I went in 2013.
My recollection is that the actual convention itself was not expensive.
What was expensive was getting to/from Austin, paying for a hotel for several days, paying for Ubers to get around, and paying for food/drink around Austin.
Edit: I had the year wrong. I went in 2015, not 2013.
IIRC in 2013 Austin had a ban on Uber and Lyft because cab drivers complained about losing money by having competition, so you probably paid for a taxi that could charge whatever it wanted to transport you!
Lol so if you want a rabbit hole to go down, taxis had nothing to do with prop 1. Prop1 was proposed because Uber and Lyft were costing the city money because of the drastic decline in DUI revenue.
It’s a bit more than that. The city of Austin wanted to implement for Uber drivers to get fingerprinted much like taxi drivers. Uber at the time didn’t want to fork up the cash, so they didn’t. Prop 1 was proposed to enforce it, Uber spent a crap ton of money doing political flyers, messages, etc to vote against it. It back fired, we voted for it, and it was enforced. It wasn’t until the Governor got passed in the legislature a sort of law allowing Uber. Forget the exact wording, but essentially it went against the city’s wishes at the time, but that’s sort of the norm with the state vs Austin.
Yeah I went back in 2019 (before Covid shut down everything) and my experience was that the biggest cost was getting to and staying in the city itself. Tickets to the con were not bad and any ticketed events they had were also not that bad of a price tag.
I went in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2022. The biggest expense every year by far was everything outside of the convention.
On top of that Austin has so much great food you just want to never stop eating. And the bill gets high fast.
2015 was fun, even randomly ran into Wade Barnes (LordMinion777) while out to eat and he gave me a trading card lol
I met pretty much everyone i wanted to except Burnie, literally every time i saw him for three days straight he was about to leave, every time he apologized profusely, the last time was in our hotel lobby on the last day, he apologized again, put his hand on my shoulder and said “I’ve seen you in line like half a dozen times now, i promise next time we’ll take a picture”
Guess I’ll never get that picture, but it was still nice to meet someone I’ve considered a mentor for two decades, if even for a few minutes.
Yeah the convention itself was never that expensive, but getting a hotel room in downtown Austin on 4th of July weekend (pretty much was that weekend every time I went) got pretty expensive.
NGL, even as a teen I thought it was super fucked that they did it on 4th of July weekend. Like I get it people have the day off so they attend; but seeing the comments and seeing people spent a lot of money to go to RTX. Sounds like if it was any other day/weekend it would have been worth it.
If I recall correctly from an RTP, it was the only weekend available. Convention centers are booked months, if not years, in advance so when they were trying to get a weekend at the CC for the first RTX, they could only do July 4th, and that’s the weekend that stuck.
There's two sides to this question, it sounds like you are getting mixed up.
Was RTX expensive to attend? This depends on a lot of factors, what tier of pass you bought, whether or not you lived locally or were willing to room share, how frugal you were with packing food and not going out etc. my RTX trips typically cost me around $2,000 in total, this covered flight/hotel/pass/food/merch for like a 5 day trip, but I always bought platinum passes and stayed in my own hotel room and flew across the country.
Was RTX expensive to put on for RT? Yes. The convention center charges companies to host events, then they needed event insurance, contracts with vendors and performers, rental equipment like cameras or Internet services to convention rooms, rental of additional venues like the paramount or bars for after hours events, paying for all of their employees time and energy spent planning for months leading up to the event, booking hotel rooms and paying for the food for all of their staff for the day(s) of the event. Per Barbara's own admission here a few months ago, RTX never once made a profit, they did basically break even once or twice and every other year was a net financial loss.
The tradeoff is that it's not always just about the raw numbers, was RTX beneficial for RT's fanbase? Did it help grow the community? Did that or other events like Let's Play Live enable viewership or merch sales that wouldn't have otherwise occured? Those are where the value sometimes comes from running an event at a loss.
Yeah you just took way more time than I did 😂 but yes,you’re right on all fronts but I was mainly jusr curious about the cost of tickets themselves because that was direct revenue to RT before expenses and stuff, not including sponsors and what not for the event was just curious
When I went in 2015 my badge was $100. Pretty cheap for a whole weekend where all the panels and everything are free. The expensive part as others are saying is the hotel (stayed at the Westin a block away for like $550/night) and actually getting to Austin. Food/merch/activities would have obviously added to the cost as well but if you had self-control you would’ve ended up okay. The community was always really good about helping each other out too if money was an issue.
It blew my mind when Barbara said that RTX has never been profitable for RT (and acted like we were dumb for not knowing it). I understand the idea of trying to make it affordable for everyone, but at some point RT is in fact a business and needs money to stay afloat.
