Fighting Fyre: Epic Event Fails and How to Avoid Them

Event fails come in all shapes and sizes, from minor mishaps to epic messes. When high profile events go wrong, they make the news and we all get to learn from them. 

Below, we showcase five examples of epic event failures and lessons learned. Though these mistakes seem obvious, they highlight the need for proper planning and risk assessments in every event planning process.

Better to learn from the mistakes of others, than make them ourselves. Read on for more about how to prepare for and avoid common event failures, and how Ticketbud can assist in your event success.

EVENT FAIL 1 – Not Living Up to the Brand 

In January 2019, the Clemson University football team was invited to dinner at the White House after their National Championship win against The University of Alabama. But instead of a 5-star, multi-course meal, the champs lined up for a buffet of “everyone’s favorite fast foods.” 

Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian

Perhaps, organizers assumed that college-aged men would like popular fast foods. Or more likely, there was a catering fail that led to a last-minute fix. Regardless, the honorary meal was subject to criticism from a national audience, many of whom believed the winners deserved better. The dinner did not meet the expectations for what the White House brand represents. And the brand took a PR hit because of this. 

How to avoid this epic fail:

When planning your event, it’s important to be clear about your brand positioning, who you’re planning the event for and why. Whether you promote yourself as a luxury brand or a family-friendly brand, your event needs to reflect that. Revisit these ideas throughout your planning process to ensure each decision aligns with your brand, event goals and audience. 

Ask yourself: What is the purpose of the event? What are we hoping to achieve? How does our brand align with that? 

If you choose to use Ticketbud, you can create a custom webpage from an easy to use template. Add all your event details, graphics (artwork, photos, videos and maps), ticketing information and clear terms and conditions to ensure attendees get a clear picture of the event experience.

EVENT FAIL 2 – Busting the Budget

Financial shortfalls are sure to cause event failures. Therefore, defining a clear budget should be one of the first steps in your event planning process. Not every event needs to offer a swanky, over-the-top experience. But if you promote a premium experience, you need to build a budget for it. Then, understand how expenses and revenue streams (vendors, tickets and sponsorships) might make or break your bottom line.

Take it from the organizers of DashCon, a convention hosted for Tumblr fans in 2014. Marketing for the event touted celebrity guests, top-level speakers and a highly anticipated ball pit. When the reality of the event’s costs hit, the organizers did not have the funds to cover what they promised. 

The only way organizers avoided canceling the highly-anticipated event was by asking attendees to fork up $17,000 to the hotel venue – by midnight! Somehow, they were able to crowdfund the debt. But then, speakers who were left unpaid began to drop from the conference. Those who stayed and assisted with the unexpected payments were rewarded with raffle tickets for extra time in the ballpit, which turned out to be a half-deflated kiddy pool (and the butt of the biggest meme of the year).

While some found humor in the crisis, most participants got angry. Organizers had to refund registrants who paid through PayPal, but those who paid cash were out of luck.

How to avoid this epic fail:

To avoid repeating a massive financial mistake like this, you need to create a comprehensive budget and balance sheet. Know your upfront costs, from the venue to construction, lighting, sound, security and catering, as well as speakers and entertainment. Take into account hidden costs like permits, production costs, extra security and safety requirements.

Review and understand your budget and costs from the beginning. Make clear how you will cover expenses  and turn a profit.

It’s ok to expect to cover some upfront costs with ticket revenue. If you need that early cash flow from ticket sales, choose a ticketing provider that ensures early payouts. This way, you’re not scrambling close to billing deadlines. 

Ticketbud offers daily, weekly and monthly payouts, so you can access those funds before your event.

EVENT FAIL 3 – Overpromising and Under Delivering 

We couldn’t talk about the ultimate event failures without mentioning the infamous Fyre Festival,. The event was an overhyped, luxury music festival set to take place in the Bahamas in May 2017. With endorsements from the likes of Kylie Jenner and Ja Rule, the festival promised beachfront parties, gourmet food, private jets, and performances from Migas and Blink 182. 

