True, but the goal isn't for the con to be profitable right now. Outside of it being a massive fan event its also a massive advertising stunt and the goal for them is to get there name out there rather then make a profit. On the financial front they just need to break even or to only have a mild loss for the event.
Running events like this without breaking the bank is all about matching up revenue and expenses.
For example you want the cost you're charging for a vendor booth times the number of booths to equal the cost of renting the vendor hall plus any associated expenses. Maybe you add a little more to give some room or make a profit. Maybe you undercost it a bit if you think you can make it up in ticket sales.
Conventions have a few sources of income:
- Tickets/badges
- Sponsorships/advertising
- Booth sales
You can usually match these pretty neatly with associated expenses. Attendee tickets go to the cost of the rental and all of the static costs (furniture rental, equipment rental, insurance, security, any staff you're paying). Sponsorships might line up with the costs associated with guests and setting up special panels. Sometimes you can even get these to line up 1:1 for example get a company to sponsor a particular panel.
Of course you don't
have to match revenues with expenses so long as the books balance in the end, but doing so is a neat shorthand way of keeping things under control, and makes it easy to predict and estimate where you might have profit or fall short.
PhaseCon would have a few unique advantages:
- Firstly, they don't have to pay for guests if they don't want to. 29 phase girls should be enough for the celebrity portion, it's entirely possible they'd get vtuber friends to guest for free, and fan volunteers can do fan panels. Should they pay to have Hololive show up? I'd argue these days it's an even bigger draw to get someone like Dooby or Nimi to do a half-hour event and probably an easier sell and less expensive.
- Secondly and more importantly, PhaseCon will be the single biggest day of official Phase merch sales. They can likely sell as much as they can stock beforehand. Speaking as a Phase fan, I wouldn't go to PhaseCon without also having a budget for con-exclusive official merch. I think a lot of vtuber fans are like me - if we're spending significant money already, we're not afraid of spending more money to expand the experience. Phase can make merch front and center in a way that can't be done at most cons, like Hololive does at HoloFes.
- This is kind of weird to say, but even OffKai doesn't really take advantage of being an event mostly about online influencers. I think there are two big events that do this fairly well. HoloFes is the most relevant example - you have mixed media events at the con itself and a massive digital concert sale, all of which doesn't cannibalize attendance. TwitchCon is the other example but I am much less familiar with how it integrates streaming into the con itself.
The downsides:
- Phase itself is fairly niche and you don't have the wide OffKai style draw, though I think there are plenty of Phase fans who would show up to PhaseCon and not OffKai. It would definitely be a smaller event and finding volunteers to help run it might also take a bit from its paying attendance.
- First year is going to be a gong show, pretty much no matter what. Imagine the kind of rrats people will throw out when Phase has massive persistent tech problems at their own event. It
will happen.
- Events are generally trash for advertising. You aren't going to make Phase bigger by having a big convention. It's better to think of them as ways to milk money and add enthusiasm to existing fans.