Ah, Las Vegas, where fortunes are made but mostly lost. So many people know of the tales that follow desperate gamblers who go in with their last dollar and win their way into the high life. There's just as many that show how it ruins all manner of things as well. With that in mind, it should be of no surprise at all that conventions tend to get destroyed in Vegas as well. Sure, the bright lights and insane atmosphere seems like a good fit for a convention, but as the promoters of Las Pegasus Unicon found out, the statement of "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" is more about your money and dreams when it comes to business.
In this case, the fandom actually had to come together to raise money to help pay for things that the con could not. Even then, they only managed to raise around $7,500 at the con itself. (Correction: at the time of the video only $7511 was raised, by the end of the night they had $12,000+) It's not bad, but I have a feeling it's nowhere near the amount needed. Though, highly commendable that they even got that much to help things out. Some VA's and other VIP's were saying that they were paying out of pocket for expenses at the con in the form of their rooms, etc. Even reports of the vendor room being shut down, rooms going unpaid and all manner of other things. How much of that is true outside of the vendor room and convention being shut down 5 hours earlier than expected, I'm not entirely sure but it's damning regardless. There were so many rumors that one of the show's VA's, Lee Tocker joined with EFN who was covering the con, broke into their streaming coverage to try and set things straight:
Many of the people there who helped to salvage the burning wreckage that was this con, have set up a site postmortem to try and help out those effected by everything, you can find that info here. Again, this is really great to see from a fandom perspective and I wish them the best of luck.
As for the rest, I'm not completely surprised this happened, I just didn't think this was the con for it to happen at. I figured it would be somewhere else. However, they tripped up in many areas. One big problem with Las Vegas as a destination for conventions is two fold. On one hand you have Los Angeles a mere 4 hours away and Phoenix nearly the same distance. Both of these cities host large conventions and in the case of Las Pegasus, EQLA was held in LA not that long ago. The other side to this is that Las Vegas isn't really as much a "family destination" as the city promoters would like one to believe. Sure, they've made huge strides to make it more family friendly but there are still major hurdles to deal with. Especially with a fandom that is, from what I've observed, rife with people under the age of 21 so that limits the audience immensely given the location. If you think that the average age is 20-25 then you realize it was scheduled right in the middle of the Spring semester for many. College students usually are broke and can't travel long distances in the middle of their terms.
What exactly happened at Las Pegasus isn't entirely known (some details are still very fuzzy). From what I've been able to gather, from a few sources close to the matter at hand, is basically the feeling that the con staff was thinking more on what other cons had accomplished rather than with what was actually happening. The logic here, I assume, was that due to the freakish success of EQLA and BronyCon last year, they figured that they'd get a certain amount of people. While I have no way of knowing just how many they were expecting, I've heard rumors of everything from 4,000 to 8,000 and as low as 2,000. Fact is? They didn't get anywhere near any of those numbers. Most reports that I've read about and heard is that they were much closer to the 1,000-1,200 attendee range.
Now, you may be thinking "Hey, that's a great turn out for a first year con!" and you'd be right, it is a great turn out. However, the problem lies with the fact that they were planning on having at the very least double or four times that amount. They never wavered from this and booked a ton of voice actors, musicians and other fandom celebrities to make the best convention they could never thinking of how they would pay them if things didn't work out. These are people who they had to pay appearance fees for, cover their room costs, possibly food and who knows what else. I'm sure you can guess what happened next, they couldn't pay all of it. This doesn't even get into the fact that certain obligations typically have to be met in order to get those great hotel deals that cons offer. Usually they have to fill a certain percentage of the rooms to get discounts on ballroom/convention space and so on. Failure to meet those requirements means that all sorts of things happen that put the con staff on the hook for potentially a ton of money and it did in this case. This shows a horrible lack of planning and too much wishful thinking, some of which is needed but this seems to be near delusional levels. They are most likely in some serious financial trouble due to all this, just on the hotel standpoint alone.
So, as I said before in a previous article, maybe having so many of these things so close together isn't such a good idea after all (in fact, to be blunt, it's down right idiotic but that's another matter entirely) and this would certainly prove that in a lot of ways. While other conventions have failed or gone completely screwy in other circles (see the whole JumpCon debacle in 2008), this should serve as a wake up call to the Brony fandom, especially those who are thinking about hosting a convention or are in the planning stages of one.
These things are serious business and you can do more harm than good if you haven't thought everything through. Everyone loves a good convention, but too many and you get these kinds of things happening. It's great that the fandom tried to help out as best they could in the situation and I give credit to those who tried to pull things together, salvaging this mess. Really nice gesture and a good way to patch things with the show's talent. However, don't be surprised if talent (especially their agents) from the show are a bit gun shy of conventions now without some reassurances.
