Halloween Venue Event

I knew some venues must be doing Halloween events.  As soon as I published Monday’s blog post I heard from my close friend, mentor, and first boss at Feld, David Rosenwasser.  He informed me that the good folks in Green Bay do an annual event called Sweet Street.  I contacted Ken Wachter (also ex Feld) and his team Cora Haltaufderheid and Kris Mattes at PMI in Green Bay.  They sent some great info to share with you.

Sweet Street is now in its 13th year.  It is promoted as a safe and controlled trick-or-treating environment for children.  They give away more then 150,000 pieces of candy.  The average attendance for this one day event is 6,500.   The event is held the last Friday in October. The kids in the Green Bay area are off for a teacher workshop. 

Cora Haltaufderheid, COO at PMI informed me that Sweet Street was the vision of David Rosenwasser after hearing about a similar event held in Minneapolis.  She also told me that Cleveland was doing one. 

It is truly a public service event.  Most the revenue comes from sponsorships.  They use volunteers to help them.  This is made up of high school students and senior citizens.  This event accomplishes:

• Venue public service (venue is part of the community)
• Creates an annual event for the venue
• Gives venue sponsors another opportunity to reach customers

I have a few pictures they sent me.  If you want me to forward them to you, let me know.  I am sure that other venues do Halloween events.  If your venue is doing Halloween events, let me know and I will try to post them.

Stuff You Could Book In Your Arena

I am always on the lookout for new and exciting shows and events for our arena venues.  A few weeks ago Josh Felix introduced me to a cool arena show, The FSX Fire and Ice Show.  This is from the FSX International Freestyle Snowcross.

The show combines the excitement of indoor extreme snowmobile sports with live Rock-n-Roll.  The show is traveling with the rock band Social Code.  Currently, it’s only traveling through Canada. 

For those arena venues in the U.S. looking for stuff to book this winter, this might be worth taking a look at.

What about Halloween?

Halloween is one of the biggest spending holidays in the country.  Think about how much money is spent on candy, costumes, and merchandise for decorating.  Why can’t all of us in the event and arena marketing business capture some of the money?  Someone should put together a huge pre-Halloween event.  Make it a retail show (selling costumes, candy, & decorations) along with a haunted house and other special Halloween live events and music. 

This would be a great opportunity for sponsorships.  Sponsors want the same thing you do. They want to make money!  They look at their sponsorship as an investment.  If you tie in sponsors that can make money at the event and in the future, you will attract their attention.