@Brad - Los Angeles and Chicago and the 2nd and 3rd largest cities in the United States and the sponsorship packages for NYC are orders of magnitude higher than the sponsorships for LA or Chicago.

The single largest expense when looking at hosting an event like this is most likely going to be venue, I know i've looked into hosting one locally, and in this case WNET.ORG is sponsoring the event and providing the venue. So if the venue is covered... why the need for such steep sponsorship packages?

Are speakers being compensated and all their travel arrangements being covered? I know some WordCamps don't do this and the speakers volunteer so that could be one reason.

Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that the event could be expensive... just curious what's going on at this event that makes it so much more expensive to sign up as a sponsor.

There is probably some very good reasons, just don't know them from looking at the site.