How do you count your audience?

[peeweeman91]

I was just wondering how you all do a house count? I work at the Henry County Performing Arts Center in McDonough,Ga and we have 710 seats and i was wondering if yall have techniques to counting an audience. Reason being last night we had 441 in the audience last night and I only counted 344 and my boss told me that I made this mistake.. I was thinking about like seat sensors that would tell you how many seats are filled or DIY tools you have made to count. any ideas.

 

[ScottT]

You can always count tickets or check with the box office.

Also, try searching for "Hand Tally Counter" on Google, you'll find lots of results if you're looking for a manual solution.

 

[derekleffew]

In the pre-computer dark ages...
Before a show was put on sale, one ticket for every seat was printed for each performance. After the initial curtain went up, the box office would count the deadwood, subtract that from the capacity, and prepare a Box Office Performance Report. Among the line items: full price tickets sold, discount tickets, comp tickets, etc., was a line for House Manager's Count. The House Manager /Ushers counted every stub handed to them by a patron. The HM's count was equal to or less than the Box Office's count (to factor in "no shows"). If the House Manager's count was greater than the Box Office's, the Producer had a problem. We don't really care about how many people are actually watching the show; we only care about how many tickets actually left the box office.

Today...
With print-upon-purchase or print-on-pickup or even E-ticket ticket-less systems, it's much more complicated. Rather than collect stubs, most venues in Las Vegas equip their "ticket taker s" with barcode readers, which transmit the data wirelessly back to the box office.

But the principle is the same--there better not be more butts in the seats than the box office thinks there is, 'else something fishy is going on.

 

[cprted]

Our tickets are electronically scanned as our patrons enter. So the computer can spit out the house count fairly easily.

 

[peeweeman91]

those sound good but we don't print tickets or sell them. Most of our stuff is high school stuff of band concerts, county meetings. so those are out and the tally counter was my next best thing. My biggest problem is when people are seated all the heads blend or there are you children that i cant see their heads so I didnt know if anyone used the online camera monitoring programs or had seats that had detection. so i guess its a tally counter.

 

[Dionysus]

I know of several places that still manually count tickets. Or have printed one ticket per seat and then count the remainders.

I have to say that the only really feasible solution I can see for your situation, not having tickets, is indeed to get the house-manager or an usher to count heads as they enter. Those hand-held tally devices are perfect for the job, and make it very easy.

 

[peeweeman91]

well the schools or local community theater prints tickets but they sell them around the town so they dont how many they sell. and people leave in and out before a performance so it could be doubled. so counter time.

 

[Footer]

If your not making any money off people being there, you probably should not be spending that much cash to figure out how many people are there. For corporate events we don't have tickets. However, we do have expected attendance from the organizer of the event. We have worked in the same house long enough that it is pretty easy for use to ballpark how many people we have in the house within 50 people or so. Beyond that, there is really no reason to have an exact number for free/private events.

 

[Dionysus]

If your not making any money off people being there, you probably should not be spending that much cash to figure out how many people are there. For corporate events we don't have tickets. However, we do have expected attendance from the organizer of the event. We have worked in the same house long enough that it is pretty easy for use to ballpark how many people we have in the house within 50 people or so. Beyond that, there is really no reason to have an exact number for free/private events.

Indeed so.

Another method I've used in the past is if you know how many seats are in each row you can quickly add the full rows! Subtract a few empty seats for accuracy. Then add in numbers from rows with a few people in them.
Also works with cabaret seating, knowing how many seats are to a table, multiply that number by number of full tables. Good ballpark.

 

[ruinexplorer]

Indeed so.

Another method I've used in the past is if you know how many seats are in each row you can quickly add the full rows! Subtract a few empty seats for accuracy. Then add in numbers from rows with a few people in them.
Also works with cabaret seating, knowing how many seats are to a table, multiply that number by number of full tables. Good ballpark.

When I managed a movie theater we did a similar method of counting. If the theater was full, we counted empty seats, if it was empty, we counted heads. Having a seating chart that has accurate seat count per row helps a lot since you can do the counts as Dionysus suggests.