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If your venue’s calendar is full of events, you need read no further. Simply go to the next article. However, based on my years of experience as a venue manager and in numerous conversations with colleagues, I have found that the one common ailment afflicting each of us is a lack of events. This topic has been addressed many times and in many ways, both in publications and as a panel topic at IAAM meetings. Various factors influence the level of event activity at a venue. In no particular order, these factors include market size, competing venues in your market, climate and seasonality of the market, venue design that either limits or enhances the manager’s ability to book events, the mission, goals or directives of the owner, and the availability and opportunity for success of sports franchises. The majority of IAAM members are not managers of a venue with a major league sports franchise as the main tenant or have a venue in one of the major markets as a must play for every touring artist. The managers of those facilities have the challenge of competing with another venue,
and the other venue is usually an amphitheater. Most IAAM members operate venues in secondary or tertiary markets where the event mix is varied and ranges from minor league sports franchises to local consumer shows such as an annual home and garden show, or boat dealers’ show, family shows and/or concerts. The focus of this article is to provide a partial list of “filler” events to provide added dates to the venue calendar in addition to the usual mix of concerts, sports events and family shows. In some cases, venue design, market size or less than cooperative local businesses or media partners will limit these events. In the interest of simplicity, I have divided the event by type or area of most venues: Parking lots: The beauty of parking lot events is the low overhead. Except for the cost of lighting, the revenue is almost always pure profit.
Automotive manufacturers look for large parking lots to conduct Ride and Drives, events where dealer staff and special clients have the opportunity to drive new automotive products on a road course. Dealers sometimes like to create a major new car sales event with other dealers in a large parking lot. Vintage or aftermarket car clubs look for large parking lots to hold their club events. Go-Cart organizers like parking lots to set up courses for their members. Outdoor festivals: A common summer event at many venues is a Ribfest. The festival theme could be food, or just about any theme that works in your market. An easy way to help ensure success of the outdoor event is to combine the event with an existing, proven event that is already a success. Movie nights. Second-run movies can be rented for a few hundred dollars, and if the venue can invest in a screen and projector, with local media and retail sponsors, movies under the stars in the slow summer months can be a nice community event that can generate additional revenue.
Exhibit hall/meeting rooms:
Garage sale/flea market. The local newspaper and/or a radio station are solid partners to promote and produce these events. Depending on market size, these events are either seasonal or monthly. The most common means of renting the hall for these events is to co-promote the event with the media partner, whereby the hard costs are deducted from booth sales and ticket revenue and the profits split equally. Small concert events. Most exhibit halls provide the flexibility to work as small  concert venues and can be themed or decorated to the particular concert artist. Bingo or other gamed events. These events typically involve a civic, church or other organization and can often be held on one of the difficult-to-book midweek dates. For example, I managed a venue where the bingo producer agreed to hold his events every Monday. Needless to say, most of my Monday dates were open anyway. Civic club meetings. Area civic clubs usually meet on the same day each week and the club may have an interest in holding those regular weekly meetings in one of the venue’s meeting rooms. In addition to booking the room on a day when it will usually be dark, having community leaders in the venue every week can provide a good source of leads for other events. Corporate parties and functions. Companies are always looking for unique and special ways to reward their employees. The exhibit hall can be a good place for corporate employee parties. Arts and crafts shows, industrial trade shows, food/restaurant shows, food broker shows.
Arenas:
If the arena has ice and a hockey team, the manager has the added challenge of finding paying users of the ice to offset the expense of maintaining the ice during the hockey season. A few of the successful events I have found include youth hockey leagues, figure skating lessons, youth and adult hockey tournaments and corporate parties that include ice skating. Curtain system for smaller concerts. While all managers yearn for the Elton John, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and Britney Spears concerts, the reality is that most concert artists do not need the 10,000-plus seats. Instead, the most useful capacity for most artists is in the 3,000-5,000 seat range. A nice curtain system for most mid-size venues can be purchased for less than $100,000 and can be sponsored by a local or regional business. These businesses also would be strong candidates to sponsor the concert series in the smaller arena theater set. Religious concerts. A growing segment of music events is Christian concerts. I have found that it is imperative that area churches or umbrella organizations overseeing area churches be involved in these concerts, either as a producer or at a minimum as promoters of the concert and sellers of group tickets. High school graduations. In some markets, the area high schools are outgrowing their own gyms as the place for graduation exercises. When the individual school cannot afford the rental fees at our arena, we solicited the other high schools to also hold their graduations at our arena on the same days and share the cost. Basketball events. In smaller markets with strong support for basketball, area college or high school athletic directors like special tournament events that generate increased interest and income for their programs. These special tournaments are most commonly held around the holiday time period.
Finding the right media or business partners is often the key to these filler events becoming financially successful. The venue manager should not only create accurate proformas and carefully analyze the proposed event prior to making the decision to go forward, but also find local cash sponsors or secure a media partner willing to contribute advertising to the event in order to lower the risk. The final objective is not only to find these additional events, but also to ensure that they are profitable. Roger Newton, CFE, is executive director of Centerplate, a provider of catering, concessions, merchandise and management services to the industry. He can be contacted at frnewton406@hotmail.com. |
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