I don't think Ron Montez will mind me quoting from an article he wrote in which he said. On his travels judging competitions where ever he goes he sees the same faces give or take a few parents and maybe some from a local dance studio. The promoters have a captive audience who are also the competitors.
So what do we have. We have a competition in your city and your next door neighbours unless you told them wouldn't know it was on. It is exactly the same where i live.
But not in all counties. My teachers gave a demonstration in the Far East ( not Japan )at a major competition. Hanging from lamposts around this city were larger than life hugh plastic very solid posters ( they brought one back) of them in full flight. With a couple of million inhabitants obviously the promotor didn't think that everybody was going to turn up as a spectator. But think of the publicity and the good for the image of Ballroom Dancing it does.
This brings me to another point. dance Societies do not own any money. It is your money. You elect people to manage the Society. You might like to find out exactly how much money is spent advertising our sport, or what is being done with that money. Does it just sit in a bank, waiting to be added to. Get it out and spend it on promoting, and advertising dancing. Spend most of it at the juvenile junior level. From what I have seen we are going to get left behind by some of these emerging countries who are now interested in Ballroom Dancing.
Does anybody have thoughts on this subject.

I think you make a very valid point--

however-- most of us Pros will not, I believe, take a stance in public , about the distribution of Soc. funds .

It would be considered un ethical .

Terence. vote for me. My first prodject would be to find out how much money was in the kitty. After leaving enough for running costs I would for one year reduce the registration fees and then have a really good look at how we could improve out Juvenile Junior competitors. Free lessons for a start would be my aim. As we are just supposing . What would you do. Would you just sit there looking at the money. Or would you put it to some good use.

There are published annual accounts.

And -- I dont think free classes is the solution for children .

Todays competition for entertaimnent is vastly differnt than it was in the 30s and 40s.
it was less expensive to go to a kids social than it was to go to a football match ( Plus there were girls ! )
It still is .

We compete today with numerous alternatives, TV- Video games etc .

The latino community has a far better solution-- many take their kids to places where they can eat and dance ( i taught at one such place for a long time, and always kids in the free class with the adults )

This topic has been thoroughly vetted on another site, about the same problem with the lack of kids in B/room in the States .

Terence. The future of ballroom dancing in a country depends on if there is a junior development in place. Anybody who is interested go to dancesportinfonet on the dancesport uk site, Take a look at the results from Portugal this Saturday just gone the 29th. See the amount of Juvenile Junior events there were listed plus Youth. This doesn't happen by chance. There is a lot of planning there , wouldn't you say. I was told that in one of those European countries they have young people reaching European finals who have never had a private lesson. It's been group lessons. This way can quadrupole your output.

I,m not dis agreeing with the premise, only the problem instigating it .

The US has probably the largest market for the under 16s, but the competition there is sports with a capital S .

The " male " in general, very often looks at "dance" as an efeminate passtime - ( dance teachers in the States, do not command the same reverance as they do in Europe )

It has got a lot better over the past few yrs, but is still lagging way behind .

Even kids who do take dance instruction mostly do not take ballroom. Jazz and Tap and the Hip Hop classes are popular. We have one young lady in our studio, but her parents also take lessons at the studio. I have no idea if there are others taking lessons during the day.

It would be nice to see the program they have in New York spread across the country, but I'm not foolish enough to hold out any hope for that.

The problem with the studio system is the cost. You are not going to appeal to the general populace at the prices the studios charge for lessons, and you are not going to get the scale of economics to reduce the cost unless you appeal to the general populace.

So, in my opinion, advertising alone is not the answer here, because advertising won't get parents to pay the prices the studios want. There needs to be a push to get kids into some sort of ballroom instruction, and it needs to be priced at the same sort of rate that the jazz classes are priced. When you have a product that parents are willing to afford, then you have something to advertise.

Getting the youth more involved is key to building the visibility of the sport. Maybe more outreach to the schools would help. Some of the elementary level outreach that started in New York is starting to spread around the country. We have an instructor in Portland (Rachel Lidskog) who I know is involved at both the elementary and college level.
Ballroom seems to have gotten pretty popular on college campuses. All the local colleges have dances now where they didnt when I was in college back in the stone ages.
Even at the high school level there is some stuff going on. My daughter has friends who recently took a series of lessons (I think they were introduced to it during gym class), although I dont know if there is a good venue for dancing at that age. I dont think ballroom is any significant part of high school dances.
You would think that there might be a possibility of getting some of the spot dances like swing, salsa and other latin dances, more popular at the HS level.