Las Vegas company looks to solve live events with crowd dilemma

As Nevada idles in Phase Two of its reopening plan, Las Vegas’ event centers sit largely unfilled with the exception of some hosting events sans fans.

The MGM Grand has been hosting weekly televised boxing matches from its MGM Grand Garden arena, without fans, but venues like T-Mobile Arena, the Thomas & Mack Center and others on the Las Vegas Strip sit empty and quiet without a clear picture of when they will be able to host crowds or what safety protocols will be required.

Enter Las Vegas-based Screaming Images, which thinks it has the answer to live event crowd management.

“We’re trying to make things that are easy to move around, collapsible and easy to store,” said James Swanson, principal of Screaming Images. “They’re inexpensive, knowing that they’re temporary.”

Screaming Images created vinyl seat covers that venues can use to block off sections of seats to ensure social distancing practices are followed by fans.

“We’re trying to come up with an easy-to-delete seats if it comes to a point where they (the state) says they can open up to say 50 percent capacity,” Swanson said. “They could have groups of four, six or whatever it is coming in with their families, and they could take our seat covers, cover up four seats, then they would be distanced from the next group, four seats away.”

Crews then would move up in the rows in a checkerboard pattern allowing for social distancing to occur.

“The way we made them, they’re inexpensive, knowing that they might have to purchase a lot of them, and they’re easy to put on and take off,” Swanson said. “They could be adjusting them an hour up to the show. They could even be adjusting them during the show, they’re that easy.”

General admission issues

Swanson and his staff also have addressed what to do at venues like the MGM Grand Garden or T-Mobile Arena, which have general admission areas, usually on the ground floor in front of stages for concerts and shows.

“Say on the floor of a venue we make big circles, 10-foot in diameter, and we print a section number on it,” Swanson said. “They can assign people (in the same group) to their circles, and all the circles are spaced 6 feet apart so that allows them to open up a general admission floor for a concert.”

Screaming Images also wanted to address any issues with lines for merchandise and concession areas, so it created dividers that can be used with social distancing markers.

“Whether it’s a merchandise store or the ticket line, they (venues) could put dividers between the lines and from there use the floor markers to keep people six feet apart and everybody is socially distanced,” Swanson said.

All of the products Screaming Images is developing can be branded with sponsorship logos, which could mitigate the cost of purchasing the safety items for venues.

“They could have the logo of the venue, or they could sell them to sponsors,” Swanson said.

The company is in talks with several local and national venues and event companies about its product ideas. Swanson said the company is working with some venues in town to test the products and is looking to get them in the market relatively soon.

Praise for Screaming Images

Daren Libonati, a 30-year veteran of the entertainment industry who ran the Thomas & Mack Center and Sam Boyd Stadium and served as vice president of festivals and outdoor spaces for MGM Resorts, praised Screaming Images’ work during the pandemic. He said the company has helped bring back the gaming sector and will provide solutions to the live event space when that’s ready to return.

“That’s all you can ask for,” said Libonati, who now has his own events company, Libonati Entertainment.

Libonati, who also sits on the 30-plus member Vegas Events COVID-19 Committee, a collection of entertainment executives planning for a safe return to live events, thinks there will be an appetite for live events when they are allowed to resume with an audience, but what capacity crowds will be allowed remains to be seen.

“When that moment comes, some of us will be leaning and saying, ‘Hey, we like that circle concept, or that ticketing and line concept,” he said. “But right now everybody is sitting back and gathering information and sitting back and watching.”

If venues are allowed to open with limited capacity, Screaming Images is working on a way for sports venues and teams to make money off what otherwise would be empty space.

To make a cluster of empty seats look more presentable on a TV broadcast, Screaming Images proposes using large vinyl covers that hide the seats underneath.

“We’re looking at ways to cover up the ugly spots, for say if you’re watching a football game,” Swanson said. “In a baseball or a football game, you can see the fans and you can see the empty seats in a broadcast. Our idea is to fill those in with things that look better and maybe help them generate some more revenue by selling the space to sponsors.”

Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.