Burning Man Is Desperate For Cash (sfstandard.com) 123
AzWa Snowbird writes: Burning Man is urgently calling for millions more in donations amid faltering ticket sales and staff layoffs. The nonprofit's CEO, Marian Goodell, primarily blamed flagging higher-priced ticket sales and increased operating costs since the pandemic.
The festival has sold a tier of higher-priced tickets since at least 2016. In 2023, a limited number of more expensive advance tickets were available between Feb. 1 and Feb. 3, with 1,000 tickets costing $2,750 each and 3,000 costing $1,500, according to an archived version of Burning Man's 2023 ticket page. Ticket sales for the annual bacchanal in Black Rock City flopped this year after a rain-plagued 2022, and scores of burners later resold their tickets, eating huge losses.
The festival has sold a tier of higher-priced tickets since at least 2016. In 2023, a limited number of more expensive advance tickets were available between Feb. 1 and Feb. 3, with 1,000 tickets costing $2,750 each and 3,000 costing $1,500, according to an archived version of Burning Man's 2023 ticket page. Ticket sales for the annual bacchanal in Black Rock City flopped this year after a rain-plagued 2022, and scores of burners later resold their tickets, eating huge losses.
sellout (Score:5, Insightful)
You sold out, man.
Your counterculture went mainstream and you cashed in. Now the money is gone, and so are the people. It's over.
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I don't want to know more about furry campouts. I did not just google search that and regret it. Hopefully no actual dogs or cats or other animals are harmed/present at these events. I understand they fantasize about anthropomorphic animals, but still. I judge.
Re: sellout (Score:4, Informative)
Absolutely not. Furry fandom isn't about being inappropriate with or harming actual animals. It's about enjoying the aspects of anthropomorphic animals.
Yes, it's a little weird. But not in a harmful or bad way. It's just people having consensual fun.
Re:yep (Score:5, Insightful)
Burning Man used to be a counter culture event. People setting off explosives and doing whatever they want in the middle of the desert. Now celebrities show up in their million dollar motor homes.
Re:yep (Score:5, Insightful)
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case in point: there hasn't been a drive-by shooting range in probably ten years.
Re:sellout (Score:5, Insightful)
You sold out, man.
Your counterculture went mainstream and you cashed in. Now the money is gone, and so are the people. It's over.
This. The festival that celebrated counter-capitalism, has now been infected by it.
Just saw a video from a couple outlining their expenses for a week at BM, keeping in mind you’re in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Over five thousand dollars to rent your way though BM, is NOT what one would define as anti-capitalist.
Re: sellout (Score:1, Insightful)
It was a sellout from day one.
It was always a con.
Re: sellout (Score:4)
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I remember as a teen back in the mid 90s watching a documentary on BM, and was all about independence and expression through art. Nothing was allowed to be sold, everything was required to either be gifted, or some limited barter was allowed, it's hard to get much more counter-capitalist than that. I used to want to go back in the early days, but now it's nothing like what it was supposed to ever be.
Re:sellout (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:sellout (Score:5, Funny)
We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two thirds majority in the case of more...
Re:sellout (Score:4, Funny)
You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship. A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
Re:sellout (Score:4, Funny)
Oh there you go... Bringing class into it again.
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"Gifting" admission to a headliner and then charging the audience a thousand bucks each is pretty capitalist. Burning Man does put a twist on it by also putting the audience to work.
Burning Man's idea of decommodification (I assume that's what you mean) seems to be more along the lines of trademark protection. I'm not sure what it has to do with commodities at all.
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Did the attendees also have production quotas to meet, or the regional Commissar is going to have words and toss a few hippie slackers into the gulag?
I do not disagree with your assessment, and find it quite humorous that a scene that definitely sounds a whole lot like the unicorn-fart powered communistic ideal (as opposed to the corrupted Communism(TM) as practiced everywhere it's ever been tried) has indeed been corrupted by human greed to the point of system collapse, just like everywhere else it's ever
Re:sellout (Score:4, Funny)
If you're feeling really adventurous, you could try gurning on the Isle of Mann.
