Case Study: How Gateway Entertainment Grew From 150 to 290+ Bookings a Month with Hot Giggity

By Ned Walker, Founder & CEO - Hot Giggity | July 15 2026

Key takeaways: Brisbane booking agency Gateway Entertainment joined Hot Giggity in February 2025 doing around 150 bookings a month. By June 2026 they were doing over 290 bookings a month, without doubling their admin headcount. Automated batched invoicing, Xero sync, worksheets and contracts, artist calendar integration and bulk booking tools carry the admin load. Gateway also leads the industry on artist superannuation, paying super on top of every artist's fee.

Gateway Entertainment is one of Australia's most respected live entertainment booking agencies. Brisbane based, with more than 20 years of industry experience and a simple promise behind everything they do: "Bringing Stages to Life".

Founded by Nathan Ward and Carl Paczensky, Gateway covers just about every corner of the live entertainment business: tour management, corporate event entertainment, artist management, private and wedding entertainment, and venue entertainment management for both independent venues and groups. Their roster features over 190 acts, including some of the biggest names in Australian music: Jimmy Barnes, Daryl Braithwaite, Chocolate Starfish, Eskimo Joe and Pete Murray, alongside exclusive tribute shows like Creedence - The John Fogerty Show and Whiskey & Cowgirls.

Nathan brings a background in live music production, artist management and event logistics. Alongside him, Jotham Garrott looks after venues nationally as National Venue Consultant, and Stacy Ponting runs accounts and administration.

This case study covers how Gateway nearly doubled their booking volume on Hot Giggity, and why their leadership on artist superannuation matters for the whole industry.

Gateway Entertainment - Bringing Stages to Life

From 150 to 290+ Bookings a Month

Gateway signed up to Hot Giggity in February 2025, running around 150 bookings a month.

By June 2026, that number had grown to over 290 bookings a month. Nearly double the volume, in under a year and a half.

The number that matters just as much is the one that did not change: admin headcount. Stacy Ponting still runs accounts and administration. Gateway did not need to hire a second admin team to handle twice the bookings, because the platform absorbed the extra load.

"We simply could not have grown to the booking numbers we are doing now without Hot Giggity. The volume we push through the platform every month would have buried us in paperwork under our old systems. Instead, invoicing runs itself, the artists get everything they need automatically, and we spend our time on the work that actually grows the business: looking after our venues and our artists." - Nathan Ward, Co-Founder, Gateway Entertainment

The Features Gateway Relies On

Gateway uses the platform end to end, but six features do the heavy lifting.

Automated Batched Invoicing

Outgoing invoices to venues are batched and sent automatically. Incoming invoices from artists land in Gateway's inbox the moment a gig is completed: accurate, complete and ready to process. At 290+ bookings a month, that is hundreds of invoices Gateway never has to type, chase or double-handle.

Xero Integration

Bookings and invoices sync straight to Xero. Accounts stay reconciled without re-keying anything, which is a big part of how one accounts and administration manager keeps pace with an agency doing this volume.

Worksheets and Contracts

File and contract attachments live on the booking itself. Gig worksheets, contracts and requirements are exactly where everyone expects to find them, so nothing gets lost in an email chain.

Artist Google Calendar Integration

Gig schedules sync to artists' Google Calendars automatically. Artists always know where they need to be and when, without Gateway sending out schedule emails or fielding "what time am I on?" calls.

Cancellation Workflow

When an artist cancels at the last minute, Gateway sees who is available for the exact date and time, selects replacements and notifies everyone in one action. No frantic ring-around, no empty stage.

Bulk Edit and Bulk Cancel

When a venue changes its schedule, Gateway does not touch dozens of individual bookings. They select them all, make the change or cancel in bulk, and every affected act is notified automatically.

Leading the Industry on Artist Super

Gateway's growth story is only half of why we wanted to write this case study. The other half is their leadership on superannuation.

Gateway pays artists super on top of the artist's fee. Not deducted from it, not left for someone else to sort out. On top. And they advocate openly for super across the live entertainment industry, at a time when many hirers are still working out what their obligations even are.

With over 190 acts on the roster, many of them multi-player bands, Gateway also uses Hot Giggity's Act Player Invoices Paid by Agency feature. Every individual musician in a multi-piece act gets their own invoice: the agency pays each player's fee and super directly to their own super fund. No single band leader acting as a middleman, and every player has a clear record of their entitlement.

That position matters. Under Australian super law, many sole trader performers are entitled to super from the party that books and pays them, and from 1 July 2026 Payday Super requires those contributions to reach the performer's fund within days of payment rather than quarterly. We have covered what this means for agents and venues in our guides to superannuation for booking agents and paying super for musicians and entertainers.

Hot Giggity was built to make doing the right thing the easy path: super is calculated automatically on every booking, shown separately on every invoice, and tracked in the Super Ledger. Gateway's approach shows what it looks like when an agency treats artist super as a mark of professionalism rather than a compliance headache, and we think the rest of the industry will follow where they lead.

A Partnership That Goes Both Ways

Gateway does not just use Hot Giggity behind the scenes. Their venue entertainment management offering promotes the Hot Giggity suite of automated marketing tools to their venue clients, including gig guides on venue screens and websites, and links venues directly to hotgiggity.com.

That is the kind of partnership we are proudest of: an agency that grew on the platform, pays its artists properly, and recommends the tools to the venues it works with.

Want Results Like Gateway's?

If you run a booking agency and want to grow your bookings without growing your admin, take a look at what Hot Giggity offers agents or book a demo with our team. We would love to show you how it works.