At last, some good news for any Sydney entertainment venue that doesn’t happen to be a multi-billion-dollar casino with governmental stakeholders.​

Venues can apply for a later lockout time of 2am and last drinks of 3:30am on nights they provide live entertainment after midnight.

“Live entertainment” is classified as:

  • ​events where people are engaged to perform live or pre-recorded music, and
  • other performances where performers (or at least some of them) are present in person – for example, theatre, musicals, dance, comedy and variety performances.

Source: Tone Deaf

If you wish to apply for an exemption you can download the form here, a fact sheet here, or email Liquor and Gaming NSW for any other queries. It’ll set you back $250 to apply, which I’m sure you’ll recoup in the first ten minutes.