How to run a LAN party in South Africa

South Africa edition. This guide is written for volunteer-run clubs in South Africa. Where rules differ — grants, tax, incorporation, safeguarding — follow the South Africa-specific pointers below or check with your national body.

At 7.40pm the left-hand side of the hall goes dark. Forty-eight machines were humming; now twenty-two of them are off, someone is shouting about an unsaved config, and the tournament you were about to start is half an hour behind before the first round is played. Nobody did anything reckless. Somebody plugged a fourth six-way board into a wall socket that was already carrying nine gaming rigs, because from the outside a wall socket looks like an infinite resource.

That incident is the whole LAN party problem in miniature. A LAN is not a games night with more chairs — it is a small events-production job with three hard constraints stacked on each other. There is a load budget, measured in amps, that the building will not exceed no matter how the night is going. There is a network that has to be built, tested and then left alone. And there is a seat map, because a LAN is the rare club event where every single attendee occupies a fixed, numbered, powered position for twelve hours or more.

This guide is for the committee or events crew running a LAN for a club, a society or a community gaming group — anything from a sixteen-seat club night to a two-hundred-seat weekender. It covers sizing the event, building a load budget, the electrical questions to put to your venue, the network build, ticketing and seat allocation, BYO-machine rules, the overnight duty of care that catches most first-time organisers, and a run sheet you can adapt. Treat everything below as general information rather than engineering, food-safety or legal advice — anything touching electricity, catering or young people should be settled with your venue and the relevant authority before you sell a single ticket.

Size the night before you book anything

Almost every LAN disaster is a scale mismatch: a plan that would have worked beautifully at twenty seats being run at seventy. Decide which of these you are actually running, then plan to that row and no other.

Two practical notes on that table. First, the jump from "small LAN" to "weekender" is not a jump in size, it is a jump in category — once you go overnight you acquire welfare, sleep and supervision responsibilities you did not have at 11pm. Second, if this is your club's first LAN, run the club-night version twice before you sell tickets to strangers. You will learn where the sockets are, which corner has no airflow, and how long bump-in genuinely takes.

Whatever the scale, write down a one-line purpose. "A social night for our members with a casual tournament" and "a ticketed open event that funds the club's competitive season" lead to completely different decisions about pricing, seat allocation, prizes and how much you police the rules.

The load budget — count amps, not power points

This is the section that saves your night, and it is arithmetic rather than expertise.

Step one — estimate draw per seat. A modern BYO gaming desktop plus one monitor typically sits somewhere between 250 W and 450 W while gaming, with brief peaks above that. As an illustrative planning figure, 350 W per BYO seat is sensible and slightly conservative; a laptop seat is closer to 120 W. Console seats with a TV land near 250 W. Add your infrastructure separately — switches, the file server, the projector, the sound desk and, crucially, anything with a heating element in the kitchen.

Step two — convert watts to amps. Divide the total watts by your mains voltage. That gives the current the circuit has to carry, which is what the breaker actually responds to.

Step three — derate. A LAN is a continuous load for hours, not a kettle boiling for two minutes. Plan to no more than about 80% of a circuit's rating, and leave more headroom than that on any circuit that also feeds a fridge, an urn or an air conditioner.

Step four — count circuits, not sockets. This is the step people miss. A hall with twenty-four visible power points may have all of them on two or three breakers. Ask the venue for the distribution board schedule, or walk the room with a manager and a torch, switching breakers off one at a time to map which sockets die together. Label the map, photograph it, and bring it on the day.

Step five — spread the seats across circuits deliberately. Once you know that sockets A through F share a breaker, you know how many seats can live there. Put the network gear and the food area on their own circuits so a kitchen trip does not take the switch stack down with it.

Here is the worked example for a 40-seat LAN, using the illustrative figures above.

At 230 V that total is roughly 75 A. Socket outlets are commonly rated at 16 A, which gives more per-point headroom than smaller plug standards, but the circuit protection behind them is still the real limit — a 16 A final circuit derates to about 2,900 W, which is eight gaming seats however many outlets they are spread across. Forty seats therefore wants five or six circuits plus dedicated ones for the kitchen and the network. Scheduled load-shedding adds a second question no plan can ignore: if the venue has a generator or an inverter, find out exactly what it backs up, and if it does not, build the schedule so a two-hour outage costs you a break rather than the event.

Bring more power boards than you think you need, all of them surge-protected, and ban daisy-chaining outright — one board per socket, no board plugged into another board. Publish that rule with the ticket so nobody arrives surprised.

