Major new order for NEC Arena

Audience Systems has secured a major contract to equip one of the UK's best-known venues, the LG Arena at the National Exhibition Centre, with retractable seating platforms.

The order, totalling almost £1m, follows months of preliminary work by the Sales and Engineering departments, collaborating with the client to find the best possible layout - and boosts Audience Systems’ already healthy order book for 2009-10.

The LG Arena is currently equipped with fixed, tiered seating around the edge, and removable seating on the flat floor. The new solution, with a flexible layout of 14,000 seats, is part of a refurbishment which will bring the Arena right up to date – enabling it to continue to compete for major music concerts and events such as WWE Smackdown and Strictly Come Dancing Live.

Around the edge of the arena, the front seven rows will become retractable – with some retractable sections able to be completely removed from the arena to create extra “vomitory” entrances for performers. This will give the arena the flexibility to host spectacles such as the forthcoming Horse of the Year Show.

At the South end of the arena, Audience Systems will be installing a massive 37-row bank of retractable seating platforms. This will be a “double row” system, with two rows of seating on each platform, which has been especially engineered to allow the arena to achieve maximum seating capacity in a limited height space. The introduction of a rake will greatly improve sightlines for spectators towards the back of the arena, who would have previously been seated on the arena floor. 

The arena will become the latest in Audience Systems’ impressive portfolio of arena clients, which includes the O2, Wembley, Liverpool Echo and Manchester MEN Arenas in the UK, Colorline Arena in Germany, Arena Riga in Latvia and the Westpac Centre in New Zealand to name just a few.