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OK, it seems that there is a lot of question whether GW GTs actually break even. I'd like to use this thread to talk about direct and indirect costs (and revenues) for such an event:

Direct Costs & Revenue
directly attributable to hosting the event, primarily costs

per event
- advertizing / promotion of the event
- facility rental
- facility labor (teamsters, security, tickets)
- shipping

per attendee
- ticket sales
- ticket processing
- event handouts & freebies

per GW staffer
- GW staff on site (managment, etc.) - wages & benefits
- GW guests on site (studio, etc.)
- travel to and from event
- car rental / taxis / shuttles
- lodging
- meals & incidentals

Indirect Revenue & Costs
things that precede or follow, but not specifically at the event - mostly revenue
- armies purchased specifically for the GT

Excluded Revenue & Costs
separate budget lines that do not subsidize / receive subsidy
- facility concessions
- GW site store

I'd proffer you're looking at it incorrectly. GTs aren't for revenue. They are marketing. It also explains why they are gone. In any downturn the first things to go are marketing budgets and economists.

Especially in the US, they have no other effective means of marketing at this point. GW stores are few and far between-frankly I'd proffer them as strictly meh on the marketing front.

To costs - don't forget shipping of game terrain.

teamsters?

As I originally stated, I assumed GTs were a money-losing Marketing event, whereas, some others seemed to think that GTs broke even or actually made money for GW. So we can hash it out and figure out how much of a Marketing "contribution" is needed to make GTs viable.

I have shipping under Direct / per event.

Teamsters are the union guys who unload trucks at the facility dock, and move dollies / pallets from place to place. In many places, you *must* pay Teamsters to unload and move stuff, or you pay even more in penalties.

From the other topic, I have some confusion on what you're definition of salary is. Are you talking overall wages paid?

When I think salary, I think of a salaried worker who gets paid a salary not based on the number of hours he works.

Example:
Salaried worker can work 4 hours or 40 hours and still get paid the same.
Hourly worker gets paid by the hour, and gets overtime if he goes over 40 hours in a work week.

I would assume that GW employees like Jervis and the like get paid as salary workers. Not like the hourly wage a store employee would earn.

As came out from the other topic, you also need to include time lost from other projects the "guests" are working on. If one of those projects were to go past deadline, then that quarters projections would be off if that project wasn't completed on time.

I'll correct "salary" to "wages + benefits" as representing the total hourly cost of labor.

Salaried workers are indeed not paid OT, however they generally get comp time in some fashion. If you're salaried, and the expectation is 40 hours a week, then the company changing things to demand 70 hours including weekends, would result in a salary change.

You are absolutely correct that time spent marketing at a GT takes away from the time they're supposed to be "working", which is why the cost of backfilling / opportunity cost, etc. would be taken as their hours at the event.

Teamsters would make up the cost for some events, but I don't think all. So if you're going for a high-end cost, it would be good to include them. If you're going for a base cost, I wouldn't count them.

Doesn't GW use a lot of volunteers for their events? Giving them free admission to said event as recompense?

JohnHwangDD wrote:
Salaried workers are indeed not paid OT, however they generally get comp time in some fashion. If you're salaried, and the expectation is 40 hours a week, then the company changing things to demand 70 hours including weekends, would result in a salary change.

And as I said before, no it wouldn't. This is why hourly employees typically lose money once they become salaried; employers are free to keep them 41+ hours and require things like the occasional weekend event or travel days that have them "on business" 14+ hours per day. The attraction of a salaried job is that it typically represents a step up on the promotion chain, and in a relatively short time period you can end up making more than an hourly worker, even accounting for extra daily hours.

The only "loss" accrued by sending a salaried person out of the office is in hours lost actually working on whatever tasks their position demanded, however an effective worker is typically far enough ahead on strategic tasks that one or two days with only phone/blackberry/internet contact allows them to stay fully caught up and more menial daily tasks can be completely monitoried by delegated back-ups.

Including salary in event cost is completely bogus accounting.

JohnHwangDD wrote:I'll correct "salary" to "wages + benefits" as representing the total hourly cost of labor.

Salaried workers are indeed not paid OT, however they generally get comp time in some fashion. If you're salaried, and the expectation is 40 hours a week, then the company changing things to demand 70 hours including weekends, would result in a salary change.

