There's a lot of competitions that do charge the contestants entry fees. Poker tournaments come to mind immediately. However, in this case, I think the problem is that the "contestants" are most likely already contributing to the success of this institution in some way, and it feels a bit more like a "nickel and dime" scenerio than it does an opportunity. After all, you're asking all the participants to take a risk by investing their own money for the "chance" to be chosen and seen, meanwhile reducing the risk of losing some money on your end.

There are possible alternative solutions:

1. Find investors who aren't also the talent.
2. Invent a "revshare" system that allows the paying participants a small cut of the profits made from the sales.
3. Take the risk.

:-)

Message edited on: 02/01/2005 21:32

---

Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.