Event planning should not be a guessing game
Think about the last time you bought a ticket for a concert, a conference or a match. You were shown a floor plan drawn from above, with a colour for each price band and a grey square for every seat already taken. You picked a square. You hoped.
The organisers on the other side had the same problem in reverse. They knew the hall, but their attendees did not. Every enquiry about pillars, screens, aisles and distance to the stage became an email or a phone call. Every sponsor wanted to know exactly where their booth would sit relative to the entrance and the coffee.
Our product brief for Nplay FrontRow lists the four failures plainly: limited visualisation, unclear seat choices, uncertain sightlines and a disconnected experience between looking at a venue and paying for a place in it. None of these is a technology gap any more. We build digital twins of buildings for facilities managers and virtual venues for exhibitions; a theatre or a stadium is a smaller, better-documented building than most.
So the question we asked was simple. If we can model the venue in 3D, why are we still selling seats from a grid? 3D seat selection for event booking is our answer, and FrontRow is the platform we are building to deliver it.
Explore, select, book — from inside the venue
The attendee flow has three steps, and the order matters.
Explore. The attendee opens the event page in a browser and walks through the venue in full 3D. No headset is required; the venue runs in the browser the way a modern game runs on the web. They can go to the stalls, up to the balcony, into the exhibition hall, and see the space at eye level rather than from a helicopter.
Select. Standing at a seat, they see what the seat sees: the stage, the screen, the pitch, the nearest exit. Availability and price update in real time, so the view they are checking is a view they can actually buy. For a conference, the same logic applies to tables and booths; for a wedding or a gala dinner it applies to place settings.
Book. Checkout happens in the same environment. Registration, secure payment and instant confirmation are part of the platform, not a redirect to a separate ticketing site. The confirmation can include an e-badge, which is where our Nplay Slate reusable badges connect.
The principle is that the person never leaves the venue between deciding and paying. Every hand-off between systems is a place where buyers drop out; 3D seat selection for event booking removes the hand-offs as well as the guesswork.
Upload the venue, draw the layout, go live
None of this works if setting up an event takes a 3D studio and a month. The organiser side of FrontRow is designed around three steps.
Upload your venue. Start from what you already have: architectural blueprints, an existing 3D model, or a survey we carry out. Venues that host events repeatedly are modelled once and reused for every event.
Customise the layout. Define seating blocks, price bands, booths, stages and networking zones on an interactive floor plan. A theatre layout, a banquet layout and an exhibition layout can live in the same hall as separate configurations.
Go live. Publish the event. Attendees explore and book directly in the 3D environment; the organiser watches sales, seat-by-seat, from an administration dashboard.
Behind those steps sit the systems any serious event booking platform needs: a content management system, a secure payment gateway, e-badge integration, a mapping system, a registration system and the admin dashboard. The data layer records how attendees behave inside the venue — where they walk, which seats they compare, where they hesitate — which is information a two-dimensional seat map has never been able to give an organiser.
What the product profile reports so far
Stadiums, theatres, hotels, universities — anywhere with seats and a plan
We designed FrontRow for event professionals rather than for one venue type, and the list of intended users is broad: event planning agencies, sports stadiums, arenas and theatres, hotels and convention centres, cinemas, corporate event teams, educational institutions and restaurants.
The common factor is a venue that people pay to sit in and a plan that changes from event to event. A stadium sells the same seats every fortnight but reconfigures for a concert. A hotel ballroom is a conference on Tuesday and a wedding on Thursday. A university hall hosts a graduation, then a career fair with booths. In each case the organiser wants attendees to see the layout that applies to their event, not a generic map.
In Jordan and Saudi Arabia the timing is good. Event volumes are rising, ticketed cultural and sporting events are multiplying, and buyers are used to browser-based 3D from property and retail. An event booking platform that shows the venue rather than a grid is a smaller change for the audience than it is for the organiser.
Where FrontRow meets our other work is the venue itself. A stadium twin built for fan experience or an exhibition hall built for Nplay Nexus, our virtual exhibition platform in development, is already most of the way to being a bookable 3D venue.
Two ways for a venue to run it
Our institutional sales model offers two arrangements. We describe the structure here without figures, because the figures depend on venue size and requirements.
Model one: free with revenue share. The venue or institution receives a customised version of the platform at no upfront cost. It is linked to their future events and marketed to organisers who use the venue. We develop and operate the system; each event pays an agreed fee for using it, and the profit is split equally. The venue gains an additional income line and a reputation as an innovative event partner without a capital decision.
Model two: owned, with a development fee and annual subscription. The institution pays a one-time development fee scaled to the system, then a fixed annual subscription covering maintenance, support and updates. It owns the customised platform, sets its own prices to organisers and keeps all the revenue.
The first model suits a venue that wants to test demand; the second suits an operator with a full calendar that wants 3D booking as part of its standard offer. Our guide to budgeting for immersive technology puts both in the context of how we price the rest of our products.
What is built, what is next
FrontRow is in development. The 3D venue engine comes from Nplay Core, the immersive engine and low-code platform behind our other products, which means venue models, avatars and browser rendering are shared with Nexus and our digital-twin work rather than built from scratch. The registration, payment and dashboard components are the same ones we use in our business portals.
What we are looking for now is a small number of venue partners in Jordan and Saudi Arabia who want to run a pilot: one venue, modelled once, used for two or three events of different types. We will measure the three things the product profile reports on — checkout speed, engagement with the tour and satisfaction with the customised layout — and publish what we find.
If you run a venue or an event portfolio and you are tired of explaining sightlines by email, we would like to talk.
3D seat selection: frequently asked questions
Does 3D seat selection need a VR headset?
No. The venue runs in a normal web browser on a laptop or phone. VR is an option for showrooms and demos, not a requirement for booking.
What do we need to provide to get our venue modelled?
Architectural drawings or an existing 3D model are enough to start. If neither exists, our team surveys the venue and models it; it is then reused for every future event.
Is FrontRow available today?
It is in development. We are inviting venues and event organisers in Jordan and Saudi Arabia to pilot it on real events, under either the revenue-share or the owned model.
Can it handle booths and tables, not just seats?
Yes. The layout editor defines seating, booths, stages and networking zones, so exhibitions, gala dinners and conferences use the same platform as theatres and stadiums.