Value in creating an 'All listings' sitemap?

[TheaterMania]

Hello, I work for the Theater discovery website, theatermania.com.

Users can browse current shows on a city-by-city basis, such as New York: http://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/shows/

My question is, is there any SEO benefit in us creating a single page that lists all shows (both current and non-current) across the US? My boss mentioned that this could help our long tail results, but I'm not so sure.

[TheaterMania]

Thank you for your answer. How would you envision a sitemap for show listings functioning?

[Laurean]

Like a page that lists every show in your database?  Isn't that what a sitemap is for?  Couldn't find one on your site.

Your search is already fantastic!  I can search for Lion King... and pick a city I want to see it in.  The dates aren't listed, so I don't know if I've missed the one in Boston or not... would be helpful for vacation planning.

The only benefit I see to listing all the shows on one page (with perhaps the city and dates listed) is for prompting ideas to the visitor who knows nothing about theater (like me and only know about the ones I've seen or want to see).

[IPIM]

I would say if this is providing useful information to your site visitors then yeah go for it.  If you are creating the page just to boost your long tail then im not so sure its a good idea.

Plus, the New York page seems pretty big, so wouldn't this super page be huge?  It may work if you do it by date using a lazy load feature so the load times are not horrendous.

have you seen any other sites using this tactic to much success?