Why radius models mislead
- Travel time is not distance. Ten kilometres of motorway and ten kilometres through a city centre are different things.
- Barriers cut the circle. Rivers, rail lines and borders truncate catchments sharply.
- Competition truncates it. A catchment ends where a competitor becomes the closer option.
- Attractiveness stretches it. People travel further for a stadium or a flagship store than for a convenience shop.
Better definitions
- Drive-time isochrones: the area reachable within 10, 20 or 30 minutes. The standard improvement over a radius.
- Observed origin: where visitors actually came from.
- Competition-adjusted (gravity) models: demand allocated between locations by attractiveness and distance.
- Primary and secondary zones: separating the area that supplies most visits from the wider one that supplies occasional ones.
A common convention: the primary catchment holds roughly 60–70% of visitors, the secondary extends to about 85–90%. The rest is a long tail no boundary captures usefully.
What audience data adds
The shape of a catchment tells you how many people are inside it, not whether they are the right ones. Two sites with catchments of the same size and demographics can differ clearly in demand for a specific brand or category. Audience data adds the composition inside the catchment, brand-specific concentration, and a comparison between candidate sites on the audience that matters rather than on headcount.
The same logic applies to venues and events: a club’s audience around its home city, the realistic draw of a tour date, and how interest falls away with distance from a venue.
Common mistakes
- Drawing one circle. Use travel time and separate primary and secondary zones.
- Counting heads only. Equal headcount does not mean equal demand for your brand.
- Ignoring competitors. The nearest alternative sets the edge of the catchment.
How Rascasse uses it
Rascasse shows the audience for a brand, club, artist or category by region, city and down to postal code where available, so the composition of a catchment can be compared between candidate sites, venues or tour cities.
Related use cases: Location Planning, Event & Venue Programming, Tour Planning.