Arena Seating improve the view for hockey fans

In the hubbub surrounding Wembley Stadium, the 2012 Olympics and the start of the football season, the mainstream sports fan may have overlooked the fact that a leading international sporting tournament took place in the UK this August. The EuroHockey Nations Championship was the highest profile hockey tournament to be staged in this country for 20 years – since the men’s World Cup in London in 1986, in fact. With the top three men’s and women’s teams gaining automatic entry to the 2008 Beijing Olympics the stakes were high and demand for seats amongst spectators was hot.

Hosted by England Hockey, the national governing board for the sport, the event saw the installation of a temporary mini-arena at the official venue, Manchester’s Belle Vue Hockey Centre. Seating specialists Arena Seating were a natural choice for the organisers when it came to supplying the infrastructure.

The company installed 4,000 seats, some of them covered, plus wheelchair areas, some 20 press positions for journalists and commentators, camera platforms and a video viewing platform for the competitors themselves.

“It wasn’t a standard project,” says Arena Seating’s project manager, Tony Sainsbury. “We were building on banks, around lighting pillars and the water canon that they use to water the pitches. We were the first supplier on site and started about 10 days before the event. This gave them time to mount all the branding and advertising. The install went well and the client was really pleased.”