This was a classic case of big dreams and no follow through. The organizers were inexperienced with grand ideas but no practical execution plans. Attendees paid between $500 and $1,500 for day tickets, with VIP packages that included flights and accommodation costing around $12k. In the end, the high price tag got them stranded on an island, fed FEMA sandwiches, and set up in shabby tents. The event was a failure of epic proportions and organizers faced jail time for fraud and $26 million in fines.

Similarly, organizers of the 2017 New York City Pizza Festival created a recipe for hanger in promising “a day-long celebration for the dough, cheese, tasty sauces and delicious toppings.” The event was dubbed the Fyre Festival of NYC Food Events. Attendees arrived to a parking lot of mostly empty booths with small samples of cold pizza. This was nowhere near the expected value of the $75 ticket price.  

Slices from the New York Pizza Festival. Facebook.

In both cases, trust was shattered between the organizers and their audience, as well as everyone witnessing it unfold in the media. The lawsuits and documentaries that followed not only damaged the reputations of those involved, it also made the general public extra cautious about events that could be a scam.  

How to avoid this epic fail:

If you promise something, know exactly how you are going to deliver on that promise, including how to fund and execute. It’s ok to be vague on some elements of your event as you fine tune the details, but don’t make promises you can’t keep. 

Also, don’t scam people, it’s not nice! 

EVENT FAIL 4 – Being Reactive Instead of Proactive

No matter how much time and effort you put into event planning, something is bound to go off-course. However, failing to have any backup plans in place, especially for common issues such as weather, creates unnecessary stress.  

Need convincing? Take TomorrowWorld 2015 for example. It should have been the perfect event: a weekend of music set on 8,000-acres of Georgia farmland. But what the organizers didn’t account for was rain, and lots of it. 

TomorrowWorld 2013 in Chattahootchie Hills, Atlanta Georgia. MixTribe, Flickr

The rural resort quickly transformed into a vast mud pit. And because organizers closed off transportation access to the festival grounds, attendees were “left to rot like the walking dead,” as one festival goer put it. Many who set off to find rides outside of the festival grounds faced high-surging rates for rideshares. Others spent the night on the side of the road.

How to avoid this epic fail:

While being adaptable is a useful skill of event organizers, an even better skill is having contingency plans. Avoiding another TomorrowWorld is reason enough for you to complete risk assessments on all aspects of your event beforehand. 

When things get out of hand and there is no back-up plan for your back–up plan, you may have to cancel or close your event. If mother nature or something outside your control takes place, it helps if your contingency planning includes coverage for your ticket revenue. Ticketbud has integrated event cancellation protection through Event Protect. So in the instance of a qualifying event cancellation, the organizer can claim ticket revenue back through the coverage, saving funds to help cover sunk expenses. 

EVENT FAIL 5 – Mispricing Tickets or Registration 

In 2009, two young blokes in Australia were sick of high-priced tickets and drinks at events and decided to take matters into their own hands by creating their own music festival. Thus, Blueprint Festival was born, promising the best three days and nights you could get in Victoria without breaking the bank. 

Marketing was a huge success, attracting 5,000 attendees looking for fun on a budget. But the 23- and 20-year-old organizers with no event experience ran out of money before paying the performers, vendors, and the venue. They claimed they expected to make more money from food and drink sales than they did. But perhaps setting a higher ticket price could have also helped. In the end, the organizers faced bankruptcy and even death threats. And their performers, vendors and venue were left thousands of dollars out of pocket . 

How to avoid this epic fail:

We are back to proper budgeting. While it might seem that a low- or no-cost ticket would be popular with attendees, it cannot come at the expense of your partners. Determining the right pricing strategy is critical to an event’s success. 

If you have a diverse audience, and want to limit barriers to entry, consider offering multiple ticket options or tiered pricing for your event (think: General Admission, Gold and VIP). Ticketbud makes it easy to create multiple ticket types for your event, or create ticket packages that include drinks, catering and other experiences. 

