This week, RX Venue Management announced that its property, the Ticketpro Dome, had been sold to new owners.

Those owners, as it turns out, is WeBuyCars according to a report from MyBroadband. While WeBuyCars hasn’t said what it intends to do with the venue, it seems that the venue will become a vehicle supermarket for the company.

While we’re pleased about the latter – music in a domed structure was never going to be a good experience – not being able to leverage the Ticketpro Dome for events leaves a rather large void in Johannesburg’s venue space.

Yes, there are other venues but they tend to be out of the way and while the Dome’s structure wasn’t great for music concerts compared to a stadium or theatre, it was a decent size for mid to large scale events.

One of the stalwart events at the Dome has been rAge and while attendees have made it known they would like a bigger venue for the event, the organisers have no choice but to move now.

This morning project director for rAge Expo, Michael James, addressed the loss of the Dome as a venue.

“We are saddened by the news that The Dome will no longer be hosting events. It’s been an incredible 18-year journey since our first #rAgeExpo in 2003,” wrote James.

We're going on an adventure … pic.twitter.com/hCYrLQcrSa

— rAge Expo (@rAgeExpo) July 20, 2021

“As for what’s happening to rAge in the future? Well, we can’t really say for sure because we don’t know what’s happening with COVID. Any guesses are just that. We do have some exciting venue options and there are multiple places we can do rAge,” the project director added.

Where to for rAge?

While the Dome was a nice venue for events, it is by no means the only venue available for events.

The first venue that might come to mind is the Johannesburg Expo Centre in the south of Johannesburg. The smallest venue within the centre measures in at 209sqm but the largest – Hall 6 – comes in at 12 304sqm which is well above the 11 000 sqm that the Dome houses.

The Johannesburg Expo Centre would also allow rAge to create a bit of space if it were to spread itself out a bit. The Artist’s Alley is generally crammed into a corner of the expo and some breathing room would be nice for shoppers and stall owners alike.

The next venue to come to mind is likely to be Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit given that Comic Con Africa was hosted here. While we’ve attended a great number of events at Kyalami, the events were smaller and not open to the public.

When Comic Con Africa was hosted here it was a logistical nightmare and, unless rAge is looking at hosting an event that takes place mostly outside in the blazing South African summer, we don’t see Kyalami being a viable option here.

Staying in the north for a moment, Montecasino has hosted several events before including Geek Fest. Geek Fest took place outside and we aren’t convinced the venue is large enough to accommodate the influx of geeks that rAge attracts. There’s also the matter of the NAG LAN which is hosted alongside rAge and we suspect neither Kyalami nor Montecasino owners would be pleased with an army of gamers taking over their premises for a weekend.

In fact, any venue that is outside doesn’t really suit what rAge is all about. Could you imagine a wall of PC components on display under the South African heat? Neither can we.

To that end we suspect the obvious choice is the Johannesburg Expo Centre here. It’s large enough to accommodate an army of people, the expo can be spaced out and still happen in-doors and it’s rather easy to get to from the N1, M1 and other roads in the area.

Of course this is just us laying our thoughts out as to where rAge could be hosted and the organisers haven’t even teased a venue to our knowledge.

The alternative is rAge moves out of Gauteng to another province. While that is a possibility, when rAge tried this before the first event left much to be desired and the second time it had a go, rAge was forced to cancel the event.

This is even assuming rAge is still a thing once we’re looking at the back of the ongoing pandemic.

We hope that rAge does still exist once the hellscape that is COVID-19 passes but over the last year we’ve learned that the virus doesn’t just destroy one’s health, it wrecks havoc on jobs, businesses and industries through prevention measures as well.