As for the con staff, wherever they are. You've taught the fandom a very valuable lesson, one that I, personally, hope many take to heart.
UPDATE: The con staff at LPU has decided to post this as a response to several things and maybe to clear things up. However, sources close to me that were in attendance, say that most of this is complete BS. I have inclination to trust them and believe that they would never lie to me. However, in fairness, I will post up what was said by the organizers on their website without edit or commentary (since who knows how long that site will remain up):
Clarification (2-26): When we say the money from EFN's fundraiser was uncounted, we mean to say that Las Pegasus Unicon has no record of it. This does not imply that EFN did not keep apropriate records themselves.
What follows are not excuses, but rather explanations for those who want to hear from ones who know.
We first wish to offer our apologies to those negatively affected by Las Pegasus Unicon. Unicon was started with the best of intentions, an attempt to provide a grand, fun event for the wonderful fandom of Bronies that we have come to know and appreciate. At no point was malice, negativity, or greed a part of our motivation. What we were guilty of was naivety. The short version of it all is that we acted upon bad advice from those we thought we had no reason to distrust, and were financially gouged by nearly every institution we dealt with. With any plan you make, allowances are made for the occasional mishap, and our plan was like this. However, we encountered not occasional, but constant negative changes throughout the stages of this convention. So many, that not only did our backups prove ineffective, but we doubt there could have been any effective backups to work, save perhaps a millionaire benefactor. Sadly, we did not have one, nor any sponsors at all for that matter. This convention was run out of our own shallow pockets, the only supplementation being the ticket sales.
Between last minute add-ons by the hotel/convention center employees, (on top of a 5 month swim through their lies and misdirections) equipment rental changes, un-authorized transportation charges, unmentioned union labor costs, and two dozen other unexpected last-week costs, our convention operations budget had been depleted. Now this is not to say that the voice actors and other MLP:FiM cast members had been overlooked. Contrary to some unfounded and untrue statements, the celebrities’ agents have all received monies from us - both prior to the convention and during. Exactly how much has been received by the agents is impossible to say with certainty. We have records of payments totalling in excess of $40,000 to the various agents. However, an unknown amount of cash was witnessed, on more than one occasion on Sunday, being directly removed by an agent of the stars from our cash box. Additionally, all monies raised by EFN’s fundraiser and all autograph sales went uncounted directly to the stars’ agents.
Clarification (2-26): When we say the money from EFN's fundraiser was uncounted, we mean to say that Las Pegasus Unicon has no record of it. This does not imply that EFN did not keep apropriate records themselves.
While at no point did we abandon Unicon, at about 2:00 AM Sunday we realized that events had escalated beyond what our experience and staff could manage, and thus effective management was transferred from us to EFNW. At this point, we were grateful for the willing assistance from our fellow Bronies and had long since discarded any thought of recouping our personal losses into a goal of giving the best time to the attendees there on Sunday. We did our best to help these more experienced folks salvage the convention, and many crises were averted with their guidance. However, when it came to monies, the hands of the stars’ agents were constantly being filled. Whether it be from autographs, auctions, or personally removing T-shirt sale money from the cash box. Due to the chaotic nature of the con at this stage of the game, and a complete and utter refusal of the agents to sign records, an exact ledger of what was received by the agents on Sunday is impossible to produce.
As some of you are aware, some attendees suffered from the questionable tactics employed, for whatever reason, by the Rivera Hotel upon their checkout - most notably, ignoring all payments made by Unicon towards their room comps and charging them full balance.
In regards to the generous Bronies who have been donating to fundraisers, we have never put our hand out requesting donations and have no association or awareness of how these fundraisers are operated or organized. They are not affiliated in any way with the staff of Las Pegasus Unicon. Thus, Unicon has no knowledge of the disbursement or organization behind these fundraisers. However, our suggestion for these generous donations would be first to go to the Bronies affected by the recent events, especially those forced by the Riviera to pay for their rooms out-of-pocket. Following this, helping the musicians who performed so admirably who may or may not be out funds. These recipients, rather than the voice actors, who have already received payment to their agents, should be preferentially compensated.
The reason that the vendor hall closed when it did was simply because the Riviera stated that, despite the convention space being paid in full until midnight well before the start of Unicon, they would be closing the doors at 6:00 PM. They then changed this to 7:00, and then finally admitted that we had paid in full for the event space. However, this confirmation from the Riviera came much too late to forestall the chaos instigated by their first proclamations. This matter we place on the shoulders of the unprofessional Riviera staff.
We are currently seeking legal counsel on how to proceed in an attempt to find closure with those financially impacted by the hotel situation, along with making our side of the story known to the community at large. The contact@laspegasusunicon.com email address will continue to be monitored and will respond to serious inquiries.
Sincerely,
The Las Pegasus Unicon Staff
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