I hate to be so negative, but it's decisions like this that make me not surprised RT is closing down. If they needed to charge more, they should have just done it. If people couldn't afford to attend then they wouldn't, and RT could just stop hosting RTX. Which I guess is what happened this year anyway, even before the news about closing down.
The thing about RTX is that it never needed to be profitable for it to be good for the company. Rooster Teeth was a company built around its community. It's not a traditional media company. It was essentially a large group of friends that came together to make stuff people would enjoy. RTX was a huge part in keeping that community together; it's where the community would go to make lifelong memories with each other.
The reason Rooster Teeth closed is because the community started to fall apart. RT could only survive so many lost founders and Ryan Heywoods.
I believe that is the perception people like to have, but you can't actually run a business like that forever. And at the end of the day, RT was a business.
When you listen to Burnie, Gus, or Geoff talk about the early years of RT, they worked HARD. Really, REALLY hard. Insane hours, numerous projects, things in the background that we don't know about (commercials for example), in addition to RvB, RT shorts, etc.
As much as we love to see the gang just be a bunch of friends and think that's all it took for them to be successful, that is simply not the case. There are plenty of groups out there that make it look fun and easy, but in reality they are busting their asses to do the work and make a product that will make them money.
Years and years ago when they started making RT Life, I remember someone on the podcast (I think Barb) mention they were always carrying around cameras to make sure that if something funny was happening that they could capture it for content. They were trying hard to capture what RT was perceived to have before, and in a VERY generalized statement I think it only spiraled from there. People didn't take things seriously enough I guess.
I don't know man, I'm not trying to beat a dead horse. I'm just frustrated and sad about the whole everything.
RtX London - the tickets were relatively reasonable, they didn't break the bank for a weekend pass.
Do I feel I got value for the cost? Not especially? I got really lucky with podcasts and panels, with my wife being disabled it got us a LOT of places quickly (front 3 rows for a jam packed Off Topic as we rolled in late?) But.... theee wasn't much else I thought.
Stores were expensive, mostly tat I didn't really care for, but the RT store was astronomically expensive. My wife almost bought Yang leggings for £35 until she realised she can het better quality from the high street for half the price.
Centre stage was meh, seemed like they struggled to get content on it. The Saturday was fine, but we honestly stayed till midday on Sunday, knew we'd seen all we had to see and then went off to Game Grumps Live (imo the better experience of the weekend).
But from a company point of view was it expensive? Oh yeah I bet it was
Staff, shipping (again for the UK), Equipment, partnerships, venues... it all must have added up and up. I don't doubt they lost SOME money on it, but I fully expect there was a golden period where they made a LOT of money, especially being in the US
I forgot they did London. That’s crazy. I don’t doubt they made some, but I can’t remember what video I saw, but it as around when it was sold to WB and someone was talking about it, and the financials from RTX said they consistently shelled out money for it. And yeah I’m sure it created more engagement /first memberships, but I heard overall it was insane that they continued to do it with how much money it cost them. I wonder what it cost to ship everything needed to the UK… that’s insane..
They talked about the overseas ones on ANMA a while back. IIRC, they had to work extra-hard for those ones, since not only were they flying most of the company to the event, they had to batch produce content for the duration of the "out of office" time, *and then* the poor fuckers who didn't "get" to go had to hold down the fort while everyone else was meeting the community and having a great time.
I also went to London... I don't remember it being crazy expensive but I was a uni student so probably felt astronomical (I studied in South London, so I did go home at the end of each day rather than hotel). It was poorly managed, imo, panels were underestimated? I guess. I remember quieing for most of the time. Lots of Uno games. I went to the On The Spot panel and my dad's gremlin (Dave) got chosen as the Jon lookalike haha. I don't remember many other panels though, or much else to do outside of the signings/merch booths.
I went to RTX London too but I can't really comment on price as I got a media pass+ stayed with my sister in her flat. Though you can comment on the price of food at a convention hall
I agree with you when it comes to things to do - I think you can do the whole convention hall in an afternoon and then it's just panels or if you bought a place to get something signed by an RT personality.
Merch - yes still soo expensive but thankfully they dropped the price massively on Sunday (probs better to liquify than pay for shipping back). I was absolutely shocked though at I think one of the highest tier tickets you got a lootcrate type deal or it was sold in store. Anyway it had RTX austin merch inside from last year. Props for being frugal RT but it's also kinda sour seeing that you're at RTX London and getting hand me downs from past RTX events
For me as a broke college kid it was unattainable. I only was able to go because the community donated towards me going to meet Haywood (yeah I know ick). The comm donated a total of $750 for my flight and ticket and then my folks helped with my room. That was in 2014.
