Taking your event to a second city

The most expensive assumption in event promotion is that a night which sells out at home will sell anywhere. What travels is the format, the visual identity and whatever reputation reaches beyond your city. What does not travel is the thing that actually fills your room at home, which is several hundred people who know you and each other.

Assume you are starting again

Edition one in a new city behaves like a first event, because for that city it is one. The contact list that got you to fifty tickets at home does not exist there. So the work is the same work: a small room, a realistic number, and a lot of individual conversations. How that goes.

Book smaller than your ambition and smaller than your home capacity. A full 120-capacity room in a new city is a story that gets you a better room next time. A half-empty 400 is a story too, and it is the wrong one.

Find a partner rather than a venue

The single highest-value thing in a new city is somebody local who already has an audience and a reason to work with you. A promoter running a compatible night, a collective without a regular room, a venue booker who wants your format on a quiet night.

What they bring is a list, a reputation with the local scene, and knowledge you cannot research: which weekend is dead, which venue pays late, which sound engineer to ask for. What you bring is the format, the identity, the booking relationships and the work. A split that reflects both is usually generous by the standards of a one-off, and it is worth it, because the alternative is buying that knowledge through mistakes.

Check the calendar before the date

Cities differ more than they appear to from outside. In our own index across a recent six-week window, London scheduled 31 percent of its events on Saturday while Los Angeles spread its calendar much more evenly, and Monday was the quietest night in seven of the eight cities we measured. A midweek slot means something very different in a city whose week is already busy.

Prices differ too, and pricing a new city from your home market is a common way to misjudge it. Read the cross-city comparison and the individual city page for wherever you are going, then price against that market rather than against your own.

What actually transfers

• The format and the identity. The reason somebody would choose your night over a local one.
• Booking relationships. Artists who have played for you will play for you again, and their local followings become your first audience.
• Your production standard. A night that runs well is noticed quickly by venues and artists in a new city.
• Documentation. Photographs and video from home are what convince a new venue to take the booking at all.

What does not transfer is the headcount, the guest list, the word of mouth, and any assumption about what people pay or what time they arrive.

Go on a night that is not yours

Before committing, spend a weekend in the city going to the nights closest to yours. You learn the door times, the actual prices, how full rooms get, who the residents are, and which venues have the crowd you want. It is a cheaper form of research than a badly chosen room, and it is how you meet the partner in the section above.

Commit to a second edition or do not go

A single event in a new city produces a headcount and nothing else. The value arrives at edition two and three, when a share of the room came because of the last one. If you cannot see your way to running three, the honest question is whether this is expansion or an expensive away fixture.

Set the return date before you leave, and capture everyone who came. A city where you have two hundred email addresses and a partner is a city you can return to. A city where you have a good night and no list is a city you have to start in again.