Getting the electrical side signed off

Everything above is planning. The compliance question — who is allowed to test what, and who signs off any temporary distribution — is decided locally, and it is worth one phone call weeks before the event rather than one argument on the morning.

Ask the venue three things. First, for the distribution board schedule so you know which sockets share a breaker. Second, whether earth leakage protection covers the circuits you intend to use and where it can be reset. Third, what happens during scheduled load-shedding — whether there is a generator or inverter, what it actually backs up, and how long it holds. Any temporary installation should be done by a registered electrician who can issue the appropriate certificate of compliance. This is general information; the venue's hire conditions and the electrical regulations that apply in South Africa are the authority.

Two rules that apply wherever you are: run cable in the gaps between tables rather than across walkways, and where a crossing is unavoidable, use proper cable matting rather than tape. Keep every exit and exit sign clear, and keep the paths to them wide enough for people to leave in the dark.

The network build

Your network has one job — deliver low, boringly consistent latency between machines in the same room — and one enemy, which is improvisation on the day.

Topology. A single core switch with access switches at the table ends is enough for almost any club LAN. Use one uplink per access switch back to the core, keep the uplinks short, and label both ends of every cable. Gigabit is plenty; the bottleneck at a LAN is almost never raw throughput between machines.

Wired only for play. Provide wireless for phones and social use, on a separate access point and a separate address range, and make it a published rule that tournament machines play on cable. This removes an entire genre of dispute about lag.

Addressing. Run one DHCP server and exactly one. The single most common LAN network failure is a member's home router being plugged in "to add a few ports" and quietly handing out addresses. Bring a note of the address range, the gateway and the DNS server, and tape it to the admin desk.

Content. A local file server with game installers, patches and the tournament's mod or map packs saves a punishing amount of time and internet bandwidth in the first hour. Publish the checklist of what people should install before they arrive, with the ticket confirmation and again two days out.

Test it empty, then test it full. Build the network the afternoon before if the venue allows, and run a load test with whatever machines you have. Then re-test after doors open, because forty machines behave differently to four.

Have a fallback. Write down what happens if the uplink to the internet dies: which parts of the event still work, which tournaments can still run, and who announces it. Most LAN content is local, so a good answer here turns a catastrophe into an inconvenience.

Tickets, the seat map and BYO rules

A LAN sells a numbered seat, not general admission, and treating it that way solves several problems at once.

Draw the seat map before tickets go on sale. Number every position, mark which circuit it sits on, mark the ends of rows (worth more — easier to get in and out), and mark the seats nobody wants (next to the door, under the speaker). Then decide your allocation model.

Whichever you pick, take names for every seat. You need them for the door, for tournament registration, and for knowing who is still in the building at 3am.

The BYO rules that actually matter

Publish these with the ticket, not on a sign at the door. Keep the list short enough that people read it.

• One machine, one monitor per seat unless you have sold a double-width seat. Space is the constraint, not generosity.
• A stated power ceiling per seat, expressed in watts, matching the load budget you built above. Anyone bringing something unusual contacts you first.
• No fridges, kettles, heaters, or anything else with a heating element. This rule exists because someone always tries.
• One power board per seat, no daisy-chaining, and boards must be surge-protected and undamaged.
• You bring your own peripherals, cables and a spare ethernet lead. Have a small pool of loan cables anyway.
• The organisers may unplug anything unsafe, and the ticket says so. Nobody has ever objected once it was written down in advance.

Sell tickets through your own site rather than a general marketplace so you keep the attendee list, the seat number and the dietary or accessibility notes in one place — ClubHelix events and ticketing does exactly this, and the same record drives your door list. If you are promoting the event beyond your own members, how to promote a club event covers the channels worth the effort.

The overnight problem

Going past midnight changes what you are running. You are no longer hosting a party; you are responsible for people sleeping, eating and getting home from a building you have hired.

Rostered adults, always awake. Never let the overnight period rest on "whoever is still up". Roster named people in shifts with a clear handover, and make sure at least two of them are awake and sober at all times. Give them a torch, a phone with charge, the venue emergency contact and the site map with exits and the first-aid kit marked.

Door control after dark. Lock down to a single staffed entrance once the crowd settles. Sign people out as well as in. A wristband system is crude and works.

Sleep and quiet. Designate a quiet room away from the main hall, with the lights actually off. People who nap for ninety minutes at 4am are far better company at 9am than people who did not.

Food and hydration. Free water is the single highest-value thing you provide. For food, either cater it properly or partner with something open late, and keep anything you serve within the food-safety rules your venue and local authority apply — a club canteen operating overnight is still a club canteen.