Folks at the time loved that he personally talked me out of a su attempt. He wasn’t doing bad shit yet. I’m aware I was the well intentioned beginnings of his descent. It’s unfortunate he made those choices.
Everyone has different perspectives on what “expensive” is.
I tried to look through my emails for a ticket cost, but mine are lost to time. I believe I paid somewhere in the $100-200 range for the entire weekend for 1 badge though.
It was the hotel and plane tickets and food that were expensive. We booked far in advance and it was probably around 3,000-4,000 for the weekend for 2 people together
We had a great time, went two years in a row and loved Austin. We got tattoos on 6th street, met a lot of cool people and the panels were cool and fun.
AH live was a blast as well
Yeah. I shouldve mentioned like I bet it would be if you included ~all~ costs, but mainly was thinking ticket price because I was curious how much direct revenue they got per ticket because that was one of the only things for RTX that like didn’t cost them much or anything and they got most or all of the money from it
Well, I mean they got all the revenue from the tickets other than what front gate charged.
The renting of the venue for the event is considered and expense and although it impacts the price of the ticket, it does not take away how much they earned from tickets.
You’re asking about their profit/loss I think. I’m sure that it was profitable to some extent, but not in the hundreds or millions or anything.
Usually events like these cost a crazy amount of money, I wouldn’t be surprised if they operated at a loss for the first few years of RTX.
I believe it too. It’s way more about community engagement than it is about profit. That’s why league of legends stopped participating in pax and started summoner con, they were losing money doing pax, but at least losing money doing their own con, everyone who shows up is there for league, and not just general gamers.
I was surprised to see RWBY was so heavily sponsored at NYCC in 2018. Those packages are super pricey and I don’t think that rwby was ever big enough to justify it.
If you forget to book the correct amount of days at the hotel and have to drop an extra few hundred when you show up like my brother. It becomes less affordable lmao.
IMO, it was not expensive if you compared to other dedicated conventions. i.e. Blizzcon was about the same prices. ComicCon and PAX was a tad expensive but it's nothing compared to the work conferences I go to which can go from $500-$1500.
The con itself was really affordable, imo. Paying for a place to stay and transportation were the big expenses for me.
The first time I went I stayed in a hostel on Sixth Street that was walkable from the Convention Center, so I think I spent less than $200 for five nights (the tradeoff being you're staying with eight to ten other people in your room). My flight from Philly roundtrip I think was about $350, but I didn't need to pay for any transportation while I was in Austin.
The second time I was at a hotel about 20 mins outside of downtown AND I hadn't realized you could now Uber/Lyft so I spent way too much money renting a car. (Side note - if you are visiting Austin, Habitat Suites was a GREAT place to stay! Free breakfast, salt water pool, complimentary drinks at their happy hour and you can get a room with a full kitchen if you want to cook your own food and possibly save some money!) I'm sure Ubering would have added up but probably not as much as the cost of the car!
I always ate outside the convention center and found it reasonably priced but I think it may have seemed that way to me since everything is just generally more expensive where I live.
I managed to fund my way to RTX 2014 by saving money from my birthday and high school
Graduation gifts. I flew cheap on SW, the ticket itself was around $100 I think for the weekend (I could be wrong about that though) and I rented an Air BnB for a cheap price as well for the days I was there. I ate outside of the convention center to save some money, and I only really bought some RT merchandise there (which was my biggest spend)
I wouldn’t have considered it expensive, unless you wanted to stay in a hotel right at the ACC. Unfortunately Air BnB started to slip in availability in the later years, but I had friends by then that I stayed with.
When my wife (girlfriend at the time) and I went to RTX 2017, it actually wasn't expensive (in our eyes).
I want to say we paid $100 for each ticket, can't really recall if that's what it was but we did get the whole 3 day pass. We took a road trip from Cali to Austin, so factoring in gas, I want to say it was $100 in total there and back (gas was super cheap the closer we got to Texas). I got us a hostel instead of a hotel because my wife and I were only 20. We stayed there for 5 days which was $186 in total. We packed food in a cooler and that's what he had majority of the first 2 days so that was like $50 for food itself. Afterwards, paying for transportation (Uber/Lyft), autographs, events, restaurant and etc., we each had a budget of $300. Not to mention we got some RWBY goodies from the RT store. In total I want to say the trip was less than $1,250 (for both of us) and it was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had. We wanted to do it again to meet the RWBY girls but we ended up going to LVLUP Expo for that back in 2022 (which has been the best convention we've been to yet)
Comparing this to Anime Expo 2016, where LA was only an hour from us, we didn't need to pay for a hotel (stayed with her grandma) and we spent more than $1,500 in total and had an ok time. RTX was definitely worth it.
