From finding the perfect venue to assembling a talented lineup, this comprehensive guide will walk you through every step of planning a successful comedy event.
The stand-up comedy scene is thriving across the UK. Comedy events are some of the most popular events we work with at TicketSource, providing tickets for a range of different comedy events up and down the country regularly, including the Piccadilly Comedy Club in London. However, planning one for yourself can be a tricky task if you don’t know where to start.
Whether you’re planning a one-off gig, a fundraising or charity event or a recurring series of comedy shows, we’ve compiled some top tips that will teach you how to organise a stand-up comedy event without needing a big budget.
By following this guide, you will be able to run a successful comedy night in your local area, just like The Funny Way To Be, a Teesdale comedy club that has grown its regular comedy night with our online event ticketing system.
The first check on your list should be to find an appropriate venue for your comedy event. Of course, your budget is going to determine how much flexibility you have with your venue choice; however, there are a few things you should always consider when picking a venue.
You need your venue to be easily accessible - which means you want a location that offers good public transport links, sufficient parking spaces and disabled access.
In terms of the actual space itself, as long as it facilitates entertainment, you should be able to run a comedy event there. Ensure that there are facilities to plug in a microphone, that the acoustics ensure your comedy acts will be heard even at the back of the room and that there are enough seats for your desired audience size.
Because comedy events rely on the atmosphere, it’s important to note that it is better to have a busy room than plenty of empty seats. If it’s your first time running a comedy event and you’re targeting comedians who are at the start of their careers, perhaps it would be best to pick a venue that will reflect this.
The most important element is that your venue has a designated performance space - this can be a specific room in a town hall, a venue with a stage or even a function room in your local pub.
You’ll also want to ensure there is some sort of ‘green room’ space for your acts to relax in before and after they perform their set.
It’s not impossible to plan a successful comedy event with a limited budget, but it’s important to outline your financial situation at the beginning.
Assess the amount of budget that you currently have and write a list of your expenses. Be sure to cover things like equipment, marketing materials, paying your talent (if working with established comedians) and any digital marketing spend.
This stage is the perfect time to pursue any potential sponsorship opportunities. Contact local businesses, schools, venues and patrons to see if they would be willing to potentially support your local comedy event and see if you can boost your budget total.
Once you’ve appropriately assessed your budget, you’ll know how much financial allocation you have for the required equipment.
For a comedy show, you will need:
• Microphone
• Microphone stand
• Raised stage or performance area
• PA system, a music system
• Lighting system to create a more professional finish.
You should always be prepared for a technical hitch as a precaution, so it’s always handy to have a spare microphone!
Don’t forget to ask your acts what their equipment requirements might be in order to ensure that you’re covered before your event starts.
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Assembling your lineup is the most fun part of the planning process, though also arguably the most tricky. You need a good balance of acts that complement each other well.
Your comedy event must be well-paced, the audience is engaged throughout and the structure of your event ensures that everyone gets a fair slot for their set. It’s also vital that you understand your audience and select your talent accordingly - an after-school comedy event which welcomes children, for example, would not be the right slot for a comedy act that likes to use profanity.
We suggest booking a mixture of acts to keep the evening interesting while keeping in mind your audience at all times. There are a number of different styles of comedy that you can mix together to create a great event!
"Most comedians create a new show each year, with a focus on the Edinburgh festival. The Witham has a 250-seat capacity, so it’s perfect for well-known artists who want to try out ‘work in progress’ in a smaller venue. We host several shows a month and this year our acts include Alistair McGowan and Lee Ridley (Lost Voice Guy, winner of ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent in 2018)."
It’s a great tip to attend as many local comedy events as possible to suss out potential acts to add to your own, and it will also help you to assess how to best run your event.
How established your act is will determine how much their fee is, but it’s always best to approach a comedian or their agent directly to secure the lowest possible figure.
Reach out to local schools, comedy groups and societies and see if any amateur comedians would like to join the lineup at a significantly lower cost.
An MC or compere is just as important as your comedy acts. The MC is the person who sets the tone of the evening, introducing your acts and maintaining the atmosphere in the room. A bad MC can undo the great work of a good comedian, while a good MC can enhance the evening if a comedian falls flat.
Your MC needs to have a concise and clear speaking manner which can be easily understood, they need to be experienced enough that they won’t fall flat with a silent audience, they need to be reliable and they need to be able to deal with hecklers.
The MC will also set the ground rules for your event, which should include things like no mobile phones, no talking during acts and no heckling or interruptions.
