Saturday night. Your venue's packed. Every slot's booked. You're turning people away at the door. Feels good, right?
Here's the uncomfortable truth: if you're fully booked on a Saturday night, you've almost certainly left tens of thousands of pounds on the table this year alone.
I know. It sounds backwards. Full venue equals success, surely? But here's what we've seen from analysing booking data across dozens of entertainment venues: peak demand is where the biggest money gets left behind.
The fear that's costing you
Most venue operators share the same worry when it comes to Saturday night pricing: "What if we price too high and people don't book?"
It's a reasonable fear. Nobody wants empty slots on their busiest night. So you price conservatively. Maybe £5 more than a Tuesday, perhaps £8 if you're feeling bold. You fill up. Everyone's happy.
Except you've just made the single most expensive pricing decision of your week.
Here's what actually happens when you underprice Saturday nights: the slots fill up fast. Really fast. Often weeks in advance. And every single one of those early bookings is from someone who would have paid more. Sometimes quite a lot more.
What the data actually shows
We recently worked with a venue in Birmingham. They were charging £45 per hour for their Saturday 7-9pm slots. Fully booked every week, usually by the previous Monday.
We suggested £65.
They thought we'd lost our minds.
We ran it for one month. Here's what happened:
- Week 1: Bookings came in slightly slower, but still filled by Thursday
- Week 2: Filled by Wednesday
- Week 3: Filled by Tuesday
- Week 4: Back to filling by Monday
Same number of bookings. Same customer satisfaction scores. An extra £2,400 per month in revenue from that two-hour window alone. Over £28,000 per year. From two hours on Saturday nights.
And that was just one venue with eight boxes.
The real cost of being "full"
When you're fully booked on Saturday night at your current prices, you're actually experiencing a problem, not a success. You've hit capacity before you've hit optimal pricing.
Think about it this way: if your Saturday night slots fill up on Monday, what you're really discovering is that your prices are wrong for the level of demand you're seeing. The venue operator equivalent of setting up a market stall and selling out by 9am every single day – then wondering why you're not making more money.
Your customers are telling you something. They're literally queuing up to pay you. You're just not listening.
Why nobody talks about this
This isn't new information. Airlines have known this for decades. Hotels worked it out years ago. Even your local cinema charges more on Saturday night.
But entertainment and hospitality venues? Still pricing like it's 2010.
Part of it is cultural. There's something that feels wrong about charging a party of four £80 for an hour on Saturday when they paid £50 on Tuesday. Feels unfair, doesn't it?
Except those are fundamentally different products. The Saturday experience comes with buzz, atmosphere, and the social validation of being out on the weekend everyone wants. Your Tuesday customers are choosing convenience and quieter spaces. They're not the same thing at all.
The maths is brutal
Let's say you run a four-lane bowling alley. You've got eight Saturday night slots (5pm-close). You're charging £40 per hour per lane. Fully booked every week.
That's £1,280 in revenue per Saturday.
Now imagine you're underpriced by just £10 per hour. That's probably conservative for peak Saturday demand, but let's be modest.
- £10 per lane
- × 4 lanes
- × 8 time slots
- × 52 weeks
That's £16,640 you're leaving on the table every single year.
And that's assuming you're only £10 under optimal pricing. In our experience, most venues are £15-25 under on their genuine peak slots. Maybe more.
For a 10-court pickleball venue charging £45 when the market would bear £65, the annual cost is £83,200.
The £80,000 question isn't hypothetical. It's literally what underpricing your peak demand costs.
The thing nobody wants to say
Here's what makes this particularly painful: you're not just losing money. You're losing it to customers who were happy to pay more.
We see this in the booking data all the time. Someone books your Saturday 8pm slot on Monday morning for £45. They would have paid £65. They expected to pay £65. They're comparing your prices to competitive socialising experiences where £65 is normal for peak times.
You've just given them a £20 discount they didn't ask for and wouldn't have needed.
And because you're fully booked, you're now turning away a party of eight who called on Friday willing to pay premium rates for a premium time slot. You're actually giving discounts to price-sensitive early bookers whilst refusing the price-insensitive late bookers.
It's completely backwards.
What optimal actually looks like
The venues getting this right aren't just charging more for Saturday nights. They're charging progressively more as the date approaches and remaining capacity decreases.
- Four weeks out: £45
- Two weeks out: £55
- One week out: £65
- Day of: £75
Same slot. Different prices based on booking momentum and remaining capacity. Because the value proposition changes when scarcity increases.
The customer booking four weeks ahead is telling you they'll take any available time. They're price-sensitive and planning-focused. The customer calling on Saturday morning is telling you they want Saturday night specifically and will pay for the convenience.
Why would you charge them the same?
The counter-arguments (and why they're wrong)
"But customers will complain about variable pricing."
They already live with it. Train tickets. Hotel rooms. Flights. Cinema tickets. Uber rides. They understand that prime time costs more.
"We'll damage customer loyalty."
The opposite is true. Optimal pricing means you can invest more in the experience. Better staff. Better equipment. Better service. That builds loyalty.
"We'll lose bookings to competitors."
Your competitors are either making the same mistake (leaving money on the table) or they're getting this right (making more money than you). Either way, you're not winning.
What you should actually do
Start small. Pick your single busiest time slot. The one that fills first every single week. Add £10 to it. See what happens.
Chances are, nothing changes except your revenue goes up.
Then get a bit bolder. Test £15. Then £20. Keep going until you see booking momentum start to slow – that's when you've found the ceiling. Usually, that ceiling is way higher than you think.
The venues we work with typically find they can push peak pricing 30-40% higher than current rates before they see any impact on utilisation. Some go even further.
The bit we're supposed to say here
Obviously, this is what Re-venue does, automatically. Our platform analyses your booking momentum, utilisation rates, and capacity constraints to guide every time slot toward optimal pricing. Saturday nights included.
But you don't need us to test whether your Saturday nights are underpriced. You can do that yourself tomorrow.
You just need to be willing to find out you've been leaving £80,000 on the table every year.
Uncomfortable? Absolutely.
Worth knowing? Definitely.
Want to see what your peak slots are actually worth? We'll analyse your booking data and show you exactly where the revenue's hiding. No obligation, just numbers.
