What you'll be able to do
- Tier markets (anchor/growth/experiment) and budget each tier for its actual job
- Turn tour data into routing evidence the booking conversation can use
- Run the post-tour debrief that changes the next map
The short version: The track's thesis module. Every system so far produces market-level evidence - registration density (M4), pool depth and cost-per-ticket (M3's war room), alert-list growth (M5), coordination status (M2) - and this module organizes it into the market-tier model and the routing debrief. Anchors get defended, growth markets get invested, experiments get honest small bets and honest grades. By the debrief, the marketing operation holds the best demand map anyone at the routing table has - and the module's job is making that map legible to the people who draw routings.
The tier model
Every market on the routing gets a tier BEFORE the tour, revisited after:
- Anchor markets: proven rooms, deep pools, history. Job: sell out efficiently, throw off proof and budget for everyone else. Budgeted lean-per-ticket, watched closely anyway (an anchor missing curve is the war room's loudest alarm).
- Growth markets: evidence of demand (streaming geography, registration density, a strong support-slot history) without headline history. Job: convert potential into a curve. Budgeted heaviest per-ticket - this is where marketing money buys the most future.
- Experiment markets: routing reaches - the geographic bet, the agent's hunch, the market the data is silent on. Job: produce a CLEAN READ at small cost. Budgeted small, graded honestly, and - critically - a soft experiment market is a successful experiment if the read is clean. The failure isn't the soft room; it's the ambiguous one.
The tier sets the war room's panic thresholds (M3), the budget weighting, and the debrief's grading rubric. Without tiers, every market is judged like an anchor, which makes growth spending look wasteful and experiments look like failures - the exact misgrading that keeps tours re-running the same safe map forever.
The evidence stack (what the tour knows, per market, by close)
Registration density vs tier expectation · cost-per-ticket vs tour average · sellthrough curve shape · pool depth and growth (tagged audiences, alert list, email adds) · walkup/door behavior where reported · coordination status · the qualitative layer (the scene node's ears, the merch line's chatter). Streaming geography (S4A city data, DAS 202 M4's honest reading) joins as the pre-tour prior. None of these alone is a routing verdict; together, per market, they're the demand map.
›Go deeper: the routing debrief (the document that changes the next map)
Within two weeks of close, one page per tier: each market's grade against its TIER'S job (the anchor that sold out ≠ the experiment that read clean; both passed), the promotions - which growth markets earned anchor status, which experiments earned growth investment - the demotions and their evidence, the underserved-market case (the city whose density/streaming/pool numbers argue for a date it didn't get), and the second-night candidates. The delivery matters as much as the content: this goes to the routing conversation as EVIDENCE, not instruction - agents and managers route on many inputs, and the marketing operation's credibility comes from clean data humbly presented, not from "the dashboard says play Tulsa." The debrief that gets read next year is the one that was right this year and didn't gloat about it.
From the field
A team ran the tier model across two consecutive routings. Tour one: 14 dates - 8 anchors, 4 growth, 2 experiments. The debrief promoted two growth markets on cost-per-ticket and pool growth, graded one experiment a clean soft (small room, small spend, unambiguous read: not yet), and flagged one un-routed city whose registration density and streaming geography outran three routed markets. Tour two's map took the evidence: the flagged city got a date (it hit 92%), the promoted markets got bigger rooms (both held curve), the clean-soft market got skipped without argument. The agent's note back after settlement: "send me that one-pager again next cycle." That sentence is this module's whole job description.
Common mistakes
- No tiers - every market graded like an anchor, growth spend condemned, experiments "failures"
- The ambiguous experiment (spend too small to read, room too weird to interpret - the only true experiment failure)
- Debrief written in week nine of the next project (two weeks post-close or it's archaeology)
- The dashboard-says-play-Tulsa delivery (evidence, humbly; the credibility IS the product)
- Ignoring the qualitative layer (the merch line knows things the sheet doesn't)
Take-home
The Market-Tier Budget Model + Routing Debrief Template - the tier assignment worksheet with per-tier budget weighting, the evidence-stack checklist per market, and the one-page-per-tier debrief format with the humble-delivery cover note.
Sources & dates
DAS 201/202/203 cross-references as cited · tier model is Darkroom practice, presented as such
Learn more
Optional extra credit. Nothing below is required for the quiz, the certificate, or the job - the full lesson is above. This is for the sickos who want more.
- DAS 203 Module 6's reporting doctrine - the humble-receipts delivery style the debrief borrows