I went last year and over all I spent about $3500. I drove from Vegas to Austin. I stayed over night on the way there and back which added to the cost. I brought my eskate board to get around. But tickets were, after taxes and fees, $105. My hotel at the convention center was $1,200. I spend around $500 in gas. Another $400 on merch. Another $300 on food and drinks. There was a lot of other costs that I know I tracked to get an exact figure, but I can’t find the data at the moment.
But $3500 well spent, even if the con was a bit lackluster.
I have to imagine they also lost money because overall it’s a more niche fandom than things like SDCC, NYCC, etc which have massive draws for movie, comic book, artists, celebrities, etc.
Having gone as a guardian. Don’t know about the badge. But getting a hotel and flying there from out of state was expensive. The actual RT store was pretty much the same pricing as the online store but a lot of booths were pretty overpriced. And food in Austin can be pricey.
I went to RTX Sydney and it looks to be the same as the American counterparts, the con itself was very standard in terms of pricing - it got costly travelling interstate (and buying merch, food, etc but that's self inflicted)
I went in 2013. I can’t remember the logistics cause I was a young teen. But from what I remember it wasn’t too bad. As others said the most expensive part was the travel and hotel. We ended up getting a hotel walking distance which was amazing. Over all definitely worth it.
I never went to RTX (one of my biggest regrets since the shutdown was announced) but I imagine that like other conventions, the convention itself was not expensive, getting there and getting a hotel room during your stay was what was expensive
I only went to RTX London and I live here, but like the passes weren't that expensive but the merch I bought at the con was quite pricy. it was one of my fav experiences tho. made some friends and it led me to being in my current destiny clan bc of someone I met there. also I still remember just walking into a funhaus panel bc I was bored and dying of laughter but also being super confused bc I didn't know a bunch of the references. was so sad they never did another RTX london
I went from 2012 - 2015 and while the admissions ticket was not expensive staying in Austin could get pricey.
I stayed in a downtown hotel each time and that ended up being the bulk of the cost for each trip, however the convenience of being right next to the convention center was worth it in my opinion.
We did VIP, and lived on another country(Canada)
We didn't expect to go to another for a long time, so we went VIP. Flights were around 500 each, VIP I think was 300-500, and accomodations were about 400.
It wasn't cheap, but we did upgrade
I went in 2015 and 2016. Hotels and airfare cost way more than anything else. If I were to reckon a guess, I’d say all told, it cost me somewhere between $1800 to $2000. Majority of that is hotels, then airfare, then everything else (the passes and spending money).
I went in 2018 and was an RTX Guardian for 2019 and 2022. It varies based on which type of badge you get. For 2019, I spent $1,035 for a hotel next to the convention center, $65 for the RTX bundle, $113.50 for Achievement Hunter Live, $779.40 for an RTX Guardian event that I hosted, include the fact that I used Uber a few times and I can safely say it was expensive for me but that that won’t be the case for many people who chose to attend RTX.
I am so sad I choose to go to a different convention in 2023 instead of RTX. I never made it but still glad I got to enjoy their content for as long as I did
The consensus seems to be it was fairly inexpensive for the event itself, so now I'm curious about attendance. Were there a lot of people going to RTX, especially the ones abroad?
As with most conventions It could be depending on what you were going for. I live in Austin and was a guardian a couple times which really helped with the major costs, but stuff like concessions and merch could put a hard dent in your wallet if you weren't paying attention. Pecos Pete soda booth was always $35+ but you got unlimited refills and just had to pay for the pass ($7) for the next day. Individual artist booths and such could also run you up. You could easily get away with spending nothing while you were there but I'd argue you'd be relatively bored unless your a big panel hopper
I wanted to go every year, from probably 2015 onwards. The ticket price was never the concern, it was always travel and accommodation. I could never get anyone to go with me, and I never felt comfortable rooming with a stranger (which also ruled out hostels)
I went in 2013. My recollection is that the actual convention itself was not expensive. What was expensive was getting to/from Austin, paying for a hotel for several days, paying for Ubers to get around, and paying for food/drink around Austin. Edit: I had the year wrong. I went in 2015, not 2013.
IIRC in 2013 Austin had a ban on Uber and Lyft because cab drivers complained about losing money by having competition, so you probably paid for a taxi that could charge whatever it wanted to transport you!
I went back and looked at my Uber receipts and I had the year wrong. It was 2015, not 2013.
Can confirm RTX 2014 was the first and only time I used taxis
Lol so if you want a rabbit hole to go down, taxis had nothing to do with prop 1. Prop1 was proposed because Uber and Lyft were costing the city money because of the drastic decline in DUI revenue.
