Seating: Choosing the Right Size

The Size of a venue is a crucial part an events success. Having an event in a massive venue is only good if you can make sure to fill it, having events in smaller venues is only useful when the event is supposed to be intimate.

Seating Dimension Options

There are a million different kinds of venues that allow people to sit, stand or even walk around while enjoying your events, below are listed a few of the most common options.

• Festival Seating
• General Admission (similar to Festival Seating)
• Reserved Seating
• Luxury Boxes  

The Advantages

Each venue is specifically designed for a specific event and patron. The luxury boxes can (and do) cost in the tens of thousands of dollars per event depending on the size of thr group, usually, there are not many people that would pay such a price for a typical concert (with the exception of perhaps U2 or the Rolling Stones). The following chart is an example of how much luxury boxes can cost: http://www.dallascowboys.com/suites.cfm

It is clear these areas are not intended for every patron or for every event. Only major events that draw above 50,000 spectaters can afford to have these types of accomodations.

General Admission works perfectly for those who want to sell a large number of tickets at a decent price. This style is most common for concerts where volume selling of tickets can make up a slightly lower price. This is also okay for concerts as the primary goal is not normally to see the band clearly, the experience is largely audio.

Reserved seats can be used for concerts but are almost exclusively used by theater performances, recitals, and orchestral performances.

Festival seating is similar to general admission and can be used for concerts.

The following is an illustration of reserved seating combining some of the feel of luxury seating. http://thepasadenathorns.com/novel.html

The picture below is a venue that has limited general admission capacity and a large reserved seating area.

How to Choose

It is best to know target markets. The University of Dallas' Margaret Johnson Theater would be a terrible place for a Concert as there is little room for people to move, let alone dance and the theater holds only about 100. Likewise, Jerry Jones, in constructing the new Cowboy's Stadium, chose to install more luxery boxes and to make it among the largest stadiums in the league but not the largest. Why would he want a stadium that was anything but the largest, after all, isn't everything bigger in Texas? He did not want to lower ticket prices but such a large degree and he did not want to have a stadium that would not reach capacity every regular season game.