How does a band know what venue to play?

Pico-Union

Invader
I was interested in knowing if someone knows how they determine the size and the venue when bands such as Iron Maiden play all around the world.
My thinking is that they somehow know how many people bought the latest album and would play according to its sales?
I don't know. What do you guys think?
 
[!--QuoteBegin-Pico-Union+Nov 18 2004, 10:26 PM--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(Pico-Union @ Nov 18 2004, 10:26 PM)[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--QuoteEBegin--]I was interested in knowing if someone knows how they determine the size and the venue when bands such as Iron Maiden play all around the world. 
My thinking is that they somehow know how many people bought the latest album and would play according to its sales?
I don't know.  What do you guys think?
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I think they might be invited be the owners of the venue due to their success with past venues, making their venue more popular and stuff? I don't really know, though.
 
Generally, the band and venue aren't directly involved in the choice. The band hires an agent and the venue contracts out to several promoters who are allowed to book bands into a venue. For example, Denver (a city of 1.5 million people) has 2 promoters who book all the major venues. Clubs generally don't have outside promoters, but dedicated employees who fulfill that function for the club only. (Often a club owner himself books the bands.)

So as a band is coming up, they keep track of how many clubs they can sell out. If they can consistently sell out clubs, then the agent can talk to the promoters about theaters which seat a few thousand. If the band can sell out theaters for a while, they can move up to larger venues.

On the downhill side, a band which reaches the level of playing arenas and stadiums might eventually fail to sell out such venues. The promoter will then stop booking them into arenas because it loses money. It takes a certain amount of money to put on an arena show whether you sell 1 ticket or 20,000... so if the band can't fill the seats, they won't get that show. The promoters will offer the largest venue that is likely to still make a profit, based on how a band did the last time.

Album sales by a new artist may be taken into account, but for established bands the main issue is their track record selling tickets. In the case of Maiden and my city (Denver in the US), Maiden can't quite sell out the local arena with about 18,000 seats. So the last 2 times they've been here, they've played ampitheaters which seat around 12,000... and they did sell those out.

I don't know if that really answers the question, but it's the best I can do at the moment...
 
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