Anyone who ever got into producing Renaissance Faires to make a pile of cash really need to have their heads examined. Now granted you can make some money, but all it takes is a rain out, snow out, last minute permit issues, or any number of occurances that impact attendence and you can go from an event in the black, to one in the red and sending you running to see about that 2nd mortgage.

The short form of the above is just meant to express that margins on events are very thin, and every new expense has an impact. For years the West Coast has been lucky enough to have a number of Jousting Troupes, and they ranged in expense from $2,500 to $5,000 per weekend for a basic show. Generally the pricing was at $3,500. Now over the last 24 months the prices have all jumped up to the base price being in the $5,000 for a base price.

One of the largest elements of their expenses is of course the insurance, which can be rather high. Spreading it across multiple events would help defray the expense. However it seems that now that events are having to rethink their jousting inclusion on their schedule, forcing prices to rise even higher based on fewer events.

Polling the community, it almost always comes back with the opinion that Jousting is very importaint to the success of an event, but the question stands - how high can it rise before it becomes a losing propisition for the event and the benefit of having one is outweighed by the outlay. Even as it stands for an event to have a joust, the expense isn’t just the flat rate (for example, $5,000), there’s also the inclusion of the expense of hotel rooms (generally demanded), fencing for the arena, seating of some kind (haybales or bleachers), and in the end it’ s over a $7,000 propisition. Given that many single weekend events have entertainment budgets under $10,000 that leaves only trace amounts for everything else (stage acts, musicians, court, and all the rest).

The Village Blacksmith is one of my favorite smithing acts/setups I’ve ever seen, but they went from an old expense of about $500 a weekend to $1500 and up. It doesn’t seem to really dawn on them that it’s not a personal expression of disliking them - it’s just that they no longer fit into the bigger picture of event expenses.

The West Coast is lucky (in some ways) to have 20+ faires a season, with three of them being long run events. But with all the entertainment options, the quality of events often suffers due to attendence numbers that just aren’t what they once were (or are in other areas of the country). It’ll take some time to sort out what new attractions, marketing, and efforts will draw in more audience. It’s even more critical now that the economy continues to be delicate (to say the least), and people in general have less discretionary funds to play with in going to events.