“We don’t know how to handle money; PLEASE SAVE US BY GIVING US MORE MONEY”


Short version: Some bronies try to run a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fan convention in Las Vegas. They do an extremely bad job of it. Guests aren’t paid; people are left out of pocket, kicked out of hotels and left stranded; and cheques have bounced, including one to voice actor Tara Strong. And they pissed off John de Lancie. Of course, it’s totally not their fault and they want fans to bail them out by giving them money for some as yet unspecified amount. Plus they totally witnessed an agent of one of the actors taking money from the con cashbox! More than once! Really! Oh, and they made up this fake money, told vendors they’d be paid with it during the convention and would be able to exchange it for real money at the end. And so much more.

Many thanks to Amatyultare on lj for providing links and updates on wank_report. I’ve made some minor adjustments but otherwise pretty much used all your wording in this post. Detailed version under the cut.

Las Pegasus Unicon was a first-year fan convention that was scheduled for the weekend of February 22-24 in Las Vegas. Its ‘About Us’ section [Note: site now deleted] claimed that “unlike all the other conventions for Bronies and fans of MLP:FIM we will be doing this in true Vegas fashion..."OVER THE TOP".” They certainly seemed to support that claim, booking an amazing 23 ‘industry’ guests associated with the show along with various fandom guests (brony musicians, podcasters, bloggers, fansite owners, etc.)

I’m unclear as to what attendance they were expected. I’ve heard rumors that at one time they were hoping for up to 8,000 attendees, which would be a little wild considering that the largest brony convention up to this point has been BroNYCon, which had about 4,000 attendees at its 2012 event. The only official statement I’ve been able to find is an answer to a question on their Facebook page on January 24 saying they expected about 2,000-2,500 people, though stating the venue could hold up to 10,000.

To pay for this expansive guest list and large space, Unicon planned to charge for autographs and sell various perks – a seat at a ‘celebrity dinner’, space in a ‘box seat’ type space, etc. However, the major money maker at any con is simple attendance fees – a weekend pass to Unicon was $64 if you pre-registered and $85 at the door.

But it…didn’t work out quite as expected. Remember that 2,000-2,500 attendance estimate? Apparently they only got about 1,200 attendees. Now, even if you use conservative estimates, assuming they expected 2,000 full-weekend attendees and planned as if every single attendee would pre-register and pay the lower amount of $64, that’s still a gap of about $51,000 between what they expected in registration fees and what they got.

At the start, there was a lot of confusion about what exactly took place at the con. It did happen! Many attendees are saying they had a great time! However, there are also a lot of rumors flying around that the guests’ hotel rooms were not actually paid for and that the guests were either being charged for their supposedly-comped rooms or kicked out altogether, that the hotel closed down the entire event early, that none of the industry guests currently stand to get their appearance fees, etc. Many of these rumors are unconfirmed, but it DOES seem undeniable that Unicon is suddenly in big financial trouble.

So, what did Unicon do about this? Not a lot. It does seem that they dropped the prices of autographs and photos on the last day to entice more people to buy, in an apparent attempt to recoup some money. But I haven’t been able to find any kind of formal (or even informal!) statement from the convention organizers – not on their website, or their forums, or their Twitter or Facebook accounts.

Unicon is being assisted, however, by the brony fandom! Specifically, this rescue mission seems to be spearheaded by Everfree Radio. Everfree Radio is not involved in the running of Unicon – in fact, some of their ‘staff’ appear to have been invited as guests – but they have posted a statement of need on their website and are soliciting donations to pay for the “overextension of funds” as they politely put it. There is a twitter hashtag, #LasPegAssist! They also put up a truly, um, amazing thirteen minute video about the request, which can be reviewed here.

If you don’t have the patience to watch the video, the basic argument seems to be:

1. Cons are really important to the fan community.
2. Unicon was a huge con experiment in inviting every industry guest ever to a single first-year event.
3. Which makes Unicon…too big to fail!
4. Specifically, if the fandom doesn’t step up to the plate and reimburse the guests for the con organizers’ lack of financial planning, it will reflect poorly on the fandom as a whole and negatively impact the likelihood of getting industry guests at future events.

Fan reaction has been mixed. Many bronies appear to be willing to donate money towards this fund, even though it has not been made clear how much money is needed, where exactly it will be going (beyond ‘the voice actors’) or how this situation occurred. Others are upset. To quote one Tumblr user who sums up the disgruntled reaction fairly concisely: “We don’t know how to handle money; PLEASE SAVE US BY GIVING US MORE MONEY”.

However, this upsets the supportive-of-LasPegAssist-bronies, who get mad at the not-supportive-of-LasPegAssist-bronies for confusing the Everfree Radio guys (who are relatively blameless) with the Unicon organizers. (In fact, see the comments of that same Tumblr post for an example!) Rinse, lather, repeat.

And this is all WITHOUT knowing what happened to cause this significant shortfall in money.

Then it starts to devolve pretty fast. See Equestria Daily post with sudden announcement referring to people being stranded in Vegas and fundraisers to help these individuals who were charged full+ rates at the hotel at the last minute. [NOTE: The banner on the site is creepy, plus the site ran some script that my computer didn't like.] A few people try to cobble the story of WTF happened on Tumblr.

Suddenly, an announcement from Unicon on their website, with rampant hotel/agent VA bashing:

"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." [Bolding mine, site now deleted]


That appears to be the last statement made by the organisers but the drama doesn't end there:


* Another account from a vender. This one has lots of detail, including how no one bothered to organise transport for Tara Strong and the John de Lancie info:

My brother went to find out what was going so very wrong, and came back with stories of how one of the voice actresses ragequit and just up and left the con. He also told me that “John de Lancie is just out in the hall looking very upset while talking on the phone… he looks so angry that people are afraid to even try to approach him.”

and info on the fake money:

Fake. Fucking. Printed-on-cardstock. Monopoly money. We were told we were supposed to accept this fake money the con had printed, but were never told to what end. I still don’t fully know why, just that it was the stupidest concept I’d ever heard of. Essentially, we were told that some people would pay us with the fake money. We were expected to take it, and then cash it at registration at the end of the con (That changed to 5pm when things started to crash, which then turned into ‘good luck getting your money back’). I finally gathered that they were perhaps paying their volunteers with it. I’m not sure. I just know that I have 15 dollars worth of funny money that I never got reimbursed for.


* A very detailed Google doc that includes the strong suggestion that everyone got scammed by pros (although they cover themselves by saying that gosh, of course they are certain it was simply incompetence.)

* A brony who attended Unicon shows one of the rare Unicon convention booklets. [Note: that link goes to a YouTube video.] Evidently a lot of vendors paid for ads and hardly any of the con booklets were made or distributed.


* A check the organizers sent one of the guests (the man behind the music on the show, I believe) BOUNCED:


* The person in charge of the con (you know, the one that fucked it up and is accused of scamming people) is suing Everfree Network for libel


* Tara Strong, one of the VAs, confirmed her check bounced as well


* Also, yes, people are already making 'Last Unicon' jokes [NOTE: holy crap terrifying background image if you hate venquilitrist dummies.]


In conclusion, lol bronies.

ETA: Fixed a link and typo. Another vendor has come forward with their experience and hopsandbarley has created a far superior pony currency for us to enjoy.