# Concert Promoter/Venue Relationship



## Skjermoney (Jan 30, 2014)

Hi everyone,

I TD for a smallish concert venue in a small city and I'm looking for some insight on how the promoter/venue relationship works in the real world. Our venue is a nonprofit primarily used as an independent movie house (we were built as a vaudeville/silent movie theatre in 1926). Consequently, our two full time employees come from and are focused on that world and I'm relatively new to this game. We only have one promoter in town so I don't really have anything to compare to but some aspects of our relationship seem off to me.

My biggest issue involves when we receive technical info for shows. The promoter sends us an "advance" for each show. These will contain the schedule for the day, crew calls, as well as basic tech info ie. four color wash, 2 spots, house audio (they usually rent out audio), usually not very helpful. I very rarely see an actual rider. We usually receive this less than a week before the show. Frequently as few as two to three days. There have been a couple shows with none at all. I've been pushing this for a while and sometimes I can get it earlier but not often. This is a huge problem for staffing as all our techs have regular jobs. How early should we be seeing this information? Should we see the tech riders for every show? A frequent excuse is that they haven't heard back from the tour. The promoter should have all this info when they sign the contract, right?

My second big questions involves labor. Most of our shows are smaller and usually handled by the road crew and a couple house guys. On shows with bigger calls the promoter will say they need two house guys and bring in outside labor to fill the rest of the spots, even if we have staff available to take the call. Is that standard? It feels wrong to me to have an outside group dictate my staffing.

Those are my two biggest issues as I'm wading into this world. Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

Thanks,


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## JohnD (Feb 1, 2014)

I don't know if you saw this post, but very similar to your situation:
http://controlbooth.com/threads/reasonable-lead-time-for-riders.31351/#post-278630


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## porkchop (Feb 2, 2014)

That seems unfortunately common as far as an advance goes. Riders can and will change. Also many TM don't look too many cities in advance so lead times are minimal at best. Likely the promoter thinks they're doing you a favor by interpreting the rider and giving you a list of only what you need to provide. Riders are often murky at best and often leave loop holes as to who will pay for what, so if nothing less you're probably dodging financial bullets there. It doesn't hurt to ask for an advance or the rider as early as possible, but really what you're describing sounds like what I would expect. As far as staffing goes, if the promoter is ultimately paying for the labor and you don't have an existing agreement I would expect them to be able to dictate who does the labor. You're best option here is to bring the best quality stagehands in every time they hire your guys and offer to bring them in whenever possible. Hopefully over time the promoter will hire more of your staff, but that is never guaranteed.


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## Footer (Feb 2, 2014)

Well, there are a few issues here. I'll tell ya how we do it at my place... then they do it a the shed down the street. 

At my place we do all staffing. We communicate to the road crew and do the advance. Sometimes we will secure backline rentals and that type of thing. We fill the rider that the promoter sends us to the T. If cuts/adaptations need to be made we let the promoter handle that. Promoter also takes care of catering. After we have advanced with the show, we send the promoter a production cost estimate based on labor/security/PA rental/backline rental etc. During the day we run the deck but we require a promoter rep and runner to be there to take care of money and ticket related things. The reason for this is we have a weird building that if the promoter advanced the show most likely large things would get dropped. Because we are the "sound company", "lighting company", and we control dock access we already have to do a good amount of the advance... 

The shed in town basically turns the keys over to the promoter (Live Nation in this case) when they have a show. They make the labor calls to the IA. They handle dock traffic and parking. They handle security. They call start of show... etc. 

The difference there is what kind of venue you are walking into. Take a meeting with your promoter and try to get a relationship hammered out. Figure out where your job starts and their's starts. Let them know about the labor thing. Any show would rather have a house guy who has worked in the venue more then once. However, your promoter may have a billing issue with your venue based on that. Odds are your promoter feels that he is just renting the space. Therefore, he does not feel he is paying for someone to advance the show with the road or spend time calling labor. In truth, he is most likely right. You really need to look into how your deal is structured. Who has the final call on building/safety/audience issues when you have an outside promoted show in. Who's insurance pays if stuff "goes down".


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## SteveB (Feb 2, 2014)

Our setup is the same as Kyle's, mostly.

In our facility, we own the space and all the gear, I.E. lighting, audio, staging - chairs, risers, music stands and lights, all rigging and soft goods, etc.... in short a completely equipped theater/road house. Promoters are welcome to bring in any extra gear needed (including a complete system for a road show, thus not using the bulk of ours), including operators for the rented or road show equipment, but the house gear gets operated by house crew. This is as BTW, a completely ordinary arraignment that road shows work with all the time. 

The promoter that is renting the facility pays whatever rental rate that is agreed upon with the facility general manager, but part of that rental covers the house crew expenses. There is little negotiating to be done about crew costs, the facility PM tells the promoter what is needed and will be provided, based on the known technical requirements and while there is some negotiating room about crew size, the promoter is not allowed to bring in overhire crew to save expenses by not hiring house crew. As well, we are an IATSE house that has jurisdiction over all technical theater work in the space, so that defines the relationship. Again though, this is a customary working setup that promoters and road shows encounter typically. 

The key is you want the house equipment operated by a crew that reports to house management. It's your theater and your gear so you need to operated it (as well as maintain it).

The rider situation and timing of the receipt of the rider can drastically change the above. The promoter needs to understand that it is in their interest to get the rider and technical requirements to the facility management in a timely fashion. That's a basic communication and trust issue that needs to be developed. 

In what I would call a worse case scenario, we have had events from foreign countries that deliberately do not provide any advance technical information to the facility (and possibly not the promoter), We have discovered that they do this so as to have their own travelling crew attempt do all the work and save the the promoter having to pay for a large house crew, as well as to attempt to setup equipment - rigging and trusses in one instance, or use open flame effects or electrical equipment wired in an unsafe manner, that they would have been told (in advance) they cannot do , but attempt to "get away with" on day of performance, under the guise of "the show must go on". One way around this is for the facility to simply tell the promoter that as a result of no rider and/or advance tech. info., the facility will hire 20 stagehands to cover any and all contingencies, the cost passed on to the promoter. That financial burden only needs to happen once at which point the promoters come to understand that the facility PM truly has the best interests of the promoter in mind, will try to keep crew costs to a minimum, but can only do so if we know the requirements in advance. 

It helps as well to have an easily available facility technical requirements and specifications information available to any vising event. Our tech packet is on-line and very clearly spells out any local codes needing to be followed as well as particular facility requirements that are not to be violated. The link to the website is in our contract, so there's no misunderstanding if they thought they could use pyro of open flames as example.


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## len (Feb 2, 2014)

Contracts go both ways. As a venue, you can specify that any riders must be attached to the contract, or must be returned within X days of signing. You can also specify what they'll get if they don't comply. Be cautious about itemizing what house equipment you have. If you change out something, or if it breaks a week before, you could be liable to have an exact replacement.


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