TicketSource is an excellent way to manage your ticket sales, which is an imperative part of planning any show. It will quickly and easily allow you to sell tickets through several different online channels, to incorporate sales and special offers should you need to, manage your ticket sales, and to directly communicate with your customers.
Another great tip which our platform facilitates is to set your seating to unreserved to encourage your audience to fill the front rows as they arrive. This is a handy tip. Funny Way To Be comedy club discovered when using the TicketSource platform, as can be read in their case study.
Peter Dixon of The Funny Way says the main advantage of using TicketSource as an online ticketing platform is that he “can sell tickets at the venue and online. I can view the sales and alter the allocation ifit needs to be and also deal with returns at any time. TicketSource does everything I need it to do, and you have flexibility over a whole load of stuff. For example, with pre-sales, I can send a link to people who receive our email newsletter for priority booking before a show is publicly displayed.”
Now that your event has a venue and a cast, you need to get people to show up to appreciate all of your hard work.
This is where TicketSource, the free online ticketing system, comes in. Adding your event to an online ticketing website provides you with a wealth of online promotion opportunities, all from one intuitive platform.
Creating your event online will give you a URL to direct your potential customers to. You will be able to promote your event organically through social media, encouraging your friends and family to attend.
TicketSource also links with Facebook, which means that you can sell tickets directly from your website or Facebook page with ease. Our integration with MailChimp will let you send targeted email newsletters to those who have bought tickets, retaining their interest and building a mailing list for future events.
When uploading your event to TicketSource, it will also automatically send your event to several partner event ticket websites for their consideration, so that your event could have multiple listings and consequently multiple exposures to a prospective audience in your local area.
You can add discount codes and create exclusive sales, making the most of our promotional tools to encourage sales for your comedy event.
While online promotion is a great way of increasing footfall to your event, it’s important not to miss out on valuable offline promotion too.
Make posters and flyers for your event and ask if local venues, businesses and schools can distribute them to help you promote.
Get in touch with any relevant societies or clubs that you think would enjoy your event. Ask your comedy acts to spread the word to their fans that they’ll be performing, and contact the local press to raise awareness and hopefully gain coverage of your comedy event.
Last but not least, you’ll need to set up your venue ready for the big event. Your number one priority when setting up your venue should be that your comedy acts are the focal point of the evening, ensuring the stage area or where they will be performing, is easy to see from all around the room.
Your audience should be able to see your acts from the waist up at all times, reading their body language, which is such an important part of comedy.
The lighting set-up should illuminate your acts without blinding them, giving the audience excellent visibility of the acts, while simultaneously giving the acts good visibility for the audience to read their reactions.
Decide how you want to lay out the audience - you can opt for a theatre-style set-up with rows or a more cabaret style with tables. You will want to have as many people near the stage as possible to create a great atmosphere. If your event hasn’t sold out, a cabaret-style is a great way of making the room look fuller.
There are several logistical elements to the day which need to be ironed out well in advance of the day itself for your comedy event to run smoothly.
Arrival times for comedians and staff
Firstly, you want to ensure that your comedians arrive in plenty of time for them to soundcheck, get acquainted backstage and practice too. It’s worth asking them early on how much time they’d ideally need and how early they’d like to arrive, and you can coordinate their arrivals so that there’s a member of staff ready to greet them and settle them in accordingly.
That also means that you’re going to need to nail down your staff arrival times. While you might not need all hands on deck from the early hours, you’re going to want to make sure you have a good team available to clean, set up, meet and greet, run through logistics and tackle any last-minute hiccups with plenty of time before your audience arrives.
Soundcheck procedures
Contact your venue about the process of sound-checking well in advance of the day of the event. You’ll want to test the PA and microphone equipment, the lights and the sound to make sure that everything works appropriately and runs smoothly on the day.
Backstage organisation
It’ll depend on both your budget and the size of your venue as to how elaborate your set-up backstage is, but regardless of the size of your venue, you can certainly work to ensure that your backstage organisation is slick and seamless.
Assign team members to be in charge of backstage, and ensure your talent has a designated space with any refreshments you’re providing them so that they can perform. Ensure you have staff backstage at all times so that someone is always on hand to answer any questions and to keep things running on track.
Handling technical difficulties
In case of any technical difficulties, you’ll probably want at least one spare microphone at your event. Your venues will more than likely be providing the equipment, but even if you’re having to rent it, make sure you’ve given everything a test and have backups for anything super critical. If your venue is providing a technical engineer, be sure that they are aware of any sound/lighting requirements for each act well in advance.
