Financial management of the event production

The management of the finances of a festival or a cultural or music event is a crucial part of the success of the effort. The bad financial management (in Finnish= taloushallinto) can be devastation even for a prospering and popular event and a good management can support a steady growth of a small or a middle sized happening, making it to succeed and to pull off every time higher quality content to attract more crowds.

However, most of the small sized cultural events are run by art or music enthusiasts whose main motivation to put up the event is to bring the favorite band or artist to town or to display the very own vision of the event. The practical approach to cruel financial realities and conditions tend to be forgotten while concentrating on high ideas, inspirations and visions.

The event management has its own golden ratios between the three supporting pillars of the whole production; the venue, the content and the price. These must be in some balance to make the effort even slightly rational – to not to bring too popular artist in the venue sized for 50 people or give special 5 euro ticket fares for the live concert of an artist whose performing costs are 10.000 euros.

The financial management and the consideration of the financial possibilities to realize the event starts from the counting the costs, dividing the sum with the estimated number of the sold tickets and seeing the result. If the sum looks ridiculous for anyone to invest their money, better to forget or find some rich friends, which is as well possible. If your event is carrying intangible valuables or messages useful in advertising products or services of others, you can always exchange these with your rich friend into money to supply the missing purchase power of your ticket buyers.

It is important to keep the records and numbers on budget organized and update the budget so that it matches the real economic situation. Event productions tend to feature all kinds of a sudden expenses and costs and the information about the real amount of the money in the cash is crucial. Many event managers have driven them self into endless debt crisis without proper knowledge of this information.