A bevy of sponsors and new revenue-generating initiatives has put the Honda Celebration of Light on track to recoup its nearly $2 million budget.
“Our goal is to break even although ultimately everything comes down to the wire and we look at ticket sales,” said Heather Sharpe, who is executive producer of the event that is expected to draw about a million people over the course of three nights.
The addition of two new licensed areas with a combined capacity of about 1,050 is the biggest change at the 25th annual festival, Sharpe told Business in Vancouver.
The largest new area is a Stanley Park Brewing-sponsored beer garden, which has free admission and can fit 750 people. Also making its debut is a 350-person paid-admission area, located near the Inukshuk and sponsored by Clearly.ca, where those who buy $139 tickets get an appetizer platter and two free drinks.
Long-standing ticketed areas remain, including a Keg lounge atop the Stanley Park bathhouse, which accommodates 450 people paying $169 each. The other one is a bleacher-style area at English Bay, where 1,200 people can go if they buy $49 tickets.
Sharpe would not say how much Honda is paying for its renewed three-year title sponsorship, which starts this year.
Total sponsorship, including in-kind donations, generates about 85% of the festival’s budget, which runs between $1.6 million and $2 million.
That total includes hundreds of thousands of dollars covered by the City of Vancouver for policing and cleanup costs.
“Ticket and alcohol revenue is the rest of our revenue,” Sharpe said.
The Vancouver Fireworks Festival Society owns the event and contracts Sharpe’s employer, Brandlive, to organize it.
Brandlive then spends about a third of its budget on things such as entertainment, stages, tents and other on-site logistics, Sharpe said. Marketing also costs about a third of the budget.
The biggest single subcontract, however, is likely to Sirius Pyrotechnics, which arranges the fireworks performances.
Headed by Winnipeg-based Kelly Guille, Sirius finds and pays the competing teams, which this year hail from Brazil, China and Canada.
It also pays shipping costs to transport the fireworks to Vancouver.
“We also hire the local crew of about 10 people who work for two weeks straight and are involved in all three shows,” said Guille.
Guille, who has also created several winning fireworks shows when representing Canada in his capacity as head of a second company, Archangel Fireworks, is this year both the producer of all three shows and also separately in charge of the Canadian fireworks performance on August 1 as head of Archangel.
“At first I said that I couldn’t do that because it would be a conflict of interest, but [Brandlive] said that, because I won in years past and it is an anniversary year, they really wanted me,” he said.
China’s Lidu Fireworks Corp. Ltd. is first to sparkle with a show July 25. Brazil’s Group Vision Show then lights up the sky on July 29. Each of those ventures will likely spend more than $100,000 to put on its show.
“When I compete, I look at my budget and I’ll spend every penny because I’m in it for prestige,” Guille said.
“I want to win the competition. There’s no [profit] margin. If I did more than one of these a year, I couldn’t run a company. For me to put this show on as Archangel, it would cost you $130,000 not counting the cost of the barges.” •
