Should Promoters Use Post-COVID Capacity To Reimagine Fan Experiences?
Is this a chance for event producers to change things for the better?
You can read the original article by Simon Rust Lamb, Esq. on the Festival Advisor website.
How often does one get the time to step back and really reevaluate? In spite of all COVID’s tilted hardships toward the music & live events industry, we also have a real opportunity to change our spots.
Social distancing regulations & guidelines offer new ways to enhance the fan experience, and it’s already happening. Virgin Money Unity Arena in Newcastle, England, and the Scala Theater in Utrecht, Netherlands have popped up as innovative solutions to the current climate, and they promise of a better future where promoters consider more than maximum capacity, but fan health & experience too.
Any serious clubber knows the sweaty, shoulder-to-shoulder feeling of a floor that’s too packed. It’s a touch unsafe, maybe even dangerous despite fire code, and when bad luck pairs with negligent operations, results can be deadly. That is how serious things can get.
Fans buy tickets not just because of lineups, but to share a transcendent experience with friends and strangers. We, as humans, want connection. Promoters and artists encourage these fleeting emotions when the energy of a room becomes greater than the sum of its parts. After months of quarantine, social distancing and COVID, we are desperately exploring new ways to hear music in spaces. We need not remind you that drive-in concerts are a thing now.
“Capacity” is the maximum amount of something that something else can contain. For gatherings of people in a physical space, one approach to capacity is the maximum number of bodies allowed in a building or venue as dictated by the local fire code.
But as we are learning in these times, it doesn’t have to be this way. We can use this recalibration to change the way that we run events to maximize the fan experience. Read Simon Rust Lamb’s full examination of the topic on the Festival Advisor website now.
