VNC 2025 Panel Preview: Booking Theaters / Small Venues

The eighth annual VenuesNow Conference will take place Sept. 9-11 at Resorts World Las Vegas. Presented by Lockton and Oracle, the event marks the debut in the entertainment capital of the world and the first time VNC has expanded to three days.

VNC is the preeminent forum for live events, sports, and cultural venue owners and partners to explore industry dynamics, share best practices, and discuss future trends. This year, the three-day conference will feature sessions on bookings, hospitality, premium experiences, technology, and a new half-day of curated programming focused on sustainability across all venue types, touching on energy, water, and waste management, along with strategies to strengthen financial performance, corporate partnerships, and guest experience.

Registration for VenuesNow Conference is open now at venuesnowconference.com. Use the discount code VNCVEGAS at checkout to save 10% on your registration (valid through Aug. 31).

Here’s a look at the VNC 2025 panel “Booking: Theaters/Small Venues”

Booking: Theaters/Small Venues
An In-depth analysis of the booking economy for theaters and small venues across North America. Topics addressed include which acts are playing small venues, what are the challenges in booking content right now, which artists have bookers excited, moving up vs. underplays, what are the deals like for smaller venues, how saturated (or not) is the market, what’s traffic like, the impact of festivals and radius clauses, what’s happening at specific buildings and markets.

MODERATOR:
Andy Gensler, Editor-in-Chief, Pollstar

SPEAKERS:
Stephen Chilton, Owner / Talent Buyer, The Rebel Lounge / Psyko Steve Presents
Brittany Johnston, Director of Programming, TVG Hospitality
Jeffrey Jordan, Director of Rentals, San Diego Symphony
Noël Largess Mirhadi, Senior Director, Theater Alliance, Oak View Group

Shrinking margins and increased competition makes booking small venues and theaters a challenge. Moderated by Pollstar Editor-In-Chief Andy Gensler, the panel of industry veterans will address the talent pool, the deal, saturated markets, audience trends and the impact of festivals and radius clauses.

Panelist Stephen Chilton of Psyko Steve Presents and Rebel Lounge in Phoenix, Arizona, offered Pollstar a sneak peek:

Why should people attend this panel?
I think right now there is a big difference between what is happening in the business at the A-list and major venues and what is happening in clubs and small theatres. Everyone is seeing record grosses and sell outs at the arenas and stadiums. But this feels very different from all the conversations we are having in clubs. Obviously, the success at the A-List gets a lot more attention than the struggles at the beginning of artist careers.

What are the three hot topics you hope to discuss?
The two most obvious are: No. 1 the pressure being felt at the club level, on both artists and venues/promoters vs the success in those large-scale concerts. And No. 2 the impact of the trend of Americans as a whole – and Gen Z specifically – drinking far less now than in the past and what that will do to the venue business.

Then another idea/topic I have been thinking a lot about lately at a more macro level is the importance of “In Real Life” and how important REAL experiences are to people’s lives vs online/virtual. There is a huge loneliness epidemic in America that is just now starting to get real conversation and I think REAL life experiences are the only cure, nothing in the tech world or AI will ever be able to compete with real human interaction. Our core as an industry is to bring people together in a physical place, and we can all lean into that more.

The most successful artists are the ones that build a real community around them and we are what help make that happen.

What questions do you hope to get from the audience?
Whenever I am on a panel like this, I always hope to get a question I haven’t thought about before. Anything that makes me and the audience think differently is bound to lead to an interesting discussion. It’s never fun to see a panel where everyone just repeats truisms that everyone in the room knows, that just leads to a boring time for everyone.

How do you see your role on the panel and what do you bring to the discussion?
Rebel Lounge is a small club, much smaller than the theatres booked by the rest of the panel. Most of the shows we book at Psyko Steve Presents are in clubs under 1000 capacity, though go all the way to the 5,000 caps, and boutique festivals, and it is just a different perspective – thought not any more or less valid than anyone else’s.