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Congrats for best of the Funny, but the target had more potential for Funny... Only three in total (as of now).
Uh... no. (Score:5, Interesting)
You sold out, man.
Your counterculture went mainstream and you cashed in. Now the money is gone, and so are the people. It's over.
Not even remotely true.
Burning man changed it's campsite rules, making it difficult for people to come and camp as a group. They changed the a ticket lottery to favor individuals and not groups, so that not everyone in your campsite might be able to get a ticket.
They did this with the best of intentions, people realized that only a subset of their campsite friends would be able to get a ticket and so everyone decided not to go under those rules.
BM was having growth issues (ie - far more people wanted to go than they had permission from the BLM), tried to change the rules to with the best of intentions, and as a result implemented a system that discouraged groups.
If they go back to the previous rules, Burning Man would be wildly popular again.
Re:Uh... no. (Score:5, Informative)
BM was having growth issues (ie - far more people wanted to go than they had permission from the BLM), tried to change the rules to with the best of intentions, and as a result implemented a system that discouraged groups.
If they go back to the previous rules, Burning Man would be wildly popular again.
2020 and 2021 were directly affected by COVID, but 2022 and 2023 both saw massive attendance numbers (70K+), with 2019 reporting near 80K.
Not sure how you figure it’s not still wildly popular. Those are all-time record attendance numbers, and the event is capped at 87K.
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So you describe how the process of becoming mainstream was having issues all while saying that the problem was not because they went mainstream.
Your thought process is broken. Really relax and think about the situation again.
Burning man changed it's campsite rules, making it difficult for people to come and camp as a group.
That is part of becoming mainstream.
BM was having growth issues
Again, mainstream.
Hm.
Letter from Marian Goodell (Score:5, Informative)
Not 10 minutes after this Slashdot article posted, I received the following E-mail from Maid Marian:
Support Black Rock City & Beyond
Hi,
If you’re getting this email it’s because you've probably had a ticket to Burning Man in the last 20 years.
Either Burning Man is still a huge part of your life, you F **#$% ing hate Burning Man, or maybe you’re ambivalent. Wherever you land, it’s probably been just as impactful for you as it has been for many of us.
What started for me in 1995 at the edge of a dry lakebed — where a tall man wearing a bedsheet and holding a plastic flamingo told me to "drive 12 miles to a black mountain and then left until you see five pointy things" — has evolved from a bunch of weirdos with guns into a global institution reimagining and reinventing what the world could be like if we did things a little bit differently.
Burning Man now is a worldwide cultural phenomenon that, since 1986, has been built and experienced by nearly a million people, both in Black Rock City and at more than 80 annual official events around the world. You may be one of those people. Whether or not you come to Black Rock City regularly, you are part of the community and we value the ways you have contributed to make Burning Man happen. Thank you.
It’s a little-known fact that revenue from tickets does not support the cultural movement that Burning Man has become. We do not want to raise ticket prices. In the name of Radical Inclusion, we actually prefer to lower them. But, the fact of the matter is that the cost to produce Black Rock City in 2023 was $749 per participant while the main sale ticket price was $575. You can read more about this inflection point and the reduced ticket sales in 2024 and how this has forced a much larger fundraising goal to keep operations going. Or explore the summary financial information going back 10 years to see how the higher-priced tickets have been subsidizing the event for some time, and how the drop in those sales threatens Burning Man.
The plan for 2025 and beyond is to flip the script. It’s time to think about the most Burning Man way to close this gap.
No, we won't go towards corporate sponsorship, additional RV fees or merchandise sales. Instead, we will turn to the community and invite participation and support to help fill the gap. Yes, we have reduced the number of regular year-round employees on staff, and we’re diving into the budget to trim what is already a lean and tight Black Rock City infrastructure and nonprofit management. But that alone isn’t enough.