I wish you'd tell that to my boss.

teamster issue: Just have them only in right to work states. Problem solved

The only "loss" accrued by sending a salaried person out of the office is in hours lost actually working on whatever tasks their position demanded, however an effective worker is typically far enough ahead on strategic tasks that one or two days with only phone/blackberry/internet contact allows them to stay fully caught up and more menial daily tasks can be completely monitoried by delegated back-ups.

Including salary in event cost is completely bogus accounting.

Again, thats now how you would account for that if you're really trying to cost account this puppy. All costs have to be incorporated. Theoretically-if salary employee had surplus time then that time would already have been taken up. Assuming employees have slack time undercosts your project as then every project will assume that.

Whether GW pays salaried employees overtime (even at the straight rate) or issues comp time, the reality is that if they send someone out of town on Thursday to run a Friday to Sunday event, they're losing at least 3 days of production assuming: travel all day on Thursday, at the event all day Friday, and travel back on Monday. Now, most managers aren't total ogres (although some are) and wouldn't expect to get full production for a few more days and/or just give the guy the day off (take Friday off, you worked all weekend, etc.). So there's probably at least another 2 days of lost production (either because the employee is coming in late, leaving early, not doing his job, or just not there).

So, each employee just spent, in effect, a full week of work to staff the event. Or, 1 out of 52 possible weeks in a year, per event.

Whether the employee is additionally compensated for that too or not, doesn't matter, that's a week of lost production (which could be in addition to paying them overtime and/or comp time).

JHDD - I think the additional marketing is fairly minimal. They publicize the event on their website and their magazine. It's not like they're taking out ads on TV or newspapers.

Except that's not how a large corporation would account for wages on their balance sheets. You're thinking like hourly managers. Salary is a completely different animal. The primary concern in whether or not to send someone on a business trip is not wages, it's travel expenses.

What you also aren't understanding is that a strategic-level employee is fully capable of doing 90% of their job no matter where they are as long as they've got internet and a phone.

The business unit accountant doesn't give a damn where you do your job as long as it doesn't generate excessive hotel or meal costs. Salary is already built into the yearly balance sheet and has absolutely no impact on travel expenses.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Salaried workers are indeed not paid OT, however they generally get comp time in some fashion. If you're salaried, and the expectation is 40 hours a week, then the company changing things to demand 70 hours including weekends, would result in a salary change.

Is there a name for the make belief world where this happens? The only sector where this might be true is the public sector. Most private sector jobs, not only is unpaid overtime common - in some fields it is downright expected. This trend seems to be accelerating, where companies try to get more from their employees while running a "lean" workforce.

You're right, I'm looking at losing an employee for a week to help staff an event. I'm not looking at the cost. But, I think most managers would look at it in the same light. While the 'cost' might be zero, the 'loss of production' is not. And if the managers are complaining to upper management, that means it eventually gets viewed as a cost, whether it's truly zero or not.

We're considering upper level management in this theoretical construct. The original premise in the News&Rumors thread was that GW sent 4 strategic-level (upper mid to upper management) to each GT at a cost of $50 per hour per person.

This led to the false conclusion that "One weekend is more than $10,000 in wages alone!", which people with more experience of corporate accounting quickly jumped on and disproved.

If you send a menial employee, i.e. someone who has to physically be on the job site every day in order to justify their wages, then yes, you have lost production. But that's not who gets sent on business trips.

Mr Clams: Jervis is definitely stragetgic level management. That's why he wins all the batreps... uh... wait.

Doublepost - must've hit "quote" rather than "edit"

OK, now, I'll try to address the various "quibbles" from the previous thread...

Note that all of this is nominal.
____

gorgon wrote:I hazard to guess that GW also doesn't employ four events staffers with salaries of $100K+ a year.

Per Don, there were more than 4 GW staffers.

Based on the information given, I'd nominally break it down like this:
- 4 days for 1 GWUK "named" "guest" designer ($100k salary = $150k benefitted)
- 4 days for 1 GWUK "unnamed" design staffer ($60k salary = $90k benefitted)

- 4 days of 1 GWUS events manager ($100k salary = $150k benefitted)
- 4 days of 1 GWUS events administrator ($60k salary = $90k benefitted)
- 4 days of 1 GWUS events coordinator ($40k salary = $60k benefitted)

- 2 days of 2 local Redshirt support (avg. $30k hourly = $40k benefitted)

It's probably not perfect, but it should be close enough to model the GW staff on site. It's still in the ballpark of $10k for labor.

Note that "benefitted" includes mandatory Federal Employer Income Tax, UI, WC, and payroll processing.