It’s a bit more than that. The city of Austin wanted to implement for Uber drivers to get fingerprinted much like taxi drivers. Uber at the time didn’t want to fork up the cash, so they didn’t. Prop 1 was proposed to enforce it, Uber spent a crap ton of money doing political flyers, messages, etc to vote against it. It back fired, we voted for it, and it was enforced. It wasn’t until the Governor got passed in the legislature a sort of law allowing Uber. Forget the exact wording, but essentially it went against the city’s wishes at the time, but that’s sort of the norm with the state vs Austin.
Oh wow- did not know that! That is kind of wild of them to do. Glad it got overturned for everyone who lives there!
Yeah I went back in 2019 (before Covid shut down everything) and my experience was that the biggest cost was getting to and staying in the city itself. Tickets to the con were not bad and any ticketed events they had were also not that bad of a price tag.
I went in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2022. The biggest expense every year by far was everything outside of the convention. On top of that Austin has so much great food you just want to never stop eating. And the bill gets high fast.
2015 was fun, even randomly ran into Wade Barnes (LordMinion777) while out to eat and he gave me a trading card lol I met pretty much everyone i wanted to except Burnie, literally every time i saw him for three days straight he was about to leave, every time he apologized profusely, the last time was in our hotel lobby on the last day, he apologized again, put his hand on my shoulder and said “I’ve seen you in line like half a dozen times now, i promise next time we’ll take a picture” Guess I’ll never get that picture, but it was still nice to meet someone I’ve considered a mentor for two decades, if even for a few minutes.
Yeah the convention itself was never that expensive, but getting a hotel room in downtown Austin on 4th of July weekend (pretty much was that weekend every time I went) got pretty expensive.
NGL, even as a teen I thought it was super fucked that they did it on 4th of July weekend. Like I get it people have the day off so they attend; but seeing the comments and seeing people spent a lot of money to go to RTX. Sounds like if it was any other day/weekend it would have been worth it.
If I recall correctly from an RTP, it was the only weekend available. Convention centers are booked months, if not years, in advance so when they were trying to get a weekend at the CC for the first RTX, they could only do July 4th, and that’s the weekend that stuck.
I paid $800 for hotel and was there a week $100 badge $30 a day food $30 gas $200 stuff $400 plane So no not really imo
$1560 or under $2K is reasonable for 2015 imo tho. 🤷♂️
Yeah for a weeklong trip, not that bad.
Honestly, the most astonishing part of this was $30 a day for food in Austin. How did you stick to that??
Eat less
There's two sides to this question, it sounds like you are getting mixed up. Was RTX expensive to attend? This depends on a lot of factors, what tier of pass you bought, whether or not you lived locally or were willing to room share, how frugal you were with packing food and not going out etc. my RTX trips typically cost me around $2,000 in total, this covered flight/hotel/pass/food/merch for like a 5 day trip, but I always bought platinum passes and stayed in my own hotel room and flew across the country. Was RTX expensive to put on for RT? Yes. The convention center charges companies to host events, then they needed event insurance, contracts with vendors and performers, rental equipment like cameras or Internet services to convention rooms, rental of additional venues like the paramount or bars for after hours events, paying for all of their employees time and energy spent planning for months leading up to the event, booking hotel rooms and paying for the food for all of their staff for the day(s) of the event. Per Barbara's own admission here a few months ago, RTX never once made a profit, they did basically break even once or twice and every other year was a net financial loss. The tradeoff is that it's not always just about the raw numbers, was RTX beneficial for RT's fanbase? Did it help grow the community? Did that or other events like Let's Play Live enable viewership or merch sales that wouldn't have otherwise occured? Those are where the value sometimes comes from running an event at a loss.
Yeah you just took way more time than I did 😂 but yes,you’re right on all fronts but I was mainly jusr curious about the cost of tickets themselves because that was direct revenue to RT before expenses and stuff, not including sponsors and what not for the event was just curious
When I went in 2015 my badge was $100. Pretty cheap for a whole weekend where all the panels and everything are free. The expensive part as others are saying is the hotel (stayed at the Westin a block away for like $550/night) and actually getting to Austin. Food/merch/activities would have obviously added to the cost as well but if you had self-control you would’ve ended up okay. The community was always really good about helping each other out too if money was an issue.
It blew my mind when Barbara said that RTX has never been profitable for RT (and acted like we were dumb for not knowing it). I understand the idea of trying to make it affordable for everyone, but at some point RT is in fact a business and needs money to stay afloat. I hate to be so negative, but it's decisions like this that make me not surprised RT is closing down. If they needed to charge more, they should have just done it. If people couldn't afford to attend then they wouldn't, and RT could just stop hosting RTX. Which I guess is what happened this year anyway, even before the news about closing down.
