The LAN Party Cost Debate

Introduction

One of the debates that has bugged me over recent years, and has re-surfaced at the start of the year because of our £3.03 price increase for epic.FIVE, is about the price of LAN parties when compared to various other leisure/entertainment persuits.

Obviously the consumer always wants the best possible price for whatever product or service they're about to exchange money for, but there doesn't yet seem to be an acceptance that a professionally operated LAN event should charge a reasonable ticket price comparable to say a sports event, a cinema ticket, a music gig etc.

To analyse this further, I'm going to categories LAN parties into different types, not necessarily by size:

The Home LAN Party

Where it all began, friends gather around in the garage, spare room or even take over the whole house. Normally people don't charge an entrance fee for the home LAN, but everybody attending tends to have an understanding that it has some cost to pull together, so there is a contribution either by cash, supplies (you bring the beer!) or reciprocal hosting of the next event.

The 'Village Hall' LAN Party

So many of these take place around the UK and you don't tend to hear of them because they quite often accomodate local communities or friend/clan groups. You would expect to pay a basic entrance fee, quite often just about breaking even on the costs.

However this scale of LAN party also tends to rely on either the operator or community members bringing along a lot of the kit and (sorry to small LAN organisers where this isn't the case) sometimes cut a lot of corners by not taking out public liability insurance, not necessarily providing a safe and stable power setup, lack of security because of the close-knit community element etc.

And I think it is these two types of LAN party where the next type, the professional LAN party has difficulty charging, because many who are used to attending the previous two types, then expect to pay similar levels for a totally different animal.

The Professional LAN Party

There is a point, often where the LAN organisation is constituted as a business, and also based on size where you cannot afford (legally or financially) to operate in an amateur way. As a LAN event grows, it starts to attract attention from local authorities, particularly their licensing teams, the health & safety executive, venues start to make more demands, participants' expections rise and measures have to be put in place to make your events more professional, and this is where your costs escalate.

From a health & safety aspect, at the size of events that we run at epic.LAN (and obviously larger events) we have to plan and put in control measures to give participants a safe event just like any other business, this includes:

• Risk Assessments - required by law and expected to be submitted to the venue
• Public Liability Insurance - technically not 'law' but foolish to run without it and most large exhibition/conference/event venues will not let you run without
• Security - often a licensing requirement as well as looking after the welfare of participants
• Safety equipment - things like securing cables or routing them safely, testing of electrical items etc.
• Emergency plans - evacuation, contingency etc.
• Training - qualified members of staff in terms of first aid and event management/health and safety.

The list goes on, for the epic.LAN events, there is an event manual which is given to every member of the team prior to the event of around 30 pages to cover all of these details! I do wonder how many of the smaller events put these measures in place or just take the chance that nothing will go wrong.