This allows you to offer different pricing levels and experiences to your various audiences. It also gives you opportunities to work with sponsors or partners to design branded, exclusive experiences that can bring in extra cash flow if people are willing to pay.

Additionally, Ticketbud helps you host and schedule ticket promotions or sales. Special promotions can further limit barriers to entry for those within your customer base that are more price sensitive. The further out from your event you can see revenue the better. Consider hosting an early–bird special with lower ticket prices to get people excited and engaged early-on in your event planning. Or, schedule a limited-time sale with a holiday to boost interest and sales.

Event Budgeting for the Budget Adverse

Planning an upcoming event is overwhelming and exhausting. There are so many moving parts to keep track of and the worst thing that could happen is that the entire event flops and no one comes and your entire career as you know it collapses in on itself like a black hole. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500"] That center section? Yeah that would be your career as you know it. (credit: Fox)[/caption] So. There is that.  We don’t know astrophysics and we can’t do anything about being crumpled into oblivion by a black hole, but we do know events. So in a way, we’re almost defenders of the galaxy. A galaxy of events. You’re welcome. As a ticketing company, we also know how the event budget can get overwhelming. No wait, come back! Don’t leave yet! I know the B-word is scary, it is to me too, but let’s be honest, we all know we have to deal with budgeting when getting an event off the ground. If we didn’t we’d all probably have $2,000 Swedish floral centerpieces on each table and gold dipped silverware. At least I would. And then we’re back at careers crumbling in on themselves. So to stop an intergalactic incident, we consulted event planners, event textbooks and some event infographics to put together this handy post to make figuring out your next event budget easier and to keep you from losing your mind and our galaxy not spiralled into a black hole.   First things firstNeed a place to be. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="436"] Pro tip: Don’t have your event on Jakku. (Credit: Disney)[/caption] You probably already know what the most important thing for your event is as you’ve been agonizing over it for some time now. If you don’t know what the key part for your event, you’ve got some catching up to do. We’ll give you a moment to think about it. Good? Okay. For most people, the main part to the event is the where; where is the event going to take place? And the answer will be [insert name of venue location here]. So naturally, the first thing you should have on your budget and the thing you should make sure your money goes towards is venue. It should be noted that just because something is first or most important doesn’t mean it is the most expensive. To have an event you need a location and venue, but this is does not mean it will be the largest expense on your budget sheet. Event planners suggest that a venue rental should account for 15% of your budget. Your venue could be a reception hall, a hotel ballroom, a backroom in a hipster bar or outside on some winery’s gorgeous rolling hills. No matter where it is, you’re probably going to have to pay something to be able to use it. If you already know exactly where you’re going to hold your event, great, skip on down, otherwise we have some more thinking to do. There are three main things you need to think about before you go looking for a place:

  1. How many people does it need to hold?
  2. Does it need high tech hook ups?
  3. Do you need/want liquor sales?
Once you know the answers to those we can move on to the really important part here: how much money do you have to spend on an event space? You can look up different venues and call for quotes and make a spreadsheet and go from there or you can use an awesome platform like EventUp which lists venues by city and need. Putting in Austin, TX pulls up a variety of different places and price points, but on average, most venues ran around $1,500 for Monday through Thursday with a premium being spent on Friday and Saturday nights where you could spend closer to $5,000. Clearly, it is much better for your budget if you decide to go with an event in the middle of the week during the day. Some venue rentals come with amenities included like: Which is awesome. If you can get a venue with many of these added in then that cuts down on your expenses elsewhere. It also makes it much easier on you and not having to figure out how you’re going to take care of everything. But we like to live dangerously, so let’s pretend that the venue you’re using doesn’t really have these set aside for your use, then you’ll need to make room for them in the budget elsewhere. But we’ll get to that in a minute.   Next part of the budget. Food. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="434"] How most of us feel regarding food, lets be honest. (Credit: Buzzfeed)[/caption]   What is an event without a food? Not an event I’m at. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way (admit, you do too), so expect that catering and food should come to around 20% of your budget (though you should plan for more if you are looking to also have liquor sales). Finding the right food type is its only difficulty, thankfully one we don’t actually have here in Austin (Morning? Breakfast tacos. Any other time? BBQ. Done.) but finding the food and caterer is only part of the expense. Make sure that your budget also leaves room for:   Now for the fun one. Entertainment! [caption id="attachment_23546" align="aligncenter" width="400"] Hit button, get party. (Credit: NBC)[/caption] Entertainment is going to be a big part of your budget. You’ve got a place to put people and you’ve fed them and given them a nice libation, but you need a reason for them to be there, other than the free food. For many corporate events this can be a no-brainer. If you’re hosting a symposium on stopping event-related black holes, you’ll likely have a rather knowledgeable speaker or two there to give a lecture (happy to talk, contact my people). Or maybe it is a bit more of relaxed and fun event, with music and a band. Either way the entertainment is going to cost and depending on how specialized you want it, it will end up costing more. You may not have all of these items but you should keep them in mind. They all fall under your entertainment section. Because of the high price of some of these, expect your entertainment budget to run about 25% of your total budget.   Rentals, because buying all of that is unnecessary. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="395"] Rent all the swag you can! (Credit: NBC)[/caption] Rentals are a necessity, especially if your chosen venue doesn’t have a lot of them on hand already. Hopefully they will at least have a few of these on hand which will cut down on this expense but if they don’t, your rentals can range from the high-tech: To the low-tech: Hopefully your venue is helping out with silverware and tables and chairs. If not you may want to talk to them about how they’re kind of a crappy venue. Depending on how and what you need to rent, your rental budget will probably run you 10-12% of your full budget with the higher end being necessary if you are renting everything. It is possible to have a smaller rental budget if your venue has all inclusive packaging, so it may be more beneficial for you to have a smaller rental budget and a slighter higher venue budget, all depends on what works the best.    Make sure to have everything look pretty! [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="381"] Perhaps don’t go with this theme. Maybe. (Credit: Disney)[/caption] Don’t forget, you want the place to look nice! You may have the best DJ and the tastiest catering but the event will look blah with normal house lights and the generic scuffed up tables and Boringly Beige walls. Make sure to add another 10% to decor to spiff the place up with:  Keep in mind that some of your decorations can go under your rental budget (lights, presentation screens, etc.). No one wants to have to buy a crazy amount of theatre can lights when you can just rent them after all, so there is a bit of movement between these two sections as well.   Everything else and the kitchen sink.  Then there are the expenses that don’t fit in anywhere else but you still need to account for them. The random detritus that accumulates somewhere whenever you plan an event. It is the final 8-10% of your budget and will likely include any: There could be any number of things that fall in under the misc tab. If it doesn’t fit in anywhere else, it could go here. Be careful though, you don’t want this to go higher than 10% of your budget! If this category starts to get out of hand, be sure to step back and look at what you have in here. Likely it could go somewhere else (or it may not be really necessary).  The nice thing here, your tickets will totally be free because you’re using Ticketbud and you won’t need to pay for anything extra to scan tickets at the door. So, that’s a relief.   Break it all down.  [caption id="attachment_23543" align="alignright" width="379"] Entertainment and food will take a good portion of the budget. Everyone loves good tunes and good food and they make or break your event.[/caption] This breakdown of your budget is a rough estimate. As mentioned previously, every event is going to be slightly different. Some events you may want to splash out more on rentals and electronics and in others you may need more for food or entertainment (or perhaps your venue has a lot of built ins and they save you a lot of money, who knows we can always dream). These are good parameters to start with when it otherwise feels overwhelming to start your budget. No matter how much money you are working with, your average percentages will be very close. Don’t let your next event budget overwhelm you, keep to this breakdown and you’ll keep everything from spiralling out of control.      ]]]]> ]]>