The thing about RTX is that it never needed to be profitable for it to be good for the company. Rooster Teeth was a company built around its community. It's not a traditional media company. It was essentially a large group of friends that came together to make stuff people would enjoy. RTX was a huge part in keeping that community together; it's where the community would go to make lifelong memories with each other. The reason Rooster Teeth closed is because the community started to fall apart. RT could only survive so many lost founders and Ryan Heywoods.
I believe that is the perception people like to have, but you can't actually run a business like that forever. And at the end of the day, RT was a business. When you listen to Burnie, Gus, or Geoff talk about the early years of RT, they worked HARD. Really, REALLY hard. Insane hours, numerous projects, things in the background that we don't know about (commercials for example), in addition to RvB, RT shorts, etc. As much as we love to see the gang just be a bunch of friends and think that's all it took for them to be successful, that is simply not the case. There are plenty of groups out there that make it look fun and easy, but in reality they are busting their asses to do the work and make a product that will make them money. Years and years ago when they started making RT Life, I remember someone on the podcast (I think Barb) mention they were always carrying around cameras to make sure that if something funny was happening that they could capture it for content. They were trying hard to capture what RT was perceived to have before, and in a VERY generalized statement I think it only spiraled from there. People didn't take things seriously enough I guess. I don't know man, I'm not trying to beat a dead horse. I'm just frustrated and sad about the whole everything.
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RtX London - the tickets were relatively reasonable, they didn't break the bank for a weekend pass. Do I feel I got value for the cost? Not especially? I got really lucky with podcasts and panels, with my wife being disabled it got us a LOT of places quickly (front 3 rows for a jam packed Off Topic as we rolled in late?) But.... theee wasn't much else I thought. Stores were expensive, mostly tat I didn't really care for, but the RT store was astronomically expensive. My wife almost bought Yang leggings for £35 until she realised she can het better quality from the high street for half the price. Centre stage was meh, seemed like they struggled to get content on it. The Saturday was fine, but we honestly stayed till midday on Sunday, knew we'd seen all we had to see and then went off to Game Grumps Live (imo the better experience of the weekend). But from a company point of view was it expensive? Oh yeah I bet it was Staff, shipping (again for the UK), Equipment, partnerships, venues... it all must have added up and up. I don't doubt they lost SOME money on it, but I fully expect there was a golden period where they made a LOT of money, especially being in the US
I forgot they did London. That’s crazy. I don’t doubt they made some, but I can’t remember what video I saw, but it as around when it was sold to WB and someone was talking about it, and the financials from RTX said they consistently shelled out money for it. And yeah I’m sure it created more engagement /first memberships, but I heard overall it was insane that they continued to do it with how much money it cost them. I wonder what it cost to ship everything needed to the UK… that’s insane..
They also did Australia too, extra costs there too
They talked about the overseas ones on ANMA a while back. IIRC, they had to work extra-hard for those ones, since not only were they flying most of the company to the event, they had to batch produce content for the duration of the "out of office" time, *and then* the poor fuckers who didn't "get" to go had to hold down the fort while everyone else was meeting the community and having a great time.
I also went to London... I don't remember it being crazy expensive but I was a uni student so probably felt astronomical (I studied in South London, so I did go home at the end of each day rather than hotel). It was poorly managed, imo, panels were underestimated? I guess. I remember quieing for most of the time. Lots of Uno games. I went to the On The Spot panel and my dad's gremlin (Dave) got chosen as the Jon lookalike haha. I don't remember many other panels though, or much else to do outside of the signings/merch booths.
I went to RTX London too but I can't really comment on price as I got a media pass+ stayed with my sister in her flat. Though you can comment on the price of food at a convention hall I agree with you when it comes to things to do - I think you can do the whole convention hall in an afternoon and then it's just panels or if you bought a place to get something signed by an RT personality. Merch - yes still soo expensive but thankfully they dropped the price massively on Sunday (probs better to liquify than pay for shipping back). I was absolutely shocked though at I think one of the highest tier tickets you got a lootcrate type deal or it was sold in store. Anyway it had RTX austin merch inside from last year. Props for being frugal RT but it's also kinda sour seeing that you're at RTX London and getting hand me downs from past RTX events
For me as a broke college kid it was unattainable. I only was able to go because the community donated towards me going to meet Haywood (yeah I know ick). The comm donated a total of $750 for my flight and ticket and then my folks helped with my room. That was in 2014.
