CEO Dreamland Post Mortem thoughts

This past weekend I hosted for the first time an all Smash Bros. and platform fighting game event at the Wyndham. My goal was to bring together the local Smash Community and also welcome anyone else who was willing to travel to it.



Overall everyone really seemed to enjoy the event which made me and the staff very happy. It was also a first time experience for a few people that has them wanting to come out to more events in the future.



Financially it was sadly far from a success even with 1100 total attendees and the first technical failing for CEO Gaming because I wanted to make it the quality tournament you could expect from the CEO brand. I did my best to make sure everything was covered and well run with plenty of setups/equipment for people to play nonstop throughout the weekend in a big space. To cover the cost of everything including stream production, AV, staging, ballroom space, 24 hour security friendlies room, staffing, commentary, hotel rooms for staff etc. really adds up and at the scale I ran the event about 2,000 attendees would be needed to make it a success. All in all for the sake of transparency Dreamland ended up at about a $20,000 loss.



I think being Easter Weekend was definitely the biggest obstacle but the main reasoning behind it was hotel rates for people to stay and I want my events to be as accessible and affordable as possible. Any earlier in the year and it would have gone from $110 to $150 per night at the Wyndham. Flights were also super expensive because of either Easter Weekend or Star Wars Celebration happening at the same time. I'm not entirely sure.



Right now I have the chance to do Easter Weekend again in 2018 which is the first week of April. I really wish I could find another great venue in Orlando to host it that would be available earlier in the year and I imagine cause of the good times people had more people will want to attend next year.



Really hate disappointing anyone and I'll try to find a way to make this work but may be stuck on Easter weekend again if nothing else can be done. I really appreciate everyone that did support the event and enjoyed it. For that alone I loved doing it.



Currently CEO likely shouldn't throw another Dreamland leading into CEO Daytona which I'm planning to feature Smash at with everything else. Daytona is set to be a revolutionary experience for CEO and the need to produce it successfully makes running any at-loss ventures in 2018 a bad idea.



I'll keep everyone posted if I decide to do another Dreamland.



Thanks for reading.