Producing Beauty Pageants: Brokering a Pageant through Barter

Nearly all new pageant systems start out strapped for cash. Most don’t have any idea of what it costs to produce a National pageant. Cara Ryckman, director of Crown Jewels Pageants and Hollywood Jewels Pageants, certainly didn’t. In her first year of operation, Cara’s hotel bill for her first National pageant — which included rental of the ballroom, Interview rooms, dressing rooms, crew rooms, workshop rooms, and orientation rooms, i.e., collectively known in the pageant industry as “the bottom floor” (plus a buffet) — amounted to $26,000! Moreover, food that is purchased at the hotel, well, being in Tennessee incurs a twenty-two percent service charge PLUS taxes. Fortunately for Cara, she met her room block quota (a group of hotel rooms that hotel management put on hold at a specially negotiated rate for pageant candidates), or she would have also been responsible for that! Cara’s total pageant bill for her 2010 National Crown Jewels pageant was just under $90,000! Cara should have looked at her expenses as being assets to other businesses. Had Cara employed this frame of mind, through barter, she could have contracted that the hotel comp her “the bottom floor,” and even the room block, for her week-long event. Cara had assets to present to the hotel, e.g., brand placement through her pageant (see Chapter 2, “Benefits Package” under “Brand Placement through Beauty Pageants”). In trade, the hotel would have comped Cara “the bottom floor” and the room block (see Chapter 5, “Pageant Venue Bartered”), in exchange for the advertising and additional pull-through revenue it expected, and felt was worthy, as a fair exchange (Chapter 3, “Begin Your Barter Quest” under “Hotel’s Pull-Through Revenue”). The pageant system’s equivalent of pull-through revenue — upcharges — would occur if pageant officials take those donated hotel rooms and turn them into premium prizes that candidates can earn when they sell full page Pageant Program Book ads (see Chapter 3, “Begin Your Barter Quest” under “Pageant System’s Upcharge Revenue” and Chapter 7, “Barter Your Prize Package” under “Hotel Rooms as Premium Prizes”). From this perspective, both businesses could have taken their expenses and bartered them into assets while strengthening their respective brands and preserving precious cash. In fact, Cara could have bartered 100% of her pageant expenses — including the buffet — and avoided even having to pay the twenty-two percent service charge (see Chapter 9, “In-Kind Sponsors”). She would have been, nevertheless, responsible for barter taxes (see Chapter 11, “Legal Aspects of Barter”). Still, there is nothing financially smarter than having another company pay your expenses with their assets, and vice versa (see Chapter 1, “Barter Works in the Pageant Business”). You would then be turning your expenses into assets — without spending precious cash. Producing Beauty Pageants: Brokering a Pageant through Barter will show you how to broker your pageant through the magic of barter.

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