Banner Photo by: Michael Solberg
One of Magicons core values is transparency, and to honour that we publish how we’ve spent our income each year. We believe this builds trust and understanding, not only with the visitors, but also with our sponsors and partners.
Let’s start with the income:
- Surplus from previous years: 107.282,-
- Ticket Sales: 803.955,- (+54,6%)
- Grant: Oslo Kommune: 60.000,-
- Grant: Sparebankstiftelsen: 49.900,-
- Grant: Kulturrådet: 150.000,-
- Booths: 125.995,- (+96,8%)
- Merch & Drink Sales: 44.681,- (-2,5%)
Total income: 1.191.963,- (+27.5%)
Then let’s look at the expenses:
Travel Expenses: 61.093,- (+58%)
Rent & Hired Personnel: 521.167,- (+13.8%)
Hotel: 74.400,- (+57.1%)
Honorariums: 48.682,- (+1.7%)
Printed Materials: 135.589,- (+87.8%)
Inventory: 21,478,- (-22.2%)
Tooling: 31.389,- (+30.4%)
Marketing: 68.397,- (+112.2%)
Prizes: 38.500,- (+119.3%)
Food & Drinks: 65.489,- (+66%)
Crew Activities: 87.524,- (+306%)
Total Expenses: 1.153.708,- (+39.4%)
Result: 38.255,-* (-64%)
*Disclaimer: Small variables may affect the result, like hidden fees, late expense reports and so on. Nothing major though.
Note: All requested invoices were paid at the latest 16 days after the convention.
Further reading with comments from ProducerChan.
I won’t be writing any in-depth analysis this year, as it is honestly just too much work. I’d rather go through some of the highlights:
1: We’re very pleased to see the massive increase in ticket revenue despite not increasing the ticket price. Magicon is still growing!
2: Expenses for international guests have increased by a fair amount, but that’s natural due to the vast amount of guests we host.
3: We spent a lot on marketing this year. As usual this is because of uncertainty regarding ticket sales. Remember that when we start planning in September, we only have what’s left from last year (around 100k), but we already know that the Con is going to cost around 1mill. The earlier you buy the tickets, the less we have to spend on advertising.
4: Food & Drinks: This was expected to increase, as prices have gone up and our crew has grown.
5: Crew Activities: We have very high crew retention and satisfaction, and we intend to keep it that way.
All in all I can say that we’ve overspent in some areas, but nothing too unreasonable. For Magicon Vanguard we’ll be a little more restrained on spending for the program production and marketing. Some cuts in food and drinks are also possible.
Finally, thank you all for joining Magicon Unchained and I hope that you will join us again for Magicon Vanguard!
/ProducerChan – Chairman of Magicon
Michael Solberg
photo by Gressloek