A guide to budgeting for your outdoor event with tips and tricks

The UK events industry is estimated to be worth £42 billion (Quadrant2Design), that’s a lot of money travelling between businesses to bring events to the customer. Planning your events budget should be at the forefront of your mind when you start your initial planning. A study found that budgets are particularly important in the planning and coordination process, keeping the organiser on track and not on the edge of financial ruin.

Outdoor events can be unpredictable, particularly in Britain where the weather is forever changing its mind. A solid budget, with a realistic view of what it will cost to put the event on, can save you headaches further down the line.

Whether you are organising a festival or a community event, keeping track of your finances, your limitations and your opportunities within that will help you pull off a great event, no matter the budget.



But where to start?

Events are multifaceted, there are lots of different areas you will need to consider to make sure you have covered all your bases. A budget is not just about expenditure, it’s about income too. How are you going to fund your event? At what stage will you have access to that money?

EXPENSES

This is arguably the harder part of the two, especially if you don’t have previous knowledge of event budgeting. Eventbrite have put some guideline prices for you to have a look at, but it varies so much depending on the event that further research will be needed.

Our suggestion is to get in touch with contractors from each of the categories you think you will need and get some ballpark prices. You will have to make contact with most of them by phone or e-mail as events vary so much it’s hard to put guide prices on websites.

It also helps to have a clear vision of the event you want to organise, then you can scale up or down based off their prices and your income budget. 

Venue

Your biggest outlay will be the venue. If you don’t already run or own a venue you will need to allocate a large chunk of your budget to this. (keep an eye out on our blog for our How to Find the Perfect Outdoor Venue post which is coming soon). Depending on the venue you select, they may charge by the day or by the weekend, some will include licenses, others won’t. Some may have facilities, like toilets and fresh water supply and others won’t. This all needs to be weighed up when assessing a venue as it will impact your costs in other areas. 

Licensing

If your venue doesn’t have a license, you will need to get a licence to hold an event there. You can read more about the different types of licences you will need in our post Licences for Live Music Events. Each licence will have a fee attached and that will vary depending on the size of the event and what activities you plan on having. Get in touch with your local council to discuss this further. 

Insurances

There are different types of insurances available for events but the main one is Public Liability, you won’t be able to run your event without it, so make sure you have factored that cost into your budget. You can also get events insurance which can cover a variety of things including inclement weather, cancellation for various reasons etc. Get a comprehensive quote to see how it fits into your budget then tailor to suit your needs. Don’t overlook it though, as mentioned below, if you cancel the event you will need to refund all of your ticket holders. 

Advertising & Marketing

Your marketing and advertising budget is flexible, this will be down to how much you want to invest in promoting your event (this can have a direct impact on ticket sales and attendance so consider this carefully). Here are a few things you may want to consider – a website, radio ads, social media ads, influencer ads, billboards and banners, flyers and print marketing ads. You might also want to hire a photographer and videographer to cover the event so you have marketing materials for future years. 

Security

This will be another chunk of your budget, with external threats and internal issues, having a decent security team is paramount. It can feel like a waste of money when nothing is going wrong, but you will absolutely need them when things start to go south. Get a team that know what they are doing and are experienced in working events of your size. They usually charge per person per hour, so assess when you will need them to arrive and how long you will need them to stay. Consider having them cover egress as well, because people rarely leave the minute the event is over. Consider what type of overnight security you will need if the event spans multiple days too.

Staffing

Unless you have a huge team of paid employees ready to volunteer their time, you will need to hire in event staff. This also comes at a cost, but there are companies out there that provide exactly that, event staff by the hour. Have a think about how many you would need to cover your event site and car park (you may opt to hire a traffic management company (check out Num8erTraffic to see what type of services these companies offer) if you are expecting huge numbers of cars too).

Entertainment

Your entertainment budget will be another flexible one, this will come down to how much income you can allocate to it once you’ve got all the basics in place. Talent and entertainment can vary wildly in cost depending on what you are looking for (we have a great post about sourcing your performers that you can read). If you are looking for small local acts it will cost substantially less than if you are looking for a named act or household name. We would suggest getting in touch with a booking agent, they will have lots of knowledge on costs and realistic prices for the acts you are looking for but don’t forget to budget for their fee too. 



Facilities and Infrastructure

This will be another large chunk of your budget but without infrastructure you don’t have an event. You will need to consider stage, sound and lighting hire, toilets, first aid provisions, water and electricity supplies, marquee and tent hire, furniture hire (picnic tables etc), track matting and fencing. Each of these will come with a price tag that will vary depending on the size of the event and the number of attendees expected. We’ve put together a cheat sheet to help you gauge how much you could expect to pay for your stage, PA and lighting but if you need a more specific and customised quote, we’d be happy to help. We will also do site visits to help you plan your production and stage area, so get in touch today to see how we can help. 

Contingency

We would suggest putting aside a contingency just in case you come across problems that will need additional spend to remedy.

Once you have all the figures you can play around with it to scale the event to something you can afford or find new income opportunities to make it the biggest and best event possible.