Create an Event

An event on Sway is a dated page attached to a promoter and to a venue. The web form ties all three together in one pass: if the venue is not on Sway yet, it is created from what you type here — a name and an address, or an address on its own when the place has no name.

Once the event exists, everything else about it lives on its own screens, listed at the bottom of this page.

Before you start

You need a promoter page you manage before you can create an event. The Promoter dropdown is looser than the rule it serves: it lists every promoter you have any access to, read-only roles included. Pick one of those and the event is refused when you submit, with Failed to create entity. When you have no promoter at all, the form says so under the field. If that is your situation, create a promoter first — the guided setup does this in the right order for you.

How to create an event

1. Open Manage, click Set up a page, then choose Set up an event. The guided setup opens the same form — inside the guide it carries a step counter above it, and that is the only difference.
2. Click the cover rectangle, pick an image, then crop it to 16:9.
3. Enter the Event title and read the Similar existing pages list that appears under it.
4. Set Start, and End if you know it. Check the Timezone underneath them if the event is not happening in your own.
5. Choose the Event type and the Promoter.
6. Fill in the Venue — pick a place from the list, name it yourself with You don't find your venue?, or switch to Address and give an address on its own.
7. Leave Sway Tickets on to sell through Sway, or turn it off and paste your own Ticket link.
8. Add a Description. Optional, and editable later.
9. Turn Publish on only if the event is ready to be public. It is off by default, and turning it on requires a cover image.
10. Click Create.

What happens next:

1. The event page is created under the promoter you chose.
2. The venue page is created too, if you gave a new venue or an address instead of picking an existing one.
3. With Sway Tickets on, the event's ticket link points at its own Sway ticket page.
4. You land on the event dashboard. If you left Sway Tickets on, the next thing to do is add a ticket type, and the guided setup takes you there.

Form fields

Event title (required)

As you type, Sway looks for events that already resemble it — same name, close date, same promoter or venue — and lists them under the field as Similar existing pages. Read that list: it usually means the event is already on Sway.

Publish

Off by default, so a new event is a draft you can finish in your own time. Until you turn it on, the field reads Not published.

You can create the event without a cover image as long as Publish is off. Blocking out a date and a venue before the artwork exists is a normal way to work; the cover only becomes mandatory the moment you publish.

See Publish an Event for the full list of requirements.

Venue (required)

Three routes, in the same block. A switch at the top of the field decides which kind you are giving: Venue, where you name a place, or Address, where you give an address and nothing else.

Search by name. Type the name of the place. The list mixes two sources in one set of rows: the venues already on Sway, and the places the map knows about. You are not told which is which, because it does not change what you do — pick the right one. If the place is already on Sway it is attached; if it is not, Sway creates its page for you, under its own name, and attaches that. Either way you are done in one click and you never have to create a venue page separately first.

A place that already exists on Sway is never listed twice, even when the map also knows it.

Name it yourself. If nothing in the list is right, use You don't find your venue?. You give a name and an address, with autocomplete on the address. While you type the name, Sway shows venues that already look like it, each with a Use this venue shortcut. Take it when it is right: a duplicate venue splits a room's history across two pages, and rooms are the entities most often duplicated.

Enter an address. Switch the field to Address when there is no name to give: a street party, a field, a private address, a place nobody has ever named. Type the address and pick it from the suggestions — that step is required. Only a picked suggestion is a real point on the map, and only its official form is correct enough to become a public address. Sway then checks it silently and replaces what you typed with the full postal address it found, so the line you end up reading is the line the public will navigate to. That address becomes a venue page of its own, carrying it as its name as well as its location.

Nothing is written while you are still filling in the form. The venue page is created the moment you save the event — or the moment you park it as a draft, which is enough of a commitment. Its coordinates are stored straight away, because the rest of Sway needs them; only the cover photo is looked for afterwards, and when none is found the page keeps Sway's default cover.

An address without a street number is accepted. Sway says so, and you can add the number if you want people to arrive at the right door.

If a venue already exists at the address you gave, Sway offers it rather than creating a second one. Use this venue attaches the existing page, and it is usually the right answer, for the same reason duplicates are worth avoiding above. Ignore the offer and carry on with the address when a named venue and your event genuinely share a doorway without being the same place.

The routes are not quite equal: Location precision only appears once a venue is actually attached. Picking one from the list attaches it there and then, so the field appears; naming a venue yourself and entering an address both create the page when you save, so the field never shows on those two. Add it after creation, in Settings → Main.

Sway Tickets

On by default. Leave it on to sell through Sway; the ticket link on the event page then points at your own Sway ticket page. Turn it off if you sell elsewhere, and paste your external link into Ticket link instead.

Sway Tickets on does not mean you can be paid yet. Payouts are connected separately, per promoter, and an event with no payout account cannot take a payment. See Connect payouts — the guided setup sequences this correctly.

Save as draft and finish later

Save as draft parks everything you have typed without creating the event. The button sits next to Create, and it is only there while you are creating a new event, not while you are finishing an existing draft.

Drafts are listed on the Manage screen, in the Events tab, with a Draft badge and the time left before they expire. On a draft card:

• Complete setup reopens the form with your values, inside the guided setup where it can, so the steps that follow — payouts, first ticket — come with it.
• Discard deletes the draft.

From the mobile app

Events can also be created from your phone: Create an event (mobile app). Selling tickets, connecting payouts and scheduling a publication stay web only.

The rest of an event

Once the event exists, its sidebar carries one screen per job. These are the ones documented so far.