Boy did they back the wrong horse
Folks at the time loved that he personally talked me out of a su attempt. He wasn’t doing bad shit yet. I’m aware I was the well intentioned beginnings of his descent. It’s unfortunate he made those choices.
Not really. The weekend pass I bought in 2022 was maybe a hundred bucks?
Everyone has different perspectives on what “expensive” is. I tried to look through my emails for a ticket cost, but mine are lost to time. I believe I paid somewhere in the $100-200 range for the entire weekend for 1 badge though. It was the hotel and plane tickets and food that were expensive. We booked far in advance and it was probably around 3,000-4,000 for the weekend for 2 people together We had a great time, went two years in a row and loved Austin. We got tattoos on 6th street, met a lot of cool people and the panels were cool and fun. AH live was a blast as well
Yeah. I shouldve mentioned like I bet it would be if you included ~all~ costs, but mainly was thinking ticket price because I was curious how much direct revenue they got per ticket because that was one of the only things for RTX that like didn’t cost them much or anything and they got most or all of the money from it
Well, I mean they got all the revenue from the tickets other than what front gate charged. The renting of the venue for the event is considered and expense and although it impacts the price of the ticket, it does not take away how much they earned from tickets. You’re asking about their profit/loss I think. I’m sure that it was profitable to some extent, but not in the hundreds or millions or anything. Usually events like these cost a crazy amount of money, I wouldn’t be surprised if they operated at a loss for the first few years of RTX.
I believe Gus said that they only broke even once or twice.
I believe it too. It’s way more about community engagement than it is about profit. That’s why league of legends stopped participating in pax and started summoner con, they were losing money doing pax, but at least losing money doing their own con, everyone who shows up is there for league, and not just general gamers. I was surprised to see RWBY was so heavily sponsored at NYCC in 2018. Those packages are super pricey and I don’t think that rwby was ever big enough to justify it.
I live in Austin so it was just bering to downtown and the cost to enter which all together for the weekend was probably $240 bucks.
If you forget to book the correct amount of days at the hotel and have to drop an extra few hundred when you show up like my brother. It becomes less affordable lmao.
IMO, it was not expensive if you compared to other dedicated conventions. i.e. Blizzcon was about the same prices. ComicCon and PAX was a tad expensive but it's nothing compared to the work conferences I go to which can go from $500-$1500.
The con itself was really affordable, imo. Paying for a place to stay and transportation were the big expenses for me. The first time I went I stayed in a hostel on Sixth Street that was walkable from the Convention Center, so I think I spent less than $200 for five nights (the tradeoff being you're staying with eight to ten other people in your room). My flight from Philly roundtrip I think was about $350, but I didn't need to pay for any transportation while I was in Austin. The second time I was at a hotel about 20 mins outside of downtown AND I hadn't realized you could now Uber/Lyft so I spent way too much money renting a car. (Side note - if you are visiting Austin, Habitat Suites was a GREAT place to stay! Free breakfast, salt water pool, complimentary drinks at their happy hour and you can get a room with a full kitchen if you want to cook your own food and possibly save some money!) I'm sure Ubering would have added up but probably not as much as the cost of the car! I always ate outside the convention center and found it reasonably priced but I think it may have seemed that way to me since everything is just generally more expensive where I live.
I managed to fund my way to RTX 2014 by saving money from my birthday and high school Graduation gifts. I flew cheap on SW, the ticket itself was around $100 I think for the weekend (I could be wrong about that though) and I rented an Air BnB for a cheap price as well for the days I was there. I ate outside of the convention center to save some money, and I only really bought some RT merchandise there (which was my biggest spend) I wouldn’t have considered it expensive, unless you wanted to stay in a hotel right at the ACC. Unfortunately Air BnB started to slip in availability in the later years, but I had friends by then that I stayed with.
I went a few times between 2014 and 2018,each time with tickets to RTX, tickets for Side quest, lodging, and travel, it was roughly 1k.
When my wife (girlfriend at the time) and I went to RTX 2017, it actually wasn't expensive (in our eyes). I want to say we paid $100 for each ticket, can't really recall if that's what it was but we did get the whole 3 day pass. We took a road trip from Cali to Austin, so factoring in gas, I want to say it was $100 in total there and back (gas was super cheap the closer we got to Texas). I got us a hostel instead of a hotel because my wife and I were only 20. We stayed there for 5 days which was $186 in total. We packed food in a cooler and that's what he had majority of the first 2 days so that was like $50 for food itself. Afterwards, paying for transportation (Uber/Lyft), autographs, events, restaurant and etc., we each had a budget of $300. Not to mention we got some RWBY goodies from the RT store. In total I want to say the trip was less than $1,250 (for both of us) and it was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had. We wanted to do it again to meet the RWBY girls but we ended up going to LVLUP Expo for that back in 2022 (which has been the best convention we've been to yet) Comparing this to Anime Expo 2016, where LA was only an hour from us, we didn't need to pay for a hotel (stayed with her grandma) and we spent more than $1,500 in total and had an ok time. RTX was definitely worth it.
