Affordable Ground
Improvements
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from local sponsors, clubs like Holywell Town in North Wales
and Baglan Town FC in Port Talbot, where we are currently
helping to improve the stadiums.
What has helped a lot of the clubs we work with is
the fantastic work the Football Foundation has done to
assist with funding. They do a great job in getting
the word out there about what is possible,
particularly for non-league clubs, when it
comes to stadium improvements. You
can upgrade your ground, even if
you’re on a tight budget, thanks to
their assistive grants. It’s often the
case that local companies, who
are passionate about supporting
their local football club, offer their
services to help them upgrade but
the clubs themselves don’t have
much money. What the Football
Foundation do is talk to the club
and explain the upgrades don’t have
to cost as much as perhaps expected,
with them stepping in to assist with half
of the funding.
They will recommend companies to help
them get better turnstiles, newer stands, upgrade
the pitch and improve the dressing rooms, and step in with
funding where the clubs can’t afford it themselves.
These stadium upgrades are crucial in non-league
football, where everyone has got ambitions for their club,
whatever their capacity or division. The fans who support
non-league clubs all want their club to do better and rise
through the divisions and whether you support Solihull Moors
or Manchester United you want the best for your team.
A lot of the time it depends whether local business are
able to offer financial support. There are a lot of examples of
local communities getting together with a bit of funding and a
bit of thought and taking their clubs up through the pyramid.
You’ve got sides like Crawley Town, who had an injection
of cash and went from the non league divisions and even
managed to reach League One.
Then you get clubs like Salford where suddenly the ex-
Manchester United players get involved, invested and the
club’s facilities reaped the rewards.
So how do Arena Seating get involved? There are two
parts of our business; there is the sale of equipment that can
go in permanently or semi-permanently. That can be at non-
league football grounds or, to give you another example, we
designed and built spectator seating including the new West
Stand at Bath Rugby’s Recreation Ground which has to be
‘demountable’ because of local planning regulations.
You then get one-off games where lower league clubs get
drawn at home against bigger clubs in the cup competitions.
Those clubs can rent in temporary covered or uncovered
seating, designed to fit into ground space they have available.
They put it in, play the cup tie – like Sutton drawing Arsenal
this season for example – and we can put in however many
hundreds or thousands of seats the club wants then take
them out afterwards.
The other side of the business is the supply of bespoke
and off-the-shelf products for lower league clubs and training
grounds. Our Sports Stands are an entry-level, off-the-shelf,
pre-fabricated product put into a concrete base, which I have
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often seen built by a local builder who has donated his time
to put it in.
The Premier Sports Stands tend to be bigger and usually
have to be assembled on site and are more bespoke. We can
design and build anything of any size that a club wants.
We have various projects in the pipeline where
we are designing a stadium upgrade from
scratch and it’s a much more cost-effective
approach than a traditional construction.
Working on smaller stadiums in
the non-league football scene adds
to the huge variety of work our
crews get involved in, and they
enjoy seeing the difference new
facilities can make at grassroots
level. One minute they can be
at Hungerford Town and the
next they’re helping put in the
infrastructure on a Ryder Cup Golf
Course, London Marathon Finish
Line spectator grandstands on the
Mall or installing 13,000 new seats
for showjumping spectator viewing at
the Mitsubishi Badminton Horse Trials. The
variation of work and type of event and the whole
feel of what they are doing can change day to day, week to
week. Because we do so many contracts they can go to five
different sites in a week.
It’s often the case at non league clubs that there is one
person – usually the chairman – who does the bulk of the
work with a fantastic team of volunteers behind them who are
passionate about their club.
We’ll meet with them and then try and understand what
they want to do and will the advise them as regards what we
believe is the best product from our huge range for them to
buy which will tick the boxes for them, allow them to go up a
division and be as cost-effective as possible.
We have a specialised team who focus on this type of
work and are all hugely experienced at giving that type of
advice.
Whatever the size of the club, the passion from their
supporters to see them grow and succeed is always the
same, and the clubs are looking after their supporters with
this infrastructure, to improve their matchday experience.”