How was the tournament you attended set up?
I imagine it’s typical to have a gym to hold two or three competition fields, and then rooms (or another gym) off to the side for pits. or pits in the same gym as the competition area? Concessions in the cafeteria?
Have you seen pits located in hallways?
Have you seen the competition fields on the stage in an auditorium?
At our school, we had 3 fields set up in the gym; 2 competition and 1 skills. We also had a judge interview corner. The pits were located on cafeteria tables about a 15-20 second walk from the gym. We sold concessions in the cafeteria too.
At states this year, the gym held 5 fields (I think); 2 high school, 2 middle school, and 1 skills. The judges were in a separate room and concessions were sold right outside the doors of the gym. The skills rink was converted into a practice rink during eliminations.
I have not seen pits in hallways nor fields on stages. Unless you count worlds where pits create hallways 
Our preferred set up is fields in the gym, pits in the cafeteria (or second gym), and judges rooms in classrooms. Sometimes some fields are in another room like an auditorium for IQ or skills. A gym can handle 6 fields pretty easily and 8 fields fairly well. Not sure for this year with flying balls though if that makes a difference with NBN.
Pits in the hallways can be problematic as it can block access as teams spread about. However, for overflow it may be what you have available. Shop/tech rooms are used many times since they have workbenches for natural pit areas.
Cutting areas and use of power tools are typically relegated to a hallway or corner for bystander safety and noise containment.
Battery charging stations can be problematic as plugs can be at a premium. Some competitions have gone to running extension cords through to all tables but one slip and everyone is unplugged. It can also trip circuit breakers. But it is preferred to have power at the table.
Everyone in one room makes noise levels much higher and less enjoyable. But long walks from cafe to gym can detract from user enjoyment too. So use what you have!
Don’t forget a food selling area and hopefully a place to eat.
Regional competitions are generally fields and skills in a gym, and pits in the cafeteria or a different gym. It really just depends how if fits into the school’s layout.
Provincials have pits in the gym, food in the cafeteria, and fields on a stage in the auditorium (with really comfy chairs :)). Skills and practice fields are in a corner of the gym.
I’ve been at tournaments with pits in the hallway or in the cafeteria. I personally like tournaments where the pits are in the same room as the fields.
We walked through the High School with the principal last night. The gym is our first choice, but we don’t expect that it will be available this year.
The second choice is the school’s auditorium. It has seating that wraps 130* around the stage, and can seat 700. The stage fairly low, it’s not set too high above the seats. We can fit two fields on the stage. It has AV already wired up, we should be able to set up a field camera and project the action onto a screen that is already there. The auditorium is climate controlled with air conditioning if needed.
How many spectators do you usually get at a VEX EDR tournament? (per team? or for a 40 team tournament?)
I’ve seen anywhere from 30-100 (local) to maybe 150 (states), but you also have to factor in places where teams that didn’t make it to the eliminations would sit. They usually fill up about 50-100 seats. Also, factor in alliance selections too, where all of the teams would be sitting in there.
With a lot of people, air conditioning is a must 
During qualifying matches, the number of spectators per match can be fairly low – at a 40-team tournament, perhaps 20 - 30 spectators per match. These usually consist of extra team members for the competing teams and some scouts. The number of spectators tends to increase for matches when the more competitive teams are playing.
For elimination matches, the number of spectators is more in the 50-100 range. Besides the competing teams, you get some eliminated teams who want to “watch the show.” But some eliminated teams will leave after alliance selection, especially if the event is running late. If there’s not enough formal seating, people will sit on the floor near the fields, stand behind chairs, and generally try to make a way to view the stage. People who want to watch will make a way, whether there’s enough formal seating or not.
In an auditorium, it sounds like you have far more spectator space than you need. You might want to have someone sit in the seats while one of you walks on the stage to check for visibility at various locations on the stage. Perhaps carry a robot to the “interior” of the stage, away from the edge near spectators, and see how visible it is.
I’ve seen a 40-team event run in a large conference room (smaller than a cafeteria), with the pits in several classrooms and hallway, and the practice field in the foyer. The spectator seats were about 50 loose chairs in 2-3 rows on 3 sides of the 2 competition fields. This was not ideal, but it got the job done, and the pits were quieter than in a gym, which was actually desirable.
Thanks for the input everyone!
My only robotics tournament experience was a 50 team FIRST Lego League tournament. Between students, parents, and spectators there were at least 2,000 people there for closing ceremonies.
For our school’s unofficial pilot year, 8 VEX teams drew around 35 to 40 spectators to each of the weekly league play competition nights. Add 40 kids to that and that was about 80 people each time the kids competed. I expected a 40 team tournament might have around 160 students and draw at least 200 spectators. Maybe I’m overestimating turnout… I guess it’s better than greatly underestimating turnout.
It sounds like the folks in your region are much more supportive, so you’d probably need more spectator seating that our events do. Also, our pit overlooks the field, so most teams can hear the opening ceremonies from the pits and don’t move to the seats in front.
In our area, about 2/3 of our participants drive from 2+ hours away. They sometimes come by school bus (20-40 students, no spectators), and some are old enough to drive themselves. The families of our local folks don’t tend to stay long. So most of the spectators are students.
It also seems that many of our teams participate in 5-10 events (including league play), so some parents might watch one event, but skip out on the others.
Ooh, an auditorium would be super cool, with the seating and the stage. Would it be possible to have all elimination matches, or just finals, in the auditorium? If you can get the gym for the rest of the matches, then you’ve got yourself a good tournament.
At the tournament we host we have 2 competition fields + all 56 pits in the same room (we can fit 60+, but we decided to do 56 for other reasons). Personally I prefer having pits in the same room as the comp fields so it’s a lot easier to travel back and forth, to watch matches, and to hear announcements such as “YOU"RE LATE FOR THE MATCH!!!”
We put the skills and practice fields in an adjoining room. I personally would prefer to have them in the same room too for the same reasons as above, but we don’t have enough room in our gym for that.
For the audience we have 9 rows of bleachers for the whole length of the gym. We find that there aren’t too many spectators at our tournaments, mostly parents of the teams.
An auditorium would be nice if you had a lot of spectators, but at the same time it’s sometimes annoying for teams to travel back and forth.
We are blessed with having a number of different schools host tournaments so I’ve seen a variety of set ups. I would say regardless of the set up, be sure that teams in the pits can be kept aware of which matches are underway, which are coming up, etc.
I’ve been to tournaments where the pits and the fields were in the same very large gym, separated by curtains. The one small speaker in the pits was unable to overcome the noise, and the other speakers were directed away from the pits to the spectators. Teams had a difficult time monitoring the progress of the matches and knowing when to get into queuing etc. My feeling is large screens in the pits displaying what match is in progress and what matches and teams need to be in queue is best.
A projector or TV in the pit area is very useful to run the pit display. One per division is generally best.
Sometimes the TM gets a bit behind if data entry lags behind. So the bottom match list can be a little off. So better to be ahead.
We find people generally hang out in the gym where the matches are held versus in their pits at the cafeteria by the early afternoon. (Unless they make major modifications that is)