A new era of venue versatility has begun. More than just being able to switch from hockey to basketball, venues are now being designed with tremendous capacity to expand and contract to meet the needs of a wide array of events. New versatility brings new profitability and improves the patron’s experience at the same time. It's important that you find the right event ticketing platform for your venue and its versatility.
The Tower
Yesterday the Circuit of the Americas race track in Austin Texas officially announced the addition of a 15,000 seat live music amphitheater, called "The Tower" to the automobile racing venue.
The announcement detailed a new form of entertainment that would be added to what could be considered a single purposed ( car racing ) facility. The Austin-Statesman reported:
The open-air amphitheater will host concerts by national touring acts mostly during the summer concert season, officials said at a press conference today. Organizers hope to have the amphitheater finished by the spring, with the first concert soon after. It will have grass seating as well as space for 6,500 reserved seats, architect Juan Miro said. Only the stage will be covered, he said.
Not part of the press release from Live Nation, but mentioned by a local Austin TV news reporter, was the idea that a live music concert may be scheduled immediately after the first Formula One race on November 18. Of course a concert would be a value-add for attendees, but much more interestingly is the strategy behind that post-race concert...to elevate some of the expected heavy congestion as 200,000 people leave the event.
Heavy traffic congestion after an event is over is a frequent problem that degrades the patron’s experience. Outdoor amphitheater ‘The Backyard’ knows this all too well:
95% of the fans attending Tuesday’s sold-out Arcade Fire concert at the Backyard in Bee Cave had a great time, but the rest were muttering “never again.” Two-hour traffic crawls, inadequate parking and lighting and unorganized existing conditions had several fans posting complaints about the outdoor venue on Yelp and the Backyard Facebook page.
Venue versatility has been around for decades, modern sports arenas have been at the forefront for decades in order to have a hockey game one night, and a basketball game to the next.. The Circuit of the America’s purported plan to have a secondary event after the race as a method to lessen departing traffic congestion represents a whole new era of venue versatility.
Pioneering
The famous Long Beach Arena will soon get a makeover that fully embraces the new hyper versatility trend. The venue has been home to many great live music concerts over the years but it lacks the ability to expand and contract to meet the needs of events that are not in the live music category, yet very profitable.
Long Beach Visitors Bureau President Steve Goodling explains:
The new venue will have the capability to customize itself to suit any event planner's palate . The versatility of the arena will expand dramatically. It isn't about re-purposing the space, but additionally purposing the space. There isn't any public space like this in the world. We are pioneering this idea.
The new Long Beach Arena will have dramatic capacity to adapt itself to unique vertical market events, like experimental theater, something never possible ( or profitable ) before this new focus on modularity. The scale at which the venue can adapt is astonishing - from a 15,000 seat world class concert hall to a 50-person private function, all under one roof.
The arena is in a very crowded urban area, so they too may use the brilliant strategy of having a smaller, yet contextually relevant, event immediately after the feature event to slow the exodus. The overall patron experience will be greatly enhanced to be sure.
It isn't everyday that an industry transforms itself, taking more than an evolutionary step, but recognizing the the experience is first and foremost, then constructing the physical space around it.
Ticketing versatility
The Tower amphitheater and the new Long Beach Arena are giant, multi-million dollar construction projects both making full use of the new venue versatility trend.
Your venue can do the same, without the big construction costs. It is simply a matter of adopting the same strategies of versatility - your choice in online ticketing software will play a big part in that.
To gain all the benefits of according expansion and contraction you'll need an adaptive ticketing technology that includes very high performance gate efficiency, reserved seating and customized ticket packages.
If you want to sell tickets to your event online, ThunderTix provides many features and support to help you achieve the versatility you desire. Whether you want to ease your patrons out upon the conclusion of the main event by providing a smaller one immediately after, or maximize your venues capacity with multi-concurrent bespoke events all under the same roof, venue versatility means ticketing versatility. Your Thundertix account has the versatile tools to match your venue's new versatility strategies.