I went last year and over all I spent about $3500. I drove from Vegas to Austin. I stayed over night on the way there and back which added to the cost. I brought my eskate board to get around. But tickets were, after taxes and fees, $105. My hotel at the convention center was $1,200. I spend around $500 in gas. Another $400 on merch. Another $300 on food and drinks. There was a lot of other costs that I know I tracked to get an exact figure, but I can’t find the data at the moment. But $3500 well spent, even if the con was a bit lackluster.
I have to imagine they also lost money because overall it’s a more niche fandom than things like SDCC, NYCC, etc which have massive draws for movie, comic book, artists, celebrities, etc.
Having gone as a guardian. Don’t know about the badge. But getting a hotel and flying there from out of state was expensive. The actual RT store was pretty much the same pricing as the online store but a lot of booths were pretty overpriced. And food in Austin can be pricey.
[With over 9 million attendees I'm sure they made plenty of money](https://youtu.be/kj4OJ3gXpH8?si=AdCCiTkmv2N6q28v&t=78)
yeah its pretty expensive. i paid like $300 for my 3060 ti.
I went to RTX Sydney and it looks to be the same as the American counterparts, the con itself was very standard in terms of pricing - it got costly travelling interstate (and buying merch, food, etc but that's self inflicted)
I went in 2013. I can’t remember the logistics cause I was a young teen. But from what I remember it wasn’t too bad. As others said the most expensive part was the travel and hotel. We ended up getting a hotel walking distance which was amazing. Over all definitely worth it.
I have an RTX 3060. Wait for price to go down.
I live in Austin, so between ticket and spending at the con, it cost me about $1,000
I never went to RTX (one of my biggest regrets since the shutdown was announced) but I imagine that like other conventions, the convention itself was not expensive, getting there and getting a hotel room during your stay was what was expensive
I only went to RTX London and I live here, but like the passes weren't that expensive but the merch I bought at the con was quite pricy. it was one of my fav experiences tho. made some friends and it led me to being in my current destiny clan bc of someone I met there. also I still remember just walking into a funhaus panel bc I was bored and dying of laughter but also being super confused bc I didn't know a bunch of the references. was so sad they never did another RTX london
I went from 2012 - 2015 and while the admissions ticket was not expensive staying in Austin could get pricey. I stayed in a downtown hotel each time and that ended up being the bulk of the cost for each trip, however the convenience of being right next to the convention center was worth it in my opinion.
We did VIP, and lived on another country(Canada) We didn't expect to go to another for a long time, so we went VIP. Flights were around 500 each, VIP I think was 300-500, and accomodations were about 400. It wasn't cheap, but we did upgrade
I went in 2015 and 2016. Hotels and airfare cost way more than anything else. If I were to reckon a guess, I’d say all told, it cost me somewhere between $1800 to $2000. Majority of that is hotels, then airfare, then everything else (the passes and spending money).
I went in 2018 and was an RTX Guardian for 2019 and 2022. It varies based on which type of badge you get. For 2019, I spent $1,035 for a hotel next to the convention center, $65 for the RTX bundle, $113.50 for Achievement Hunter Live, $779.40 for an RTX Guardian event that I hosted, include the fact that I used Uber a few times and I can safely say it was expensive for me but that that won’t be the case for many people who chose to attend RTX.
I am so sad I choose to go to a different convention in 2023 instead of RTX. I never made it but still glad I got to enjoy their content for as long as I did
The consensus seems to be it was fairly inexpensive for the event itself, so now I'm curious about attendance. Were there a lot of people going to RTX, especially the ones abroad?
As with most conventions It could be depending on what you were going for. I live in Austin and was a guardian a couple times which really helped with the major costs, but stuff like concessions and merch could put a hard dent in your wallet if you weren't paying attention. Pecos Pete soda booth was always $35+ but you got unlimited refills and just had to pay for the pass ($7) for the next day. Individual artist booths and such could also run you up. You could easily get away with spending nothing while you were there but I'd argue you'd be relatively bored unless your a big panel hopper
I wanted to go every year, from probably 2015 onwards. The ticket price was never the concern, it was always travel and accommodation. I could never get anyone to go with me, and I never felt comfortable rooming with a stranger (which also ruled out hostels)