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As part of my weekly Skeptic's Lens column, I looked at the economics behind @coindesk's Consensus. About 8,800 people attended Consensus last year while only about 4,600 attended this year, according to CoinDesk’s self-reported numbers. That’s a 48% drop in attendance. 
The drop is because:
- market conditions were worse than last year
- there are now competitors like MCC who are higher quality and 1/10th of the Consensus ticket
- market conditions were worse than last year
- there are now competitors like MCC who are higher quality and 1/10th of the Consensus ticket
We can also estimate the revenue Consensus generated year-on-year by considering the number of tickets sold, the cost of tickets, the amount of sponsorships and the cost of sponsorships. All of which is public.
Based on my estimates, Consensus generated a total of $5.8 million in 2017, $15.6 million in 2018 and $8.7 million in 2019. This means that the revenue from Consensus is down approximately 44% from last year but still 50% higher than in 2017.
These estimate line up with CoinDesk’s reported revenue from events in 2018 of $21 million, which includes two smaller events – Consensus Invest and Consensus Singapore, which would have generated a little more than $5 million combined.
While CoinDesk is primarily a media company, events like Consensus make up ~85% of its revenues; subsidizing its content creation and helping the company turn a profit last year. It also has two other income streams that took CoinDesk’s total revenue in 2018 to $25 million.
Kevin Worth, CEO of CoinDesk, said last week that “revenue will be lower this year” and that “profitability will depend on its performance the rest of the year.” It's gonna be a tough year for CoinDesk but DCG “is prepared to invest further in the business to expand operations.”