Now is the time to ensure that Burning Man can persist into the future — not just as an annual event in the desert, but as a cultural institution that will be here decades from now, empowering future generations to reimagine the world they live in.
I would certainly prefer that our focus be solely on pushing the edge, rather than having to raise money all the time. But as we continue to provide containers for the future to be prototyped, we operate in the context of the default world, and that requires ongoing charitable support year after year to keep this thing going.
You already know we're not a normal nonprofit — we never wanted to be “normal.” But we are a nonprofit and to keep doing what we do, we need your help.
F-*&$ commercial sponsorship! \/
Contribute today so we can:
Prototype new ways of living, working and being together
Support art and artists through grants
Get Black Rock City off fossil fuels
Nurture Burning Man culture around the world
Capture the DNA of what we are doing to hand off to the next generation
Get funky and bring more cacophony of chaos
We are moments away from announcing the Black Rock City 2025 t
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For those who've been, what do they spend that on? Does everyone get a personal porta-potty? Catered gourmet meals? "Free" beer, or just a free tow out of the mud?
They sponsor art (Score:5, Informative)
> the cost to produce Black Rock City in 2023 was $749 per participant
For those who've been, what do they spend that on? Does everyone get a personal porta-potty? Catered gourmet meals? "Free" beer, or just a free tow out of the mud?
They sponsor a lot of art. IIRC, the "Belgian Waffle" (several years ago) was given $200,000 to create their exhibit.
There's a lot, and I mean a *LOT* of art at the festival, much of which is truly breathtaking. Every year the "Temple" is breathtaking, and "The Man" is pretty impressive too.
Additionally, the infrastructure is top notch. They've got a lot of skip loaders, tractors, and backhoe-like things that run around and help setup and strike the event. Also lots of electrical infrastructure that powers the management (lights and power for central camp, ranger radio stations, lights for the man, and on and on.)
Additionally, that $749 is for a full week, so roughly $110 per day to attend the event. They rent a lot of porta-potties which are cleaned frequently (maybe twice a day?), there's water trucks that go around spraying water on the roads to keep the dust down, they've got a free medical center staffed with doctors (possibly volunteer) with at least a working X-ray machine (determined experimentally when I accidentally got injured).
Did I mention their infrastructure was top notch? Go talk to some of the organizers or long-time volunteers some time, they're available, approachable, and highly knowledgeable.
(Apropos of nothing, Burning Man (infrastructure) gets power from solar panels. A few years ago the solar panel rebates federal and local added up to more than the price of the panels, and Burning Man has free labor, so for several years they set out solar panels, then after the event they donated the panels to Gerlach, the local "out in the middle of nowhere" town next to the event. IIRC, they had done this enough times to put Gerlach completely electrically independent, meaning that the town doesn't need to run generators to power the town.)
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The fact that they gave away the solar panels is insane. They knew they needed them again next year, why give it away instead of loaning it? The money is for running the event, not building electrical infrastructure for rural towns.
I'll bet if anyone looked even a little below the surface, there's huge amounts of money being wasted for feel-good reasons, and maybe even some really dumb reasons. They probably haven't seriously negotiated a lower price for the land, or considered moving it somewhere cheaper.
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They probably haven't seriously negotiated a lower price for the land, or considered moving it somewhere cheaper.
I don't think they pay anything for the land. BLM requires permits for large gatherings, but doesn't usually charge fees.
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BLM requires permits for large gatherings, but doesn't usually charge fees.
This article mentions a $3 million permit fee: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/2... [cnbc.com]
Also it's another data point in my argument. They were overcharged millions of dollars for years and didn't bother to correct the problem.
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BLM requires permits for large gatherings, but doesn't usually charge fees.
This article mentions a $3 million permit fee: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/2... [cnbc.com]
Also it's another data point in my argument. They were overcharged millions of dollars for years and didn't bother to correct the problem.
