Thank you for your clear and thorough responses here, I sincerely appreciate your explanations. I’ve worked with two people from the HCC and they both echoed your words here. I’m glad that the “let students pick what they want to pay for” crowd isn’t in charge of the university, or else the UA might not be able to afford the health center, concerts, the amazing guest lecturers and other services all students have access to. Moving here from a big city, I appreciate the HCC having enough funds to attract big-name acts to Fayetteville. And, if the HCC turns a profit that it uses to attract even bigger acts, more power to you! Keep up the solid work.

Other than the “let students choose which fees they pay!” argument, I have no idea why people dislike HCC so much. They offer a decent variety of entertainment and many of the acts they book would only normally route through Little Rock or, if we were lucky, Tulsa.

You are correct. Still doesn’t help someone wanting to compare your use of funds with a private company’s.

” You are welcome to email me and I will be happy to explain to you how this works and how we attempt to maximize every penny that is given to us.”

I’m sure I’m not the only who would be interested in seeing how the HCC maximizes every penny. Why don’t you just post it on here?

Many of our shows cost around 140-175k or more. We generally have a budget between 200-250k. If we generated no revenue on the first show, we would only have 60–75k for a second show. Therefore, we attempt the balance of providing an opportunity for as many students as possible to see each show with the ability to provide to equally big shows a year.

Mr. Crowne does a great job with his shows. He has actually helped us out tremendously in the past, specifically with the Blake Shelton show. You are welcome to email me and I will be happy to explain to you how this works and how we attempt to maximize every penny that is given to us.

Wesley
We no longer use ticketmaster for various reasons, but are happy to use the local Walton Arts Center Ticket office to assist in the distribution of tickets. The fees associated with buying tickets are proportional to the software costs and additional bandwidth costs it takes to run a modern online ticket system.

If we were running our shows like the AMP I suppose we could charge the $100 plus ticket charges that often occur.

The 30% figure is in fact a gross exaggeration to the fee associated with online ticket sales.

Oh you mean 40 bucks. Because no one ever sells tickets for the price on the front. They all have to add at least 30% in stupid fees onto them.

What is the point of this? It’s just blatant lying.

You’re not selling through Ticketmaster or tickets.com. So why the hell are we still being charged these outrageous “fees” for attending a concert?

“To address the comments about profit, I would like to reiterate that this group is not aimed at turning profits, but maximizing the funds to provide the best show possible.”

You can’t do that with the money you currently have available?

“To address the smaller concert idea, when the student fee for HCC was passed, the students specially voted to have a headliner concert per semester.

Yeah, I remember that. I voted for it. My beef is that I feel this money is being under-utilized. I would be curious to know how your per show cost compares to that of one of Brian Crown’s (George’s/AMP) shows at the AMP. Yes, I realize that I’ll never see either set of numbers. Just trying to make a point.

Also, if the HCC funding was removed, most of the shows we would bring would never happen. The HCC has provided increased awareness to the NWA area as a venue for large shows. So not to hate on Arkinvestor’s love of the free hand of the market deciding, the fact remains, that HCC is the reason for these shows. The option of letting parents decide which shows to purchase tickets for their children to attend is irrelevant because once again these shows would most likely not occur without HCC.

I would also like to commend the crew at George’s Majestic Lounge, the Walton Arts Center, and the Green Machine for continuing to bring great shows and to grow their venue capabilities. In the end, all of these groups are working together to provide the students of the University and the local residents of NWA with increasingly more opportunities to see great artists.

Never turned a profit, huh? Maybe it would be a better idea if the HCC just held one concert a year or two smaller ones per year, but with all tickets going to students since they did pay for it.

When the HCC first started, I know that only 4,500 seats (about half Bud Walton’s capacity including the floor) were allocated to students. Has this changed?

I’m not really shocked that big shows held in campus buildings cost a lot of money. However, a per item cost breakdown of a single event might shock me. Only because I suspect there’s some fairly big waste areas (extra middlemen).