Stadium Business Awards

The Stadium Business Awards are now in their 8th year, and are run by stadium industry experts for the stadium industry. They recognise and reward excellence in stadium, arena and sports venue management, raising industry standards and encouraging greater professionalism. The event is a global event, which takes place as part of the annual Stadium Business Summit, with delegates attending from all over the world. Out of the twelve award categories, ten are nominated by public votes, while the ‘Industry Supplier’ award and ‘Outstanding Achievement’ award are closed nominations.

The Stadium Business Summit is the leading information and networking event for owners, operators and developers of stadia and arenas, with a two-day conference, mini exhibition, stadium tours and networking events, as well as the awards ceremony.

In addition to the twelve Stadium Business Awards, this year two unique, special awards were ordered, which were given out to the operational teams at Emirates Old Trafford and Manchester United. These teams worked solidly for seven days to organise the One Love Manchester benefit concert, which took place in the wake of the terror attack that killed 22 people and injured more than 100 after an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena.

One Love Manchester featured a series of the UK’s most popular artists and groups playing to an audience of 50,000. Concert-goers were able to get into the venue just an hour and a half after the final whistle sounded on the Michael Carrick testimonial match, which was already scheduled to kick off earlier in the afternoon at nearby Old Trafford, which is just 800m away from the One Love concert venue. With around 70,000 football fans attending the testimonial match, and 50,000 at the sell-out One Love concert half a mile away, security and operations were obviously of paramount importance.

Xperiology, the organisers behind the Stadium Business Awards, felt that the teams who organised the One Love concert deserved special recognition for the work they put in to pulling the event together in only one week. Co-ordinating a large-scale concert is an operational challenge at the best of times, let alone a high-profile event with multiple performers taking place just half a mile away from another high-profile event on the same day, with the associated threats to security, safety considerations and transportation of everyone attending the events. Gaudio was honoured to partner with Xperiology to produce two special Judges’ Awards free of charge to recognise the teams who pulled off this amazing feat of organisation and co-ordination.

Gaudio has designed and manufactured the Stadium Business Awards for several years. This year’s Stadium Business Awards are tablet-style, made from two layers of clear and pink acrylic, with brushed and printed aluminium to the front and reverse. The clear acrylic extends beyond the aluminium to the side of the award, and this is printed vertically with the event name and year. The event logo is printed at the top of the award, with a line-drawn image of a stadium in the background stretching across the award, and the event category printed at the bottom. The Judges’ Awards were medium acrylic tablets with the same branding and logo in full colour single-sided print.

Gaudio loves producing the Stadium Business Awards as the strong event branding, and their desire to have something different every year, always makes it exciting to redesign the awards. This year though, we particularly loved the opportunity to design the two special Judges’ Awards. It always makes us feel extra proud to design awards which are so well-deserved by their recipients.

To find out how Gaudio can design awards for your events, please contact us now on 01242 232383, email sales@gaudio.co.uk or fill in the ‘contact’ form on our website and one of our project managers will get back to you.