Another thought about the growing fascination about whether there’s a dot-com bubble happening: conferences have become big business, especially in Silicon Valley.
Facts to consider: About 1,000 people are attending the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week. At $3,595 a ticket, that’s gross revenue of $3.6-million, not including money from sponsors such as Nokia, AOL, eBay and Microsoft.
This sold-out event comes on the heels of TechCrunch40 that saw 800 people cough up $2,500 a ticket, which is gross revenue of $2-million. (Cynthia Brumfield suggests this meant a cool profit of $2.1 million for the organizers, Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington, after taking into account sponsorship.)
You can find my chicken list post about the bubble worries from earlier today here.
2 Comments
I don’t have first-hand knowledge of either conference, but I do know that most attendees at a conference are there for free or for a reduced price. I’d be surprised if either conference grossed more than $1M in registration. Also, running conferences isn’t cheap. I’m sure both of these events turned a profit, but I’m also sure it wasn’t the outrageous profit you suggest.
You’re right, conferences aren’t inexpensive to arrange – something I have learned first-hand from helping organize the mesh conference in Toronto. That said, our prices are significantly less than the TechCrunch40 of the Web Summit.