Hmm. When the BLM does charge fees, it's to cover BLM expenses related to the permit. In this case, it doesn't seem unlikely to me that the cost to the BLM of supervising the event and ensuring cleanup of the site afterwards would be in that ballpark.
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Wait, what? It costs them $749 per participant to put on the event?
Assuming 75,000 people attending, that puts the cost of Burning Man at over $56 million dollars.
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Also, if your expenses are 50% higher than the revenue you're booking per sale, why are you in the least bit surprised that you're bankrupt?
That's what's supposed to happen. Try charging what it actually costs to make the event happen, and see how that fits? This is some Fyre Festival level nonsense.
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They clearly have powerful drugs there.
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I'm confused here. This is an event that everyone brings their own stuff to, is held on Federal land... why is so much money needed for it? There are other events like Wasteland Weekend that have a different, less hippie vibe, but don't seem to have the issues that BM does. It doesn't that that much money to draw out spots in the desert for people to park at, provide security, and get some events going. When I read about stuff like the Solar Womp (which is from a number of years back), and BM having a l
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I think the BLM or bureau of land management does charge them a nominal fee of like $150,000 or something. It's not totally free; the BLM grants them exclusive use of the flat for like 6 weeks, maybe longer; several weeks to set up and several more to tear back down and pick up every hair tie and toothbrush in the mud, plus dispose of literally thousands of abandoned bicycles each year. The actual event only lasts for 7-9 days but most of the flat is restricted access for the entire back half of summer.
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Re: sellout (Score:2)
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Burning man began as a counter-culture event and turned into exactly what it was supposed to protesting. Reminds me of that quote from Batman: You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
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Came here to say the exact same thing. This is what happens when you overmilk your cow.
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Selling out is a common thing, even amongst the most "principled" of groups.
Pink Floyd, which used to be one of my musical heroes, what with their tales of how eeeevil the record co's are, etc...
Well, they sold all their shit to Sony for 400 million USD. Would've been a nice round half billion but Waters had to go shoot his mouth off wiht the whole Palestine thing, and that cost them 100 million.
https://www.rollingstone.com/m... [rollingstone.com]
KISS also sold out, but they sold out the day they were formed, so I'm less off
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And, stupidly, the money isn't gone. It's still fuck tons more income than they had 20 years ago. It just can't keep up with the "growth mindset" that they tried for.
Assuming the org didn't go into debt to finance future growth, all they really need to do is stop paying for so much.
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Or, charge usage fees commensurate with the cost of producing such an event.
If the average cost per attendee is 50% more than what you are charging for them to be there, then you have a fairly simple issue of not knowing how math works.
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And aged out (Score:2)
The hippie and post-hippie-hippie types have aged out of this with people being 20 in 1980 are going to be 65 in 2025.
Conjecture: Expect Burning Man and a lot of other things started with the people of the boomer generation to fade.
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So fucking boring.
--
Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring. - Marilyn Monroe
Re:And aged out (Score:4, Funny)
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Agree. The anti-establishment 1960s and 1970s crowd went on to become the establishment in the 1980s.
who cares (Score:1)
$2750 for a ticket? Wow, I had no idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought Burning Man was a hippy, alternative culture sort of thing. It sounds more like a hippy simulation for rich people to me now...
They should rename it Burning Cash.
Same here (Score:1)
I thought Burning Man was a hippy, alternative culture sort of thing.
I thought exactly the same thing, if I were ever to go I assume I'd just show up on a flaming chariot or something, and camp wherever.
I mean how do they even check for tickets?? It looked like chaos driving in from all the pictures I've ever seen.
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If they claim it costs ~$750 per attendee to put on the event (according to numbers they include in their fundraising email posted above), why the fuck do tickets only cost $500ish? And why are they surprised that they're bankrupt?
Can we fix the public education system in this country now? Please?
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Long in the tooth, yes. Hippie, no. Geek.
I don't think you've ever been. I have, more than a dozen times.