Add Travel:
- 2 round-trip tickets to GWUK London ($900 ea)
- 3 round-trip tickets to GWUS Baltimore ($500 ea)
- 2 cars rented ($50/day = 2x $200 w/ tax & fuel)
- 2 local mileage ($25 ea)
Roughly $4k total


So:
$10k labor
$4k travel
____

don_mondo wrote:Past years, there have been more than four actual GW personnel, I'm saying they can/could run a GT with four paid personnel, filling more slots than they do now with volunteers.

However, you did miss a couple of the major expenses:
1. that is trucking all the scenery/tables to the GT location. IIRC, GoGo told me that runs about $5K,

2. And then of course, the venue rental. No idea on that, but that is a major chunk of the cost of the event.

And the only hotel rooms GW pays for are theirs, plus rooms for volunteers, who double bunk or bunk with GW employees


Base numbers for attendees, last year, ...
BaltGT, 245 players
ChiGT, 115 players
VegasGT, 247 players
... if we say even half (i.e. 300 players) build new armies at approx $500 each, then we come up with about $150K in (gross) sales. if we chop that figure in half ($75k for GW corporate), then ... lowballing the profit figure, we'll say $25K profit. And they're also getting 600 x entry fee as well, last year $125 IIRC, so another $75K. So that gives them a little less than $35K per event for three events before they start 'losing' money.

Anyways, it's interesting to run the possible numbers for revenue generated, but very hard to nail anything down as solid.

See above for nominal event labor of 5 GW paid personnel with a couple guests.

$5k for trucking costsper event? Sounds about right. We can assume this includes teamster fees.

Venue rental? How about $10k per event? That's probably in the ballpark for 3 full weekend days at a major location (friday unload, friday night gaming, all day saturday, sunday finish, sunday teardown).

Hotel rooms, if they double-bunk (some) volunteers, then we can assume single occupancy for each guest, and each GW US staffer, with the redshirts in a single room. Total of 6 rooms at $120 per night (local & hotel taxes included), assume 2 nights each = $1500 total.

So:
$5k trucking & shipping
$10k estimated venue rental
$1.5k lodging

vs.

$25k direct revenue
$8k indirect revenue
____

sourclams wrote:your "cost per day" in wages is effectively $0 beyond time lost on the job,

Lodging in a large city runs about $120 per night if you book in advance, with a $25.00/meal allowance,

But the largest hit should be space rental. I don't know what a convention hall on the east coast/Vegas costs, but most definitely in the thousands/day and I could realistically see it being tens of thousands/day.

I disagree in the cost per wages being zero, as they're supposed to be working, regardless of how you count it.

Lodging at $120 /night is fair. $50/day for meals is consistent with US Federal GSA allowances. I have 5 guys above, 4 days each at $50/day = $1k meals

Agree on roughly $10k for the space rental over the weekend. Assume rental being well under $10/day ($30k/event) - that seems awfully high, even though there are limits to the numbers of places which can host something like a GT.


so add:
$1k meals
____

Ironhide wrote:Can't really count salaried workers pay. They are on salary, which means they get paid the same no matter how many hours they work or don't work.

Why don't they just combine GD and GT?

Yes you can. If it's part of their job to be at the event, then they are paid to be there, which means their time comps out against something else.

That's a GW question.

____


Anyhow, adding it all up, I have:
- $10k labor
- $4k travel
- $5k trucking & shipping
- $10k venue rental (could be $15k?)
- $1.5k lodging
- $1k meals
= $31.5k total cost

vs

+$25 direct revenue (tickets)
+$8k indirect revenue (GT army sales)

As I surmised, GW almost certainly loses money on GTs, and needs the indirect sales to break even. Still lots of variables, but please use this as a strawman.

@sourclams: If Jervis' job is to spend 1 weekend each year at a GT, then that portion of his salary must be allocated to GTs. End of discussion.

DD: You left out prize support, but I'd imagine that amount to be negligible compared to your labor values.

While I think that expensing time for the guests is overestimated at worst, and inappropriate at worst, that your expenses for the redshirt help is likely overestimated - I think that expensing the events staff is an outright mistake, as running events is their full time job, and as such I would not expect them to be compensated a second time for doing their primary job. That would be like giving a guy extra compensation for working nights when they were hired to work nights (i.e. should be factored into their BASE compensation package).

DD wrote:@sourclams: If Jervis' job is to spend 1 weekend each year at a GT, then that portion of his salary must be allocated to GTs. End of discussion.

