Producing awards nights and galas

A dinner and a show in the same room

Awards producers work inside a tight set of constraints. The room has to seat hundreds at rounds while keeping sightlines to the stage. The set and lighting usually need rigging. Screens carry nominee videos, sponsor branding and live camera feeds, and every category has its own walk-up music, stings and graphics. The running order is minute by minute, and dinner service has to fit around it.

None of that works without accurate venue detail, and venue detail for a ballroom is often scattered across a tech pack, a banqueting pack and whatever the in-house AV team remembers.

Venue detail that matters for awards

For participating venues, BES gathers what awards production depends on, together with the venue team:

• Floor plans and capacities, including how the room works for dinner layouts
• Rigging points and associated details for set and lighting
• Screen locations with resolutions and specs, plus branding screens and how they're controlled
• Power availability and locations
• Access and load-in routes for set, staging and catering crossovers

Venues share packs through a secure link created for a specific request, with an expiry date, which you can pass to your lighting, set and video teams. See the example venue pack; the venue shown is fictional, and real coverage is growing as founding venues join.

Tools for the running order and the night

Our free tools directory includes show-running, timing, cueing and communication tools that help keep an awards show to time, along with registration and seating tools for the dinner side. Each tool has a short write-up so you can see what it does. No account is needed to browse.

Staging and production suppliers

The supplier directory groups production companies and specialists by category, so you can find partners for staging, AV and the wider event.

Planning an awards night with BES

1. Check the room's layout, capacities and rigging in the venue pack before designing the set.
2. Brief video and graphics teams on the venue's screen specs and branding screens.
3. Shortlist timing and cueing tools for the running order.
4. Share the venue's link with crew instead of forwarding attachments.

Sponsors, branding and the screens around the room

Awards nights carry a lot of sponsor commitments: category sponsors on screen during their award, logos on foyer screens during the drinks reception, and branding around the stage. Delivering those well depends on knowing which screens exist beyond the main stage, their resolutions, and how they're controlled. Some venues run branding screens from a central system that only in-house staff can access.

A BES venue pack records screen locations, specs and control arrangements where the venue provides them, so the graphics team can build the right sizes and the producer knows who to call.