UK Venues: Thank you for the music

While millions were watching England lose the Rugby World Cup final on 20 October, another performance spectacle - live music - was proving it could be a massive draw too as The Police played their last European tour date to a sold-out, 12,000-capacity Wembley Arena.

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.

This article was first published on Event

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