Routing

Routing decides what a weekend costs and how much the artist sleeps. Two shows at opposite ends of Europe on consecutive nights mean early flights, little sleep and travel costs someone has to cover.

Example

[Artist A] lives in London and has two requests for the same weekend: Munich on Friday, Vienna on Saturday. Routed together, that’s one flight London → Munich on Friday, the train Munich → Vienna on Saturday (about four hours, city centre to city centre) and one flight Vienna → London on Sunday. Three legs instead of two return trips. The two promoters split the shared travel, and the artist sleeps in hotels instead of at airports.

Put the Saturday in Lisbon instead, and the flight is longer, has fewer departures and crosses a time zone. It works, but now a single delay puts the second show at risk.

What to watch for

• The inbound travel to the second show starts where the first show was, not at home. The advance of each show has to know about the other.
• Plan sleep. After a set that ends at 04:00, the 07:00 flight is often the cheapest, and it means going from the club straight to the airport.
• Know the last connection that still works, as a fallback.
• A radius clause can rule out two dates that look perfect on a map.
• Shared travel is split as agreed with each promoter, and each offer says what that promoter pays.