Guarantee vs Door Split vs Versus Deal: A Promoter's Plain-English Guide

There are three ways to pay a band, and they differ in exactly one respect: who loses money if nobody comes. Everything else is detail.

1. The guarantee

You pay a fixed fee regardless of attendance. The band knows what it's getting; you carry the entire risk.

Worked example. $500 guarantee, 100-capacity room, $12 tickets, $300 of costs. You break even at 67 tickets. Sell 100 and you make $400. Sell 30 and you lose $440 — and you still owe the $500.

Guarantees are right when you're confident of the draw, when the act won't play without one, or when you're building a relationship worth investing in. They're how promoters go out of business when used optimistically.

2. The straight door split

The band takes a percentage of the door, commonly 70-80% to the act after costs at small-room level, sometimes 100% of door with the venue keeping the bar. No attendance, no payment.

Same show. 30 tickets at $12 is $360; after $300 of costs, $60 splits — the band gets maybe $48. Nobody's happy, but nobody's ruined.

Splits are honest and they're the default for developing acts. Their weakness is that they give the band no floor, which is why good bands with options don't accept them.

3. The versus deal

"$500 versus 70% of the door, whichever is greater." The band gets the guarantee as a floor and the upside if the night does well.

Same show at 100 tickets: $1,200 door, less $300 costs, 70% of $900 is $630. That beats the $500 guarantee, so the band takes $630. At 30 tickets: 70% of $60 is $42, so the guarantee applies and they take $500.

This is the standard structure once acts have leverage, and it is entirely one-directional: the band cannot do worse than the guarantee and you cannot do better than the split. That's the deal — you're buying a real act with a real floor.

Variations you'll meet

• Versus with a promoter profit line. You recoup costs and a stated profit before the split kicks in. Common and reasonable; get it in writing because it materially changes the maths.

• Backend-only after costs. Everyone splits what's left after documented costs. Requires trust and honest bookkeeping in both directions.

• Bar-split deals. The venue pays based on bar take rather than door. Notoriously hard to verify from the band's side and worth being straight about.

What decides which one to offer

• How confident are you in the draw? Confidence justifies a guarantee. Hope doesn't.

• Can you survive the worst case? Never offer a guarantee you can't pay from an empty room. This is the rule that keeps small promoters solvent.

• Is this a relationship or a transaction? A guarantee on a quiet night for a band you want to keep is a real investment and they'll remember it.

Run the numbers before you offer anything

Musavise's show break-even calculator works out how many tickets each structure needs, at your capacity, price and costs — no account needed. Model the guarantee against the split before you send the offer, because the number that matters isn't the fee, it's the attendance at which the night stops costing you money.

All of it lives in one free Musavise account — free means free, within honest limits, and your data exports whenever you want it. Create your free account; it takes about two minutes.