Venue sales teams love the phrase "use house AV for breakouts, bring your vendor for general session." On paper it saves money. On the floor it creates silent gaps — duplicate wireless bands, nobody owning playback, dimmers that do not talk to your lighting look, and two crews waiting for someone to call the first cue. This guide maps what house AV actually owns, what your production vendor must own, and how to split scope without the handoff failures that show up during the CEO walk-on.
What house AV usually owns — and what it never owns
House AV is built for the hotel's average meeting: projection in the ballroom, a basic PA, a handful of wireless mics, and a technician who knows the rack in the closet. That is legitimate inventory. It is not a touring show file, a broadcast capture path, or a show-caller discipline tuned to your run-of-show.
House typically owns:
- In-room projection or house LED — screen size tied to the venue's standard package, not your IMAG geometry.
- House PA and basic mic inventory — handhelds and lavs from the venue pool, often with limited spare count.
- House power and tie-in coordination — distro the venue permits, union labor rules for rigging and power drops.
- Breakout packages at list price — flip charts, confidence monitors at podium height, simple HDMI switching for slides.
- On-site house technician — tier-one support for house gear, not your external show caller or TD.
House does not automatically own — and should not be assumed to own — the production layer your general session actually needs:
- IMAG switching and camera direction — multi-camera cuts, presenter framing, and delay-screen timing.
- Dedicated playback and show control — QLab or similar with locked cue structure, not a laptop at FOH running slides.
- Wireless coordination across the property — RF scan covering breakouts, press rooms, sponsor activations, and your general session on one plan.
- Stream or broadcast encoding — program audio bus, redundant paths, and capture standards marketing can reuse.
- Show calling and technical direction — one person owning sequence, timing, and escalation when the script slips.
The gap is not competence. It is scope. House AV sells packages. Production vendors sell outcomes against a brief. When nobody writes down which side owns the gray zone, you pay twice or miss once — and the miss is always during the highest-stakes segment.
Split-scope checklist: power, dimmers, wireless, playback, comms
Before you sign the house estimate and the production vendor contract, walk this list with both parties in the same call. One owner per line. No "we'll figure it out at load-in."
Power and infrastructure
- Who pulls distro for the production vendor's LED processor, switcher, and camera package — house electrician or vendor tech under house supervision?
- Are dimmer circuits house-controlled or vendor-controlled for your lighting look?
- Who owns generator or UPS requirements if house power cannot support your load?
- Load-in dock slot, freight elevator access, and storage for empty cases — assigned in writing?
Wireless and RF
- One master frequency coordination sheet for the entire property — who maintains it?
- House breakout mics on the same bands as production keynote lavs — resolved before RF scan day?
- Spare wireless count: house pool plus vendor spares, or vendor-only for general session?
- Compliance with venue RF restrictions and any broadcast coordination near airports or arenas?
Playback and video
- Slide playback: house laptop at podium, vendor QLab at FOH, or both — and who advances cues during walk-ons?
- Embedded audio in sizzle reels — routed through house PA, vendor console, or both with defined levels?
- Confidence monitors and delay screens — house feed or vendor IMAG path?
- Backup playback if the primary machine drops — documented switch procedure and who executes it?
Comms and show control
- Clear-com or similar: house tech on one channel, vendor show caller on another, or integrated beltpack inventory?
- Who sits at the show-caller position — house, vendor TD, or your internal producer with no headset discipline?
- Green room and backstage feeds — house confidence loop or vendor program mix?
- Escalation path when house and vendor disagree on a cue during rehearsal — name the decision maker before show day.
If any row has two names or a blank, fix it in pre-production. Ambiguity at load-in costs more than either line item.
Who calls the show when two vendors share a room
Two vendors in one ballroom is not a collaboration by default. It is two labor stacks with different employers, different overtime clocks, and different definitions of "ready."
Assign roles explicitly:
- Show caller — one person owns run-of-show sequence, talent cues, and timing. Usually the production vendor TD or a dedicated show caller on the vendor team. House tech runs house gear; they do not call your CEO segment unless that is written into scope.
- Audio lead — one A1 owns the house mix the room hears. If house provides FOH console access, define who patches vendor playback, mics, and VOG into the house system — and who has final mute authority.
- Video lead — one person owns switcher, IMAG, and record paths. House projection tech switches house inputs; vendor switcher feeds IMAG and stream. Define the handoff cable and who requests a source change mid-show.
- Single integrated run-of-show — catering, emcee, house, and vendor read the same document with cue numbers, not parallel PDFs that drift by five minutes.
Rehearsal is where shared-room failures surface. Block time for a full cue-to-cue with both crews in headsets — not separate sound check and "vendor can rehearse after." The first time house and vendor hear each other's comms should not be when doors open.
Red flags in the house estimate
House AV proposals are optimized for the venue's margin, not your show file. Read them for gaps, not just line-item price.
Watch for:
- "Includes technician" without role definition — support tech vs show caller vs TD are different rates and different outcomes.
- Wireless listed as "up to six channels" with no RF coordination clause — your vendor's eight channels plus house breakouts will interfere without a master plan.
- Projection-only general session packages — no IMAG, no delay fill, no sight-line validation for the back third of the room.
- Playback assigned to "presenter laptop" — no dedicated operator, no backup machine, no integration with walk-on music or VOG.
- Comms not listed — if the estimate has zero clear-com or beltpack lines, nobody planned for show calling.
- Overtime and hold fees buried in terms — load-in windows that start when the dock opens, not when your vendor's truck arrives, trigger surprise invoices.
- Exclusivity language — some house contracts require all AV through the venue, which kills a clean production split unless you negotiate carve-outs upfront.
If the house estimate and vendor quote both include full PA and screens for the same room, you have a scope collision — not a savings. Consolidate before the truck leaves the warehouse.
From the floor: one ballroom, two comms networks
A corporate general session loaded into a convention hotel ballroom with house AV on the contract and a production vendor on the PO. House ran breakouts flawlessly. Production built IMAG, six cameras, and stream. Nobody confirmed comms — house tech stayed on the venue's analog intercom tied to breakouts; the vendor show caller ran digital clear-com with camera ops and the TD.
Rehearsal day, the emcee asked for a five-minute hold. The vendor show caller heard it. House did not, because nobody bridged the systems. Breakout overflow started admitting guests while the main room was still in a hold. Catering got the wrong clock. The hold itself was fine; the duplicate reality was not.
Fix took twenty minutes and a borrowed beltpack patched into both worlds — a workaround that worked once and never should have been necessary. The next year's contract named one show caller, one comms inventory owner, and a single run-of-show distributed to house and vendor before load-in.
Split scope works when the split is explicit. Shared rooms fail on communication before they fail on gear.
For general session and keynote production where house inventory and outside vendors need clean handoffs, see our nationwide event production services. Need help drawing the scope line before your next venue contract? Request a consultation.