It's what you make of it. A week to build a temporary utopia. Costs money. Yes, burning cash. I save for it. Try new stuff. Have a total blast.
Did they "jump the shark"? Yeah. They need reinvention desperately, and for some brighter eyes with budget minds to take the baton and run with it into a different era: Today.
At the top, they're in love with themselves. On the playa, we're doing something differen
Oh no. Anyway... (Score:2)
Woodstock 99 should have warned you.
But now where will all the tech bros bang drugged up hippie chicks?
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Coachella.
Business finds out (Score:3)
What? (Score:1)
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Anarchy works really well for one person, it's kind of workable for two... but by the time you get to larger groups, if you don't have organization and authority you're asking for trouble.
Of course, once you have organization and authority, you'll get people trying to claim the top spot and rip everyone under them off.
Re: What? (Score:2)
This idea works. It's called the detatched single family home with a yard and no HOA.
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So... you want a large organization with the authority to control who can experience anarchy and where?
There is this thing called 'irony'...
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See: native people's reservations.
Same reasoning.
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
I thought the cost of burning man was to physically get yourself into the desert and be outfitted with enough stuff to survive on or trade, and hopefully get back home. plus the cost of all the weird or crazy crap you need to show off how crazy you are. I was not aware that land rent was so expensive to in the desert. "Sir your ticket says Lot 5A, but this is 3B. what are you trying to pull here? ahy?" Apparently my understanding of Burning Man was all wrong. or a decade behind.
1993 Attendance/Cost: 1,000/$40
2023 Attendance/Cost: 70,000+/$575
There’s growing pains, and then there’s dealing with the unmitigated nightmare of your event turning into a Superbowl-sized clusterfuck filled with rich attention whores mining for clout while glamping in the desert, blissfully unaware of the original point of it all.
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I always though it was kind of odd that Burning Man was even as popular as it was. Participating was pretty expensive if you weren't relatively close to the event location, and as you said, visitors had to arrive equipped to deal with spending several days in the middle of a damn uninhabited desert of all places. It was never anything I was particularly interested in, because I already live in a miserably hot climate and that's not my idea of a vacation.
Plus, I want my vacation spots to have modern infras
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I'd wager about 1 in 8 people who worked at startups in SF went to burning man each year. The office would just clear out that week. These are not people who have trouble throwing down $6k for a spot to sleep in an air conditioned bus + food and booze for a week.
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Why not, when it only costs half a month's rent?
Re: What? (Score:2)
rent in sf proper runs about $2500-4500 for a 1 bedroom these days i think median is like $2950 depends on location age and condition
LOL. Get fucked. (Score:4, Funny)
The moment they had a CEO position they should have seen they were no longer what they stood for.
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The moment they had a CEO position they should have seen they were no longer what they stood for.
LOL you don't have a clue about your history. CEO is nothing more than a leader. Every event needs a leadership, and virtually every long running event with that kind of turnover and planning requirements has a professional organisation orchestrating it from the top. When you run long enough leadership changes and new people need to be employed. What do you call those people in the job ad? Cuddly Decision Daddy? Tsar of the Flame? or just CEO.
The first CEO position was formalised in the 90s. They've had a C
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The moment they had a CEO position they should have seen they were no longer what they stood for.
LOL you don't have a clue about your history. CEO is nothing more than a leader. ... Find a better attribution.
Their CEO is "nothing more than a leader " who makes over $350K [givefreely.com], so there's the attribution that they've lost their way.
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Their CEO is "nothing more than a leader " who makes over $350K [givefreely.com], so there's the attribution that they've lost their way.
Oh yeah, when you are the host of an event like this you should be paid in hugs. That will attract people who know how to manage these superbowl sized events. /sarcasm
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And apparently their CEO is an incompetent leader who charges $500 a head for entry to a festival that costs $750 per head, and wonders why they're broke.
They should give their $350k/year back as the donations they need, because they haven't even got a grasp on simple math.