Emergency contact information
Be sure to email your comedians or their agents ahead of time to collect any emergency contact information so that you have it on file in the event of an accident or an emergency. While we’d like to not anticipate you needing this - you’ll need to act quickly should things go wrong, and having this information on file ahead of time can be crucial.
Hecklers
You’re likely going to get hecklers at a stand-up comedy event. It’s become somewhat of a right of passage where people feel like they’d like to get involved. If you’ve got an experienced MC, they’ll likely know exactly how to deal with any hecklers on the spot - and the same goes for your comedians. However, if you feel like anyone is being disruptive or inappropriate, work with the venue to get them removed as quickly as possible to try and keep the event running smoothly.
What sets a great comedy gig apart from a good one is a welcoming atmosphere where your guests feel relaxed, are enjoying themselves and are more susceptible to having a good laugh.
There are several ways in which you can foster this environment, but here are some of our top tips:
Pre-show entertainment
Offering pre-show entertainment, like music or games, can create a brilliant atmosphere for your event attendees before the show starts.
The game aims to help people relax, ease into the environment and share a laugh amongst friends - so whether that’s an upbeat playlist that’ll get the crowd going, or the opportunity to play some card games or board games that won’t disrupt the evening whilst at their table, be sure to help everyone ease into the evening before your comedians hit the stage.
Bar and food options
Adding food and drink options can be quite important for a comedy gig, not only to help your venue make some revenue before, during and after - but to keep the flow of the evening going nicely.
It’s a long time to ask guests to sit and focus without the opportunity to rehydrate and snack, so try to ensure there are plenty of catering options so that people can grab a drink, a bite to eat and make a real evening of it.
Merchandise sales
Adding the opportunity for your event attendees to purchase merchandise is a fantastic idea. Not only will adding a merch stand give people something to browse while they’re waiting for the big event to start, but you’ll also be able to hopefully squeeze some lucrative sales out of an audience that’s enjoyed themselves.
Post-show activities
Why let the fun stop after your acts have finished? If your comedians are willing, you could work on negotiating a meet and greet or a Q&A with some of the talent, helping to extend a great evening that little bit further.
Not only that, but adding a meet and greet option could help you to introduce tiered ticket prices, gaining more revenue and, in turn, offering your attendees the chance to enjoy a more personalised experience!
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A great thing to put into practice is to collect feedback after your event. You can do this verbally, face-to-face after the event, you can ask for feedback on your social media channels, you can use social listening by searching your business and event name on social media and seeing what people say about the event, and you can send a survey out via email once the event has finished.
It’s also important to ask your comedians for feedback too, because they’re going to be experts at attending comedy events and understanding what works well and what doesn’t!
When it comes to positive comments, be sure to thank those who have said something good about your event. If someone comes back with a great endorsement, be sure to ask them for their consent to quote them on your website and in future marketing materials. You can make quote graphics for your social media channels and even include some positive feedback on future marketing materials.
Negative comments, complaints and issues also need to be dealt with and listened to. Firstly, it’s important to collate any constructive feedback so that you can analyse it with your team and take it into account when planning a future event. Then any specific complaints or issues need to be dealt with.
While you may not be able to go back in time and change the turn of events, you’ll be able to make the customer or talent feel listened to, considered and valued. Be sure to apologise, and where it’s warranted, perhaps offer a free or discounted ticket for future events. If there are any complaints about things like the venue, you can pass those comments on and reassure the customer that way, too. A sincere apology always goes a long way.
We mentioned social listening briefly earlier, but it’s a fantastic idea to monitor your social media channels closely around the event and during, responding to every single comment, both positive and negative, to foster a community and connection within your audience. Don’t feel the need to hide negative comments - how you respond to them can say a lot about your company and go a long way to building a positive perception on social media.
When your lineup is assembled, your MC is ready, and the venue is set up - you’re ready to go. Using an innovative event ticketing system like TicketSource will enable you to manage the tickets sold for your event, building a mailing list from those who bought tickets to actively promote future comedy events.
Don’t forget to make the most of the range of exciting features built within the platform to market your comedy event to its full potential, and get ready to have a successful comedy event that will be the talk of the town.
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Rebecca Collis is a content writer for TicketSource, based in Cardiff. She specialises in events and marketing. With a wealth of experience under her belt, including bylines in The Guardian and The Sun, she has a professional history of producing content across a range of digital platforms.
