Apparently the Vancouver Sea Festival lost a boatload of money (decaying link). We won’t know how much for a few days, but apparently they hoped to sell 28,000 tickets but only sold 20,000. The weather was bad, but there were also complaints about long lines to see the main attraction–18 tall ships. The tall ship owners left port with only a fraction of their deserved cash. In light of how much coverage and advertising the festival received, it’s remarkable that they didn’t do better.
The part of the article that was most interesting to me, however, was the last one, which discusses festival chairwoman’s background:
Podmore chaired the Richmond Tall Ships festival in 2002, which attracted massive crowds but lost $2 million. Podmore pitched the project again to the city in 2004 as head of a non-profit society similar to the Sea Vancouver society, but Richmond refused to invest the $500,000 requested by the society to run the event.
If they want to run this festival again, I’d hope they have somebody else at the helm. Government agencies like British Columbia Lottery Corporation and the Vancouver Port Authority might want to be shrewder with their sponsorships as well.
UPDATE: Somebody commented with a link to an update from CBC–apparently the debt is about CAN $200,000. That, admittedly, pales in comparison to $2 million. I spoke to a musician friend of mine who played at the festival, and they hadn’t been paid yet.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Hey Darren, heard you on Rutherford today so I figured I better come check it out, will add a link to mine as well.
I have been to the tallship fest, loved it. Really cool to think that it was once only major mode of transportation for cross ocean voyages. What we take for granted as a 6 hour flight use to take them months. Hope to take the kids there next year.
I’m not so sure they did a good job promoting the event. I live in Kits, and I only happened to notice it when walking on the beach. I saw a whole one poster prior to the event.
Perhaps more local support would have been good? Notices in local eateries, posters, etc.
Oh, and some more blogosphere hype would have been good.
I was lucky enough to be paddling in English Bay on Saturday morning, but I only saw 6 Tall Ships, 4 near the Maritime Museum and 2 at Jericho. I have no idea where (or how) they hid the other 12.
Overall, the group I was with wasn’t very impressed and a few of us seemed to remember the Tall Ship Festival in Richmond being much better.
how many other festivals get $500 grand in public money?
I think Jazzfest gets less than $20,000.
by the way, there’s a non-decaying link here: cbc.ca/bc
http://vancouver.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=bc_sea-festival20050713
The Victoria Tall Ships festival had similar logistical problems… IE: A 3 hour wait in a lineup to get a pass to join another lineup to board a ship. It’s always a bad sign when the organizers have to hold an emergency press conference after the first day of a festival. They did have some lovely souvenir foam cutlasses, though.
I didn’t hear any information about the tallships going to Vancouver. There was billboards in the lower mainland for the tallships coming to Victoria, but it never said anything about them coming to Vancouver. It’s definitely understandable that they didn’t sell enough tickets because their advertising was horrible. I went to the tallships in Victoria and was very disappointed. They made it out to be so great on the news and such, and there was only 2 big ships from far away, and the rest were local and as big as a regular boat! I don’t know why anyone would have paid 25 bucks to see it. what a rip off. i think vancouver could have done much better had they advertised it though.
It’s been the same problem each year they come. The crowd management is absolutely horrible and the ticket system to see each ship feels like they’re pillaging. So many people come away feeling ripped off that the paying customers are bound to dwindle even further.