UK Venues: Thank you for the music

According to a report published by Mintel in July, the live
entertainment market is worth an estimated £743m, up 8% on 2006.
Half of the adults it surveyed agreed that you 'can't beat the
atmosphere of a live performance' and 41% said that a live music
performance was more exciting and entertaining than watching it on
TV.

In such a climate, the time seemed ripe for another live music venue -
so when The O2 opened on the Greenwich peninsula in London this year, it
was seen by the venue sector as an opportunity to benchmark service
levels and evaluate hospitality offers and in-house technology.

NEC Arena and National Indoor Arena (NIA) general manager Guy Dunstan
says: "The O2 represents a new generation of music facilities and raises
the bar to a level that other venues should benchmark against. We are
currently carrying out our own feasibility study on the NEC Arena, which
was built in 1980, so that we can compete better and meet the demands of
the future."

The NEC Arena is a 12,300 all-seater facility with two large hospitality
suites for 400 standing or 120 banquet-style. The NIA can accommodate
7,870 standing but can also create more intimate settings for 2,000-plus
via its Eclipse format. "We use a draping system to reduce the capacity
for both sporting and music," Dunstan says. "The Chemical Brothers were
the first act to use the new format and it's been a great success."

The renaissance in live music has also seen Academy Music Group (AMG)
continue to open new regional sites. AMG owns and operates the Shepherds
Bush Empire, Carling Academy Brixton and Carling Academy Islington, as
well as venues in Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, Newcastle and
most recently Oxford. In February it announced the acquisition of The
Hippodrome in Brighton for development by February 2008.

AMG group operations manager Richard Maides says: "I started out in this
industry 18 years ago when concertgoers didn't care about the customer
experience. These days it's not only about developing the strength of
the brand but also delivering service to both the customer and the
artistes. Therefore we invest a capital sum into each of our sites each
year to improve the standards of dressing room and production
facilities, quality of staff and the overall visitor experience.

"We position ourselves perfectly to create a regional touring backbone
for this resurgence in live music and while the bar is being raised by
the national venues, we aim to meet those expectations by involving
local people from the beginning."

Customers have reported their experiences at The O2 to be overwhelmingly
positive and its general manager, Mike Potter, puts this down to the
venue's hardware and software. "It's the software that's the biggest
challenge to get right," he says. "We decided to employ two security
companies six months before opening to provide all front-of-house staff
so that they could instill the attitude in their staff of being able to
look the customer or venue staff in the eye and call them by their name.
Too many venues treat service providers as contractors but we regard
them as employees. Everyone needs to feel like they work for The O2 and
AEG so that they can communicate the brand."

From a hardware perspective, The O2 gained inspiration from the high
standards in the US. Its bars have fast-pull beer systems and each seat
has acoustic panels underneath so that when the sound engineer is doing
soundchecks in an empty venue before a show, he can set the levels as if
it were full of people.

Wembley Arena general manager Peter Tudor believes the venue will always
get the blame if an artiste's sound engineer is having a bad day, so
upping the ante on in-house technology can only benefit the touring
circuit. The north London venue, sitting in the shadow of Wembley
Stadium, has had more than 1.8 million visitors since its redevelopment
18 months ago and this year has played host to 135 shows. "We and The O2
complement each other with our locations and both give the whole of the
south of England access to some great performers," Tudor says.

Ticketing technology

Since the smoking ban came into force in England, Wembley Arena has
taken advantage of improvements in technology to introduce bar coding
that allows visitors to leave the venue for a cigarette and then gain
re-admittance by having their ticket swiped.

There are other examples of how ticketing technology is being put to
good use. In the live entertainment study by Mintel, a pilot scheme to
rid the industry of ticket touts by providing visitors to a Guns N'
Roses concert in Hammersmith saw visitors turn up with mobile phone
barcodes - and at the NEC Arena and NIA, a rebranding of the NEC Group
box office to become The Ticket Factory on 1 October has already
resulted in bar-coded print-at-home e-tickets. The next step, due soon,
is for tickets to be delivered to the customer's mobile phone. "It is a
massive step forward for us," says the NEC's Dunstan. "Not only do we
hope that it will stamp out ticket touts, but it also provides
much-needed live data about who is in the building for each event and
what visitor trends can be capitalised upon."

Nottingham Arena works with See Tickets to improve its ticketing service
and has recently spent £90,000 on its dressing room facilities.
The venue's sales and marketing director, Julie Warren, thinks everyone
should be keeping a close eye on other venue developments so that the
experience of both customers and promoters keeps getting better. She
says: "Promoters these days want their shows to sell fast and be
installed quickly and efficiently. We have a big marketing team for a
venue of our size and our ice rink is covered with a special floor,
called an ice shield cover, by our in-house team. It goes down in under
two hours."

By removing all the seats and transforming the ice rink into an
all-standing space, the venue now has a capacity of 10,000 for concerts.
Justin Timberlake benefited from this recently when 9,899 fans attended
his performance in the round. "Audiences have varied hugely with the
live performance resurgence, so a venue's offer has to be able to
continuously vary with it," says Warren.

NORTH OF THE BORDER

- Perth Concert Hall

In the two years since Perth Concert Hall opened its doors with a gala
performance blending African, Asia and traditional Scottish music, the
venue in the heart of Perth's city centre has not only won several
awards for design and business, but has also consistently filled its
1,600-capacity auditorium to capacity with gigs by bands such as The
Proclaimers, Ocean Colour Scene and The Human League.

- Corn Exchange

Edinburgh's Corn Exchange is one of the city's most renowned music
venues and offers audiovisual support, catering and a flexible booking
fee system. The surrounding infrastructure comprises facilities such as
10-pin bowling, American pool halls, five-a-side football pitches and a
sports bar to maintain the customer's overall experience.

- SECC

The Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) in Glasgow has
recently announced its second-phase development of the adjoining Queens
Dock, costing £562m. The SECC has ongoing plans for development of
the site, including construction of a luxury hotel in the run-up to the
opening of the £66m, 12,500-seat Scottish National Arena in
2011.

- Queens Hall

The Queens Hall in Edinburgh is home to the Edinburgh Chamber Orchestra
and is renowned for its acoustics. The spacious auditorium can be rented
for events and conferences. Possible layouts include cabaret-style
tables to create a club atmosphere, standing for rock, pop and ceilidhs
and formal seating for classical concerts.