Air and temperature. Sixty machines heat a hall remarkably fast. Plan ventilation, and know how to open what.

Incidents. Have a first-aid trained person on the roster, a stocked kit, and a written record of anything that happens. A simple incident log — time, who, what, what was done — protects the club and the individual. Incident reporting in ClubHelix keeps those records with the event they belong to rather than in a volunteer's notebook.

If under-18s are attending

Overnight events involving under-18s carry obligations that vary by jurisdiction — supervision arrangements, background screening for the adults present, and written consent from a parent or guardian. Do not take a supervision ratio from a forum post or copy one from another club. Ask your venue, your governing body or student association, and the relevant child-protection authority what applies to an overnight event with minors present, and get the answer in writing before tickets go on sale. Many clubs sensibly conclude that a first LAN should end at midnight, with a separate all-ages daytime session, rather than take that on in year one.

The run sheet

A run sheet is one page, in time order, with a name against each line. This is the shape that works for a 40-seat overnight event.

Pack down in that order every time. Pulling power before the network is how switches get dropped, and how the club's own gear goes home in someone else's car.

What it costs

Budget in five buckets — venue, power and network, catering, prizes, and contingency — and price the ticket off the total, not off what feels friendly. A LAN that loses money quietly is a LAN that does not happen again.

For a 40-seat overnight event, an indicative budget in rand might run to R2,500–R6,000 for a hall overnight, R1,500 for consumables and cable, R4,000 for catering, R3,000 in prizes, and a R2,000 contingency — landing near R17,000, or roughly R425 a seat before sponsorship. Add generator or inverter hire if the venue has no backup, because in South Africa that is a scheduling risk rather than a remote one. Local computer retailers are the natural sponsors and usually contribute product.

Those figures are illustrative — build your own from real quotes. Whatever the total, decide early whether the event is meant to break even, subsidise the club, or be a member benefit paid for out of subs. If the LAN sits inside a campus club or society, the university clubs page covers how the rest of that year hangs together.

Running the whole night from one screen

The admin behind a LAN is unglamorous and relentless: a ticket list, a seat map, dietary notes, emergency contacts, who is under 18, who has paid, who turned up, and who is still in the building at 3am. Doing that across a spreadsheet, a payment app and a chat thread is exactly how a seat gets sold twice. ClubHelix puts events and ticketing on your own club website, with forms and surveys for BYO declarations and consent, RSVPs and attendance for the door list, and facility booking if your club also hires out the room the rest of the year.

You can have the next LAN on sale before the crates go back in the store cupboard. Start on the free tier while you find out whether it suits you, check the whole pricing page in about two minutes because there is nothing buried in it, and create your club site when you are ready — most committees get there in a single sitting.

Frequently asked questions

How much power does a LAN party need?

Estimate 350 W for each seat running a desktop and monitor, add your infrastructure and kitchen loads separately, convert the total to amps at your mains voltage, then plan to use no more than about 80% of any circuit's rating. The number that matters is how many separate circuits the room has, not how many wall sockets you can see — a hall with two dozen outlets may run them all off two or three breakers.

How do you allocate seats at a LAN party?

Draw and number the seat map before tickets go on sale, then choose one model and stick to it — attendees pick a numbered seat at checkout, groups book a block and name people later, or you allocate everyone after sales close. Take a name for every seat regardless, because you need it for door check-in, tournament registration and knowing who is still on site overnight.

What rules should attendees agree to before a LAN event?

Keep the list short and publish it with the ticket rather than at the door: one machine and one monitor per seat, a stated power ceiling per seat, one surge-protected power board with no daisy-chaining, nothing with a heating element, bring your own cables, and organisers may unplug anything unsafe. People follow rules they read before they packed the car.

Is it worth running a LAN overnight?

Only once you have run the shorter version successfully. Going past midnight adds welfare, sleep, food, door control and — if under-18s attend — supervision and screening obligations that vary by jurisdiction and must be checked with your venue and the relevant authority. A strong twelve-hour day event is better than a stretched twenty-four-hour one.

What is the most common thing that goes wrong at a LAN party?

Two things, in this order: a circuit tripping because seats were spread across sockets rather than across circuits, and a second DHCP server appearing when somebody plugs in a home router to add ports. Both are prevented in planning, both are hard to fix once eighty people are mid-match, and both are why the run sheet has a full power and network test hours before doors open.

Keep reading — how to run a university esports club covers the season around the event, and how to run a board game club tackles the same room-and-table problem without the cabling.