Finding venues for events is the first practical problem every new licensee runs into. You've got the games, the training and the booking system sorted. What you don't have yet is a room full of tables where forty or eighty people can eat dinner and play a murder mystery together. This post covers where to actually look, what makes a venue workable, and how to get the first yes.
The short answer: restaurants with a private function room, breweries and wineries with event space, hotel banquet rooms, and community or fraternal halls are the most reliable places to start. Most of them already host trivia nights, comedy nights or private parties, so a ticketed murder mystery night is not a new idea for them, just a new format.
What kind of venue actually works for a ticketed event?
You're not looking for a stage or a purpose-built events centre. You're looking for a room that can seat guests at tables in groups of six to eight, serve food, and let people talk and move around a little between rounds. That rules out very little. It does mean you should avoid rooms with fixed theatre-style seating, because guests need to face each other, not a front of house.
Good signs a room will work:
- Round or long tables, or furniture that can be rearranged
- A kitchen on site, or a caterer the venue already works with
- Enough space between tables for you to move around while running the game
- A bar or drinks service, since a lot of ticket sales happen because of the evening out, not just the game
Do you need a stage or a microphone?
A microphone helps in anything over about sixty guests, but a stage doesn't. You're working the room, not performing to it from a fixed spot. If the venue has a small PA system for announcements, that's usually plenty.
Where should you start finding venues for events?
Work through this list roughly in order. Each type gets easier once you've already got one signed venue to point to as an example.
- Restaurants and gastropubs with a private room. These are the fastest yes, because they already understand ticketed dining and they make money on food and drink regardless of the game.
- Breweries, wineries and distilleries with event space. Many of these actively look for reasons to fill a Tuesday or Wednesday night and will often waive a room fee in exchange for bar sales.
- Hotel function rooms. Slower to say yes, but they can hold larger numbers and often have an events coordinator whose job is exactly this kind of booking.
- VFW, Elks, Legion and similar halls. Cheap to hire, used to hosting community events, and often flexible on dates.
- Golf and country clubs. Good for reaching an audience that already pays for a night out, particularly for slower midweek dining rooms.
- Local chambers of commerce and tourism boards. They won't host you directly, but they know every event-friendly venue in town and will usually make an introduction.
You can also see how public events are run in other cities by looking at public events by city, which gives a sense of the kind of venue other licensees have used.
How do you pitch a venue on hosting your event?
Keep the first conversation short and concrete. Venues get pitched constantly and most pitches waste their time. Lead with the numbers that matter to them: expected guest count, what night you want, and what it does for their food and drink sales. A murder mystery night on a normally quiet Tuesday can turn into one of their better nights of the month, and that's the argument, not the concept of the game itself.
Bring a simple one-page outline: the date, the format, how tickets are sold, and what you need from them (room, tables, and usually nothing more than that). Most venues will ask who handles the food. The answer is almost always them, at their normal pricing, which is one less thing they have to worry about.
Should you offer the venue a cut of ticket sales?
Some licensees do, particularly with venues that have a strong local following of their own and can help sell tickets. It's not required. Many venues are happy with the guaranteed food and drink revenue from a full room and don't ask for a percentage. Decide this before you pitch, not during the conversation.
What needs to be agreed before you book the date?
Put these in writing, even if it's just an email confirming the conversation:
- The date and the time the room needs to be set up by
- Maximum and minimum guest numbers the room can hold
- Who is responsible for food, and roughly what it costs per head
- What happens if ticket sales don't reach the minimum
- Whether the venue or you handle drinks service during the game
This is the same groundwork used for private bookings, where pricing and availability are agreed up front. You can see how that's structured at pricing and availability, and the same logic applies to a public ticketed night with a venue partner.
How many venues do you actually need?
One good venue you can return to every month or two is worth more than five venues you've each used once. Repeat venues mean the room setup, the food arrangement and the staff all already know what to expect, which makes each event easier to run than the last. Most licensees end up with two or three regular venues and a short list of others for when they want a change of scene or a bigger room.
If you're still working through the basics of how bookings, tickets and training fit together, the frequently asked questions page covers most of what comes up in the first few months.
Once you've got a venue lined up, the rest of the licence, the games, the booking system, the brand, is what turns that one room into a repeatable public event night. If you haven't looked at the licensee program yet, that's the next step, and the licensee application takes a few minutes to submit.