Bono has left the stadium!
The Rola-Trac guide to surviving a visit by U2, Bon Jovi, Sir Elton, Oasis and numerous others!
Carrow Road filling up
SUMMER 2005 has proved challenging to say the least. In the last few years Rola-Trac has averaged between 8 and 10 full pitch covers for concerts and associated events since starting rental operations in 2001. The problems are similar and concerns are always the same. How do you protect a sensitive surface where sport is the core business? Then someone wants to build a 400 tonne stage on your 18 yard line that is going to need three 80 tonne cranes working on the grass to get it built! Okay, this may be an extreme but it can happen, and did, at the City of Manchester Stadium in June 2005 for the U2 Vertigo tour. Sports venues are always looking for additional revenue and large scale live music is now a common route to achieving this. Clubs can make money from promoting, ground rental and catering rights. At one end of the spectrum are the clubs commercial departments that are craving the income, and at the other end is the man who has to recover the ground sometimes within days to play the next game.
ditto the City of Manchester Stadium
Building the stage at the City of Manchester Stadium
Carrow Road ready for the punters
Most shows have been at the end of the season in May or June. This allows for reparation afterwards which is good for the ground staff, but tends to mean that shows get very congested in that period.
So what does it take to cover a pitch? To give you an idea an 8250m2
pitch would demand
some 200 man hours of labour, 4 articulated trucks of
equipment and at least a couple of all terrain forklifts. In an 8
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