Cheltenham Festival
In what is proving to be an incredibly busy year for the Arena Group , the multi-service event supplier celebrated its 35th year of working with The Jockey Club on the Cheltenham Festival this month . Access went along for the ride
Having been onsite for four months at the Cheltenham Racecourse , assembling the longest triple deck hospitality event rental structure in Europe , the onslaught of storm Eunice in February was hardly what the Arena Events Group team needed or deserved , but by drawing on decades of experience its structures and staff came through unscathed .
“ We have 16,000 square metres of temporary infrastructure at Cheltenham , it ’ s a huge operation with between 40 and 60 members of staff onsite every day since November ,” says Arena Events Group CEO UK & Europe Tom Evans . “ The storm was one of the biggest to hit the UK for years . We had to batten down the hatches and get everyone off site for two days but when it was over we didn ’ t have any damage at all .”
Evans has worked for the Arena Events Group since 2013 , across Asia and the Middle East before returning to the UK mid-pandemic in 2020 . Along the way he has been involved in numerous largescale events , including the Saudi International golf tournament and the Anthony Joshua fight in Riyadh in 2019 – for which Arena
Arena ’ s 185 metre triple deck hospitality structure
designed and installed the 15,000- seat Diriyah Arena and hospitality structure .
In the UK alone this year Evans certainly has his hands full . Along with the Cheltenham Festival , Arena will work on three other Jockey Club Projects ; the Grand National , Epsom Derby and Newmarket . Among the other landmark projects in the pipeline are the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and the 150th Open at St Andrews – which he says will be the largest yet .
Back at Cheltenham , one of the world ’ s best-known and regarded racecourses , the strength and diversity of the Arena Events Group offering is on full display . The work of its seating , structures , scaffolding , interiors and furniture divisions have come together with stunning results .
Along with the triple deck Jockey Club VIP area , which is 185 metres long , Arena has also created the two-story Guinness Pavilion and supplied grandstand seating
PHOTOS : Graham Brown
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