Christmas Party Entertainment Hire: What to Book, When and What to Ask
Hiring entertainment for a work Christmas party is mostly a logistics job. Choosing the idea is the easy part. The hard part is the date, the room, the guest numbers and the handful of questions nobody thinks to ask until the week of the event.
This is the guide we wish every organiser had in front of them in September. It covers what to lock first, how much entertainment a guest list actually needs, the venue checks that quietly decide whether a plan works, and what a proper quote should include. It is written from our side of the job, running racing simulators at corporate parties out of our Silverstone base, but most of it applies whatever you end up hiring.
LOCK THE DATE AND THE ROOM FIRST
December is the tightest diary in the events year. Thursday and Friday nights from the last week of November to the third week of December go first, and they go early. Suppliers and venues are working from the same small pool of dates.
So the order matters. Fix your date, then your venue, then hire entertainment around both. Organisers who pick the entertainment first and go looking for a date to suit it usually end up choosing from what is left. If your date is already set, you are in a strong position: check availability straight away, even if the rest of the plan is vague. A supplier can hold a conversation about format and numbers later. They cannot invent a second Friday the twelfth.
WORK OUT HOW MUCH THE GUEST LIST NEEDS
The most common booking mistake is one activity for a room that is far too big for it. Two hundred people and a single attraction is a queue, not a party. The number you need depends less on your headcount than on the job the racing is doing at your party.
If the simulators are the entertainment and you want everyone to drive properly, plan for roughly one simulator per three or four guests. That is the ratio that gets a whole room through a real competition instead of a queue.
If the racing is one attraction among several, with a bar, a dance floor and dinner running alongside it, you can go much wider. Guests drift over in ones and twos across the evening rather than arriving as a crowd, so a handful of simulators keeps a party of a hundred or more busy. Most Christmas parties sit in this second group.
Underneath both, the throughput is the same. Our team gets roughly 8 to 10 drivers through each simulator per hour on short qualifying stints, and about half that on longer race formats. Take your entertainment window, take out the food and the speeches, and check the number against your guest list. Most organisers discover their window is two hours shorter than they assumed. For the biggest nights we can build up to 16 F1 simulators plus 2 GT simulators, all racing head to head on one live leaderboard.
THE VENUE CHECKS THAT DECIDE EVERYTHING
Ask your venue these before you sign anything with a supplier. Every one of them has changed a plan at some point.
Get-in and get-out times. When can suppliers access the room, and when must everything be out? Get it in writing. This is the single most common thing that changes a quote late in the day.
Access route. Door widths, lifts, stairs, and how far the kit has to travel from the loading point. A room upstairs with no lift is a different job to a ground floor function suite.
Power. Ask how many sockets are in the room and whether they are on separate circuits. Each of our simulators runs from a standard 13A socket, which most venues handle easily, but it is worth confirming rather than assuming.
Floor space and sightlines. You need room for the kit and room for a crowd to gather around it. Pillars and low sections matter more than total square footage.
What else is in the room. Christmas parties are rarely the only booking of the day. Find out what is happening before and after yours.
WHAT INCLUDED SHOULD ACTUALLY MEAN
Two quotes with the same headline number can be very different jobs. Push on what is bundled and what is billed later.
For us the answer is straightforward. The team comes with it. They arrive around two hours before your guests, build the grid, run the racing all night and take it away afterwards. It is not a line item you can remove, because drop-and-go kit at a party full of people who have never used it makes for a long evening. Delivery is included within 100 miles of our Silverstone base, with UK wide cover available beyond that.
The extras that can legitimately appear on a quote are travel beyond the included range and late finishes. Both are itemised before you commit.
SIX QUESTIONS TO ASK ANY SUPPLIER
Is staffing included for the full duration, or only for setup?
How long do you need for setup and breakdown, and does that fit our venue access times?
What happens if our guest numbers change between now and December?
What are your payment terms, deposit and cancellation policy?
Are you insured, and can we have the certificate for our venue?
What do you need from us on the day that we might not have thought of?
The last one is the most useful question in the list. A supplier who has done hundreds of December events will have a ready answer.
WHAT CHRISTMAS PARTY ENTERTAINMENT HIRE COSTS
Budget early, because entertainment is usually the line that gets squeezed after the venue and catering are booked. F1 simulator hire starts at £790 per day, and the full list is published on our racing simulator hire prices page. The simulator hire FAQs cover space, power and timings if you want the detail before you enquire.
If you want a second focal point in the room without a second supplier to manage, the Batak reaction board is a popular addition. It is the reaction test F1 drivers train on, it takes 30 seconds a go, and it keeps the competitive energy going between races.
THE BOOKING TIMELINE THAT WORKS
August and September: date and venue confirmed, entertainment availability checked, quotes gathered.
October: decision made and booked. Popular December dates are largely gone by the end of this month.
November: guest numbers firmed up, format agreed, venue logistics confirmed with the supplier.
December: turn up and enjoy the party you organised.
If you are reading this in the summer, you are early. It costs nothing to check whether your date is free.
GET A QUOTE
Tell us your date, venue and guest count and we will come back with a quote within 24 hours, Monday to Friday. Call 01327 856155, or start with our racing simulator hire page.
