Running a Venue Page

What a venue page is for in the Sway web app: the address that puts you on the map, the screens it carries, and the ones it deliberately does not.

A venue page is the thinnest of the three public page types, and knowing that from the start is worth more than a tour. It has no CRM row, no Presskits row and no ticketing screens at all. If you came here looking for those, they are on a promoter page, on an artist page and on the event respectively, and no plan and no permission adds them to a venue.

What is left is small, and all of it matters.


What a venue page is for

You do not create events on it. An event belongs to a promoter. The promoter opens the event, presses Add a venue, and picks yours from the list, and any venue on Sway can be attached that way, not only ones the promoter manages. There is no event form on a venue page and there never was, so the venue's job starts before an event exists and continues after it.

Four things the page actually does:

It puts you on the map. The Address field on SettingsMain autocompletes as you type. Picking a suggestion is what stores the coordinates; typing the address freehand and saving stores the words and not the position. Get this one field right and everything else on the page is decoration.

It is the address of record for other people's events. Every event a promoter attaches you to shows what you put here. A wrong address is wrong on all of them at once, and correcting it on your page corrects all of them at once too.

It collects an audience that is yours. Followers accumulate on the venue itself across every promoter who has ever run a night in your room, and they stay when the promoter moves on. That audience is what the Email Marketing, Notifications and News rows exist to reach, and what Insights and Boosts measure.

It is a directory entry. Genres, Resident Artists and Promoters are declared on your Main tab, by you, and they are what a booker or a punter reads when deciding whether your room is the right one.

Anyone can attach your venue to their event. Attaching does not ask you, and it gives that promoter no access to your page. It also means the events listed on your Dashboard are not a list you curate. If an event names your venue wrongly, the fix is with the promoter who organises it, not on any screen described here.

What the sidebar holds

Row by row, in the order the rail draws them, grouped under the headings it shows:

Sidebar rowCategoryWhat opens it
DashboardGeneralNothing, it is always open
SettingsGeneralA permission
SubscriptionGeneralA permission
BoostsAnalyticsNothing, it is always open
InsightsAnalyticsA permission
Email MarketingMarketingA permission
NotificationsMarketingA permission
NewsMarketingA permission
PermissionsAccessA permission

Nine rows, and none of them is plan-locked in the rail itself. A promoter page adds CRM here and an artist page adds Presskits; a venue gets neither.

Dashboard writes nothing. It is the landing screen and it is read-only from top to bottom: four figures, Followers on Sway, Upcoming events, Past events total and Resident artists linked to venue, then General information, Upcoming Events, Overview (30 days), Follower Growth and a Quick navigation card pointing at Settings, Insights and Permissions. Every number on it belongs to a screen that owns the real version.

One tab in Settings is a placeholder. External Links sits in the tab bar greyed out, with the tooltip This feature will be available soon. It is not a plan and it is not a permission: streaming and social addresses are not yet available on a venue page, and the tab will start opening when they are. Today only an artist page has a working one.


The order to touch it

  1. SettingsMain: the name, the picture, and above all the Address, picked from the suggestions. Then the description, the genres and the relations. Page Settings covers the whole screen.
  2. SettingsSway Verified: ask for the badge, so people can tell your page from a duplicate. If the page already existed before you did, claim it first.
  3. SettingsURL: a custom address for the page. The tab is greyed below the Starter plan, with Upgrade to Starter to unlock this feature., and Plans and Billing explains the ladder.
  4. Permissions: add whoever else runs the room, with only what they need. See Team and Permissions.
  5. Only then the audience screens, in Reach Your Audience. They are worth nothing until there are followers to reach, and followers arrive through the events other people attach to you.
A venue has a Payouts tab, and no ticket money ever lands in it. Buyers pay the Stripe account of the promoter linked to the event, which is what Connect Payouts describes. Connecting a venue's own account serves the Earnings & payouts block sitting underneath it on the same tab, which is where boost revenue is requested. The block stays dimmed until an account is linked.
A greyed row is never hidden, so your sidebar reads the same as everyone else's. Hover it before blaming your plan: a tooltip repeating the row's own name means somebody has to grant you the permission, and This feature will be available soon. means the tool is not built yet.

Where each screen is documented

ScreenPage
Settings, all tabsPage Settings
PermissionsTeam and Permissions
SubscriptionPlans and Billing
SettingsPayoutsConnect Payouts
InsightsInsights
Email MarketingEmail Marketing
NotificationsPush Notifications
NewsNews
BoostsBoosts

Creating a venue page in the first place is covered in Create an artist or venue page, and handing one to a team that already exists is covered in Crews.