well to do payroll, keep our finances in order, and produce the awesome report that lead to this analysis. Our lawyer, Kia Kamran, declined his commission because he knew how much the tour was costing us. Kia is the man.

Fortunately, Pomplamoose made some money to offset some of these expenses. Let’s look at our income from the tour:

Income

$97,519 Our cut of ticket sales. Dear fans, you are awesome. We love every ounce of your bodies. You’re the reason we can tour. Literally, 72% of our tour income came from the tickets you bought. THANK YOU.

$29,714 Merch sales. Hats, t-shirts, CDs, posters. 22% of our tour income.

$8,750 Sponsorship from Lenovo. ...If you’re making a living as an indie band, a tour sponsor is a shining beacon of financial light at the end of a dark tunnel of certain bankruptcy.

The Bottom Line

Add it up, and that’s $135,983 in total income for our tour. And we had $147,802 in expenses.
We lost $11,819.

https://medium.com/@jackconte/pomplamoos....mort47iap

The tour was a week longer than Haley's, and aside from the hometown Filmore they played modest sized venues. I couldn't find the gross ticket sales number, which would be useful in assessing the percentage that was their cut.

I had guessed Haley's ticket sales at about 150-160K with some additional income from merchandise. If she got 65% of the ticket sales that would be around 100K from tickets.

---

Lastly, are we sure Haley and her band took flights to their gigs? I thought the implication was they drove to their gigs and stayed at hotels.

Yep, they drove the Sprinter van.

I think her band expenses were higher than your estimate, Tom. Especially considering Jacob was her music director and opened for her. They did pre-tour rehearsals too, where WillieRay came to LA.

#TeamHaley I'm sure costs her in various ways.

In the end, I think she made some profit on the tour. If the ticket sales are higher that would be largely profit, too.

Awesom find John!

Exactly the sort of thing I was just trying to get my head around with the
.. guestimates I made

As for the band costs... yeah , the number I used was what I figured was the bare minimum starving artists in LA could get while still actually affording a place of residence during the time between gigs...

As per the travel -
my guess was that they used the van in regions but would still have flown once from the west coast to the Mid West and again from the Midwest to the East. I only "guestimated" one day use of the van per gig... if they didn't fly at all they'd have needed to rent the van every day of the tour, which would have boosted my travel expense estimates to about the same as using the flight cost guesses.

Still - > much better to have the real numbers from someone who actually paid bills for a similar scale tour.

---

Great to hear about big numbers and sell-outs at shows 900 in Minneapolis was a HUGE money maker -- I figured the Chicago show was sold out.

---

My goal was just to learn more and get feedback on specific points like you guys have done ... I think other people here are also enjoying learning about the economics and trying to piece it together bit by bit .... trying to define at least portions of it helps.

Real Numbers are best of all!

[Himm2]

JUNE 3RD - PETALUMA, CA
40 miles
JUNE 4TH - SAN FRANCISCO, CA
383 miles
JUNE 6TH - LOS ANGELES, CA (El Rey Theatre)
100 miles
JUNE 7TH - SOLANA BEACH, CA
368 miles
JUNE 9TH - PHOENIX, AZ
820 miles (two days ?)
JUNE 11TH - DENVER, CO (Bluebird Theater)
914 miles (two days ?)
JUNE 13TH - MINNEAPOLIS, MN (Varsity Theater)
408 miles (I know they drove)
JUNE 14TH - CHICAGO, IL (Lincoln Hall)
356 miles
JUNE 15TH - COLUMBUS, OH
205 miles
JUNE 17TH - DETROIT, MI (Saint Andrews Hall)
285 miles
JUNE 18TH - PITTSBURGH, PA
304 miles
JUNE 19TH - PHILADELPHIA, PA
139 miles
JUNE 21ST - WASHINGTON D.C.
225 miles
JUNE 22ND - NEW YORK, NY (Gramercy Theatre)
215 miles
JUNE 23RD - BOSTON, MA
240 miles
JUNE 25TH - BAY SHORE, NY
100 miles
JUNE 26TH - ASBURY PARK, NJ
Fly back to LA - 23 days of Bandvan & Uhaul rental plus gas one way was probably $7,500 or about 1/4 of the cost of airfare for 8 tour persons between every citiy.