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Their CEO is a full time position. It's not a three week a year part time job. That pays $350k. And they've been doing it for a decade. And they manage 120 other full time employees.
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Indeed. Big events are complex. Fuck man small events are complex, have you ever tried to host something before? Once you get beyond about 10000 people in a recurring event your management requirements basically become full time.
The fact you think organising an event of this scale is a 3 week job really speaks to your ignorance on a matter.
Re: LOL. Get fucked. (Score:2)
i was mostly focused on your claim that "CEO is nothing more than a leader" as if dismissive to the significance of the need and role of what they're doing
BMORG is the issue (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:BMORG is the issue (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that during covid an unofficial burn was done on the site for little money shows that the BMORG is the issue here. They've gotten too greedy.
5,000 people at an unofficial (COVID) burn vs. 75,000 people at an official one.
Last time the event was that small was damn near 20 years ago. Perhaps we do the math before assuming.
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So have 15 small events of 5000 each instead of a single large one. What's the problem? The desert's huge.
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5,000 people at an unofficial (COVID) burn
Not to mention all of those 5,000 most assuredly died from COVID because they didn't adhere to the government's guidelines, thus there were 5,000 less for the following years...
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OK, I did some math.
From their most recent Schedule 990 they had $62 million in income, $58 million in expenses with a net income/profit of $4 million.
Total expenses for the event itself, not including any wages, travel, insurance, legal costs, etc. was $18.1 million. With 80,000 attending, that is $227 per person to cover the basic cost of infrastructure.
Salaries and other compensation for employees was $26.6 million or 46% of all expenses.
Form 990 here: 990 [propublica.org]
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Commercialized self realization...? (Score:1)
Oh well (Score:2)
Burning man hasn't been a relevant event for at least 25 years.
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OooOOOooo, the anonymous pussy strikes again.
BM has been boring and corporate for 20 y (Score:4, Interesting)
BM was boring and corporate even back in 2004. Full of stuffy aging anti-fun hippies
Culture has moved on. BM is irrelevant and over.
The real revolutionary counterculture is now churchgoing Republican families with 6 kids.
Nuke it from orbit (Score:2)
Same is true for most music festivals (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm more into another genre, but you see the same things in festivals across the board: ticket sales dramatically reduced this year, markets saturated, promoters not sure how to play it... and artists hanging on for what they can. Pre-pandemic the festival count was dramatically lower, and then everybody made a festival after the pandemic to capitalize on extra spending money burning a hole in people's wallets.
Next year I will skip a few of my favorite festivals-- they are dropping the offering to the point that it isn't worth it. I'll focus on some of the smaller events that still have some energy.
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Chicago’s Lollapalooza Music Festival held its 33rd edition in downtown’s historic Grant Park (its 20th in the location) this past weekend, featuring over 170 artists on 8 stages. The four day festival has grown in recent years to include more than just music; as the festival partners with brands to create enticing activations, provides a family friendly area full of activities, and partners with local eateries to provide a taste of Chicago.
Attendees were
Actual value to customers (Score:2)
Behind the scenes (Score:2)
If they aren't managing the drug trade at the event they should at least be receiving a split. If they're savvy businesspeople.
In no way do I mean this in a disparaging way. Some things just pair naturally with drugs, like Riesling and Brie. I, for one have never been to Burning Man. But if I had, my urine would have to take the 5th.
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Let's Not Go To Burning Man, 'Tis A Silly Place (Score:2)
No thanks.
YOUtopia, the San Diego area regional event, was cool when it was on the Indian reservation but "leadership" incompetence and sensible Indians put an end to that golden era in the mid/late 2010s.
Women (Score:2)
with 1,000 tickets costing $2,750 each and 3,000 costing $1,500
Never underestimate the amount a man is willing to pay in the hopes of seeing a nude woman dancing in a colorful hat.
They forgot half are staving artists (Score:2)
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Affluent WP problems... (Score:2)
Re: Affluent WP problems... (Score:2)