YouTube Opens 6,000 Seat ‘YouTube Theater’ Where it Will Host a Range of IRL Events

YouTube is looking to take its presence to the next level with the opening of its new YouTube Theater for business, a 6,000 seat performance venue, located in Inglewood, California, where it plans to host a variety of live entertainment events.

That’s a fairly old school promo for a modern web business – “where swooping steel meets shining glass…”

Clichés aside, with this new physical venue, YouTube will be looking to host a range of live events, including concerts, theater performances, award shows and eSports competitions.

It could also become a key venue for conferences. I mean, maybe not right now, in the midst of an ongoing pandemic, but eventually, YouTube Theater could become a major venue for corporate functions, with the linkage back to YouTube’s app and tools providing additional capacity to maximize reach with your programming.

Indeed, YouTube also notes that the venue includes live-streaming capabilities built into the infrastructure – “so performers can live-stream their events to billions of YouTube viewers around the world”.

In an interesting extension of YouTube’s online presence, and a physical symbol of the app’s growing status. These days, YouTube is fairly ubiquitous, so it’s not a major shift to see it taking physical form, as such. But still, the move into a real-life venue seems like a significant statement, underlining the app’s standing as one of the key entertainment and event tools in the world today.

It’ll be interesting to see what events YouTube Theater hosts, and how the in-built video infrastructure translates to subsequent YouTube clips.

The first event planned at the venue is the Hollywood Black Comedy Festival, which begins on September 3rd, while YouTube will also soon announce its inaugural “artist residency” for the space, which will reportedly feature “one of today’s most popular music groups.”