We sometimes have clients, most often with smaller venues, who frequently have sell-out situations, who would like to sell standby or standing room seating. This enables them to oversell the house and if patrons with seats don't attend, they can fill in those seats with the standby patrons. There are two suggested ways to handle this:
1) Add extra seats to the seating chart - perhaps a row behind the actual seating area, visually separated from the rest, that they put on hold and sell only via the box office. Label this row SB and number each seat. When curtain time arrives have ushers quickly seat these patrons into any seats that are empty.
2) Build a separate 'standby' venue and show versions - You could build a separate venue called "standing room" that has a general admission seat count of the number of standing room seats you feel safe selling, then build a separate version of each show that is "Name of Show - SR" and then selectively add a performance to that show in the case of a performance that is selling out, and sell it via box office. Then seat those patrons as above.
NOTE: If you do intend to fill otherwise sold seats this way, make sure you have announced to all patrons in advance that you have a policy to resell their seat if they are not seated by curtain time, etc.
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