LEISURE & HOSPITALITY FACILITIES


GRANDSTAND VIEWING


On the back of Britain’s tennis success this summer, Tim Wood investigates what goes into putting on the sporting spectacles at Wimbledon and the Aegon Championships.


The summer of 2013 has been the best in living memory for most British tennis fans as Andy Murray brought an end to our 77-year wait for a homegrown men’s singles champion at Wimbledon. Not only that, Murray’s triumph came on the back of him retaining the Aegon Championship title at The Queen’s Club to make sure that the Scot is hot on the heels of Novak Djokovic for the world number one slot.


Much has been made of the impact of last year’s Olympic Games on Murray’s career (he’s gone on to feature in three of the last four slams) but it’s not just the on-court action that has benefitted. While we basked in the glory of a first male champion since Fred Perry, those with a facilities head (and those not too caught up in all the tension) will have been quietly noting all the little bits that go into running both championships and making them a sporting spectacle fit for global coverage.


One of the key components to the Championships’ smooth sailing


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was the Arena Group. Arena, which delivers temporary structures for both Wimbledon and Queen’s, invested in a mammoth 45,000 temporary seats ahead of last year’s Olympics to service the 15,000-seat arena for the beach volleyball at Horse Guards Parade, amongst other competitions such as the marathon and the gymnastics at the ExCeL.


The much-vaunted ‘Olympic Legacy’ has been questioned repeatedly over the last 12 months, but Arena is one of London 2012’s success stories.


Arena spent three years developing it’s Clearview™ seating system in the lead up to London 2012 and is seeing the systems and equipment deployed at the games being used across the


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