Turn Show Night Into Show Day
Concertgoers have hours to fill before the show. Give them an experience that keeps them happier, more engaged, and more likely to spend.
BY NATHAN GREEN
There's a headliner playing at your theater tonight. Doors open at 8 p.m. Ask most properties what time the concert starts, and that's the answer you'll get.
But the concert crowd doesn't show up at 7:55. They show up at 2 p.m. to check into a room. They show up at 4 p.m. to eat. They're at a blackjack table by 6 p.m. By the time the lights go down, they've already spent five or six hours on your property. And for most of those hours, the music playing around them has nothing to do with the reason they came.
That's a missed opportunity, and it's one of the easiest ones to fix.
Match the floor to the marquee
When Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo played the Pearl Concert Theater at Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, we programmed a classic rock feel across the casino floor in the hours leading up to the show. Nothing complicated. No new equipment, no additional spend. We simply shifted the dial on what was already playing.
Here's why that works. You already have a captivated audience. Someone who bought a Benatar ticket has a musical taste profile you can predict with real confidence, and they're standing in your building for hours before the show. Give them something they recognize and the whole night starts earlier. They're in a better mood at the slot machine. They stay at the bar for an extra round. The show stops being a two-hour block on the calendar and becomes the entire day.
The reverse is also true, and it's worse than doing nothing. If a guest is on property for a country act and spends the afternoon hearing current pop, you've created a small disconnect between that guest and your brand. They probably couldn't name it if you asked. They just feel like the night hasn't started yet.
Then add the ask
Music sets the mood. Messaging closes the sale.
If seats are still available the day of a show, that's the moment to say so. A short, well-produced message running on the floor that afternoon reaches people who are already on property and already in the right frame of mind. Tickets are still available for tonight. Box office is by the north entrance. Doors open at 8 p.m.
That's not an announcement blaring over a loudspeaker. It's a message woven between songs that sounds like it belongs there.
The part your GM will like
Everything I've described is measurable, and that matters more than it might sound.
An in-house message for a ticket promotion isn't running anywhere else. It's not on the radio, not on social media, and not in an email blast. So when day-of-show ticket sales move, you have a much clearer picture of what influenced them. Run floor messaging for one show, skip it for the next, and compare. Look at the box office. Look at food and beverage in the two hours before doors.
Most marketing spend in this industry is difficult to attribute. This isn't. It's one of the few things you can run as a clean test, and it costs nothing beyond a script and some scheduling.
It's a habit, not a project
If your entertainment calendar is set six weeks out, that's all the runway you need. You can build the genre shift and the ticket message in an afternoon and schedule them to run on their own.
The show is already booked. The audience is already in the building. Give them a reason to feel like the night started the minute they walked in.
Book a demo with New Level Radio today.
