I admit it, casinos fascinate me.
Part of what fascinates me about them is how they are designed.
Most casinos particularly the big ones, are perfectly designed to do two things:
1. Detect cheaters.
2. Spot whales.
What's a whale?
A whale is a high stakes gambler. These are the people who are capable of gambling away hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars, in a few days.
The whales are what creates the profit margin, so when one of them walks into a casino you can almost feel the whole place shift in their direction.
If the whale loves Chinese poker then PRESTO Chinese poker tables magically appear.
If the whale loves Cheetos and Orange Soda, then a waitress suddenly has a stockpile of both at hand.
There is virtually no level a casino will not go to in order to keep a whale happy.
Ready for the arts tie-in for all this?
Here it comes:
----------------------------------------------
All the questions we ask about many arts organizations:
Why don't they diversify their organizations more?
Why don't they do more interesting programming?
What don't they change their connection to the consumer?
All of them have the same answer.
It's because of the whales.
-----------------------------------------
Stay with me on this.
Let's imagine a fictional arts organization that has a budget of say, $7 million dollars a year. Let's say that 50% of that money from ticket sales. That means they have to raise 3.5 million from other sources.
3.5 million is a LOT of money to get via fundraising.
I know it may not seem like much, but really it is a LOT. Particularly when you need that 3.5 million EVERY YEAR.
Where are you going to get that sort of cash from?
Corporate funding/sponsorship? Not anymore.
Your endowment? That will be good for some of it, but not nearly enough.
Foundations? Please. Sure, they may give that big arts organization 50,000 a year, but that's a drop in the bucket.
Where is the money coming from?
The whales.
Or at least that's where they hope the money is coming from.
So the arts organization go whale hunting.
Most of their major decisions, the programming, who the Artistic Director is, etc. are all seen through this prism:
What will make the whales happy?
The whales on their Board.
The whales in their community.
The whales that give enhancement money when they do trial runs of Broadway productions.
That's why I don't get all worked up when I see a big organization make a decision that doesn't make much sense to me . . . I know that are doing what they feel like they have to do.
These organizations were built to sell lots of tickets and get money out the pockets of whales.
That isn't a good thing or a bad thing, it's just how it is.
-----------------------------------------------------
Now of course, this whale strategy has a few problems. The biggest problem are:
1. Those whales have less money then they used to.
2. If the whales are giving money they aren't giving to arts groups like they used to. There are a lot of people that need money in this world and the whales are spreading their money around.
So it could be argued that these organizations need to shift their energies to getting less money from more people and away from whale hunting. There are some that are trying to do that.
But that's a hard shift for them to make, it is not what they were designed to do.
-----------------------------------
So here's the punchline to all this. Many of us look toward the larger, well resourced organizations to take a lead in solving some of the challenges we have in the field.
But that's like asking Wal-Mart to solve world hunger.
Any changes in the field, any innovations, any new thinking, is going to have to come from you.
Yes, you.
The leaders of arts organizations that are, by their very nature, flexible enough to take major risks . . . fail . . . and then keep moving.
That's why I'm so passionate about working with small to midsized organizations and individual artists. It's those groups that are going to blaze the trail.
The big guys will come along as best they can, but the job is on us.
Let them chase the whales. We have got to chase the future.
Comments