Olympic games set to rake in the cash for Coventry
The chief executive of Coventry’s Ricoh Arena has told Insider that the 2012 Olympics could be worth between £30m and £50m to the city. Between five and 10 Olympic football matches will be held in the Midlands ground when the tournament arrives in the UK. As the arena celebrated its fifth birthday, chief executive Daniel Gidney also told Insider that Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre (NEC) did a “dreadful thing” by blaming its loss in revenue this year “specifically on an events and conference recession in the West Midlands”.
Gidney added: “It makes it sound like there was a problem with the West Midlands’ conferencing industry – and that’s certainly not what we’ve found.”
He said that the conferencing aspect of the business for the Rocoh Arena is growing 25 per cent year on year.
“We have 15,000 sq m of conference, convention and exhibition space and that flexibility and variety does help us in this market,” he said.
“We’ve just held a major blue chip convention for 2,500 people. That side of the business is definitely attracting more clients.”
Gidney also revealed that just 20 per cent of the company’s turnover is made on football match days. “I plan to get this down to 10 per cent as the events and conferencing side of the business continues to grow," he added.
The chief executive admitted the ground had found keeping attendance levels up on match days “a challenge”. He added: “We’re still in very uncertain times – business confidence has returned, but has Joe Public got lots of money in their pockets? And if they have, they are very careful about what they spend it on. Ticket sales for the matches are still going to be a struggle.”
However, the ground is still a popular destination. It held the England football under-21s semi-final last year, and held the biggest concert in the Midlands last summer when Take That took to the stage.
In 2012, the ground will host up to ten of the Olympic football games, and is the only stadium in the Midlands to do so.
“The best moment over the last five years has got to be bringing the Olympics to ground. We’re also hosting the 2015 Rugby World Cup, so to have two of the world’s biggest sporting events come to our stadium is pretty impressive," said Gidney.
And despite saying that the tournament could rake in up to £50m for Coventry, Gidney has his reservations.
“The worst thing would be is people stayed in London and just came up here on the train for the day," he said. “We’ve got some work to do with the city council to make sure as many tourists as possible come up here, but there’s no reason why we can’t become the number one spot for tourism, business and leisure.”
