Seating designer

The seating designer lets you draw your venue as seats, tables and standing areas, group them into priced zones, and let customers pick their exact seat. Open your event → Seating.

Events without a plan keep selling general admission as normal. Seating is optional.

Before you start#

A seating plan belongs to a venue. If your event has no venue yet, you'll see Add a venue first. Pick a venue in the location step of the event builder first (see Create an event and Venues).

Choose a starting layout#

On Reserved seating & zones, pick where to start:

• This venue's plans — copy a plan already saved for this venue.

• Or start from a layout — choose Blank floor, Club · standing, Theatre, Cabaret · tables or Arena · mixed.

Each event gets its own copy of the plan. Edits you make for the event never change the venue's saved plan, and an event can have one plan.

Using the designer#

Click Open designer for the full-screen editor.

Views#

Switch between Plan (2D editing), 3D (drag to orbit, scroll to zoom, right-drag to pan) and Buyer view — exactly what customers will see.

Building the floor#

The Build tab has a searchable library:

Tools: Select (V), Pan (H or hold Space), Draw standing area (P) and Draw walls (W). Snapping toggles with G. Press ? for all Keyboard shortcuts. Undo and Redo are in the top bar. The Layers tab lists everything on the plan.

Setting up seats and tables#

Select a piece to edit it in the inspector:

• Seat blocks — rows and seats, plus Stagger alternate rows, Show row letters, Rise per row, First row, First seat #, Row letters start (At the front / At the back) and Seat numbers run (Left → right / Right → left).

• Tables — Chairs on the ends, and Sold as either Per seat or Whole table. With Whole table, one ticket buys the whole table.

• Standing areas — Capacity and Label under the name.

Individual seats#

Choose Edit individual seats, select seats, and mark them as:

• Wheelchair space — shown with ♿ to customers

• Companion seat

• Hold back — not for sale (for example a production desk or a poor sightline). Customers see held-back seats as unavailable.

• Remove seat — no seat here (an aisle or pillar)

• Restore to normal — undo any of the above

Zones and prices#

A zone is a group of places sold at one price — for example "Stalls", "Balcony" or "Tables". Open the Zones tab to:

• Create a zone with New zone, or select pieces first and use New zone from selected.

• Assign selected pieces with Assign selected →.

• Name each zone, pick its colour and set its price. The price is what the customer pays — the booking fee comes out of it, not on top. See Fees explained.

A piece that isn't in a zone is Not for sale until it has a zone. Unassigned places are listed so you can click to select them. The first bookable piece on an empty plan is put into a zone automatically ("General admission", "Tables" or "Reserved seating").

How zones become tickets#

When the plan saves, each zone with capacity becomes a ticket pool with one ticket type ("Standard", or "Table" for table zones) at the zone's price. Pools start as drafts. Go to Tickets (or Prices & ticket types) and click Publish all tickets to put them on sale.

The zone's name and capacity keep the pool up to date. You can add more ticket types to a zone's pool — such as a concession — in Ticket types and pricing. After that, or once anything is sold, change prices in Tickets rather than in the designer.

Saving#

There's no save button. The plan saves automatically a moment after each change. The chip in the top bar shows Saving…, Saved or Unsaved. Press ⌘S to save straight away, or Done to save and exit.

If the plan was changed in another window, you'll be asked to Reload latest.

What's locked once tickets sell#

To protect customers who've already bought, a save is refused if it would:

• remove or re-zone seats that are sold or in someone's cart

• leave a zone with fewer places than tickets already sold

• delete a zone that has sales

Undo that change to keep saving.

Tracking sales by zone#

Back on the Seating page, each zone card shows sold, held (in carts) and remaining places, with a Not on sale badge if its pool isn't published yet.

Venue plans you can reuse#

• Save to venue copies your event's plan to the venue, so you can start future events from it.

• You can also build plans from the venue itself, under Seating plans on the venue's page. See Venues.

• If another host made a venue plan, you can't edit it, but you can use Make a copy to edit.

What customers see#

Customers see the map on your event page, can switch to 3D and preview the view from their seat. They can pick seats on the map or use Best available. Seats are held while they're in a cart. The seat (for example "Stalls · Row A · Seat 12") is printed on their ticket. See Seat maps.