Eliminating GT's from Jervis' timetable doesn't reduce his salary does it? I don't see how you can bill against it.

-edit- I'll figure out the edit tags eventually!

@Keezus: I beg to differ, strongly.

Expensing the events staff *is* definitely correct. The only question is how much to allocate. In my case, I'm only expensing the hours onsite, which keeps the number low.

If you want to count the primary job cost, which I excluded, then the cost picture is very different. Otherwise, you'd expense their annual benefitted salary (say, $90k) and spread it across the number of events (3). That means having a dedicated management staff for these incurs cost well in excess of $30k per event in labor.

So I agree NOT to count Jervis and the rest ($10k), but instead to take 1/3 of the event manager's full-time benefitted cost ($30k).

As a result of your correct, the event cost is increased by $20k in additional cost.

Based on this, even if *every* player bought a brand new $500 army, GW isn't going to break even on a GT event.

JohnHwangDD wrote:So I agree NOT to count Jervis and the rest ($10k), but instead to take 1/3 of the event manager's full-time benefitted cost ($30k).

That would be correct - IF you assume they have no other duties. If the events staff have other duties, then wouldn't it stand to reason that those duties are also factored into their salaries?

@Keezus: Yeah, which is why I originally got the labor cost at $10k.

No matter how you slice it (hours on site, slice of annual salary, some mixture thereof), you're probably looking at over $10k in GW labor.

You can't get it to down to "zero".

Depending on how you allocate web support / promotional materials / rulespacks / ticket processing, this can jump right back up again.

It would be interesting to see what some folks say about this topic who put together Adepticon or some of the other indy GTs. They'd probably have a good idea about what cost is involved.

@Sarigar: No doubt they would have a lot to say. The biggest difference is that they are unpaid volunteers.

JohnHwangDD wrote:@sourclams: If Jervis' job is to spend 1 weekend each year at a GT, then that portion of his salary must be allocated to GTs. End of discussion.

No, you don't. Not only because that's not how you account for the time of someone like Jervis Johnson (time /= productivity for senior strategic staff) but because 90% of his job can be done on the plane and in the hotel room and probably even at the GT itself.

By your definition GW would probably have to recoup that 1/52 of Jervis' salary as gains because they figured out how to get him to work more hours.

Baltimore convention center is VERY expensive. I doubt that 15k covers it. I'll have to make a couple of calls and try to get some idea of price. My guess is that the cost of the venue alone in Baltimore eats up all revenue.

Anyhow, adding it all up, I have:
- $10k labor
- $4k travel
- $5k trucking & shipping
- $10k venue rental (could be $15k?)
- $1.5k lodging
- $1k meals
= $31.5k total cost

vs

+$25 direct revenue (tickets)
+$8k indirect revenue (GT army sales)

As I surmised, GW almost certainly loses money on GTs, and needs the indirect sales to break even. Still lots of variables, but please use this as a strawman

JohnHwangDD wrote:@Sarigar: No doubt they would have a lot to say. The biggest difference is that they are unpaid volunteers.

Volunteers still get freebies though, which would cut into costs. T-shirts and free admission are a couple that pops to mind.

Also consider that there's some effort in organizing the volunteers, both for initial sign-ups and also organization at the tourney. While they collect no pay, they have a 'cost' associated with them.

Just a heads up but when was the last time there was a member of GW HQ at a GT? I'm just curious since I don't remember ever seeing one in seattle, la, or vegas. I saw the 3 members of the event staff but that is it. Who based on 90k after benefitted employees it's funny john but I got 4,100 in labor for a 4 day event (((90k/52)/5)x4))). But i'll be nice and throw in another $400 ($8-10 an hour) for local redshirts that got drafted.

As for transportation costs if anyone out there reading is a long haul trucker and could give us an idea of the gas cost that would be great. As was mentioned earlier this is all it would cost since they own the truck, tables, and terrain.

Also no event i've ever worked or attended has teamsters load up or unload. The trucks were always loaded by GW employees or local volunteers. What states is it required to have teamsters unload the trucks?

Union states. In areas where unemployment is not in the double digits they've never heard of such a thing.

It all depends on the strength of the local union whether union labor is required.

Also, even if GW is renting a U-haul and having GW employees truck terrain and tables from Baltimore to Seattle, that is not an insignificant cost. And while the employees might be salaried, that doesn't mean there isn't a 'cost' associated with having them not do other work. And these aren't upper management guys driving the truck and talking on their cell phones, these are guys that pack mailorder boxes.