Sport Outdoor Sound in the UK - what's the 'ecosystem'?

[Technomad LLC]

Hi Blue-Room Folks -

 

Karl from Technomad LLC here. We discovered Blue-Room from some B-R links over to our website, and thought the forum was interesting. We're trying to get a handle on how pro-audio works in the UK, and how it's different than the US (mods, if this post should go somewhere else, please let me know).

 

We've sold outdoor audio products for years to the US 'sports audio market' - in large part, to high-school (2ndary education) and college Athletic Departments. We stir up interest in our products with the end users, then they approach our local dealers to actually source the equipment.

 

We're learning that the UK outdoor audio scene is wildly different. Councils? After school sporting clubs? Independent football organizations? All the players (pun indadvertently intended) are different.

 

If anyone feels like sharing some info with your friendly Septic friends over here, we'd be much obliged. We'd like to develop a bigger presence in the UK, and want to avoid clueless mistakes! :P

 

 

So... what's the audio-for-sports world like in the UK?

 

Thanks,

 

Karl

http://www.technomad.com/

[paulears]

Hi Karl - I can only comment from personal experience and my work with schools in the performing arts area, but maybe they will help. UK education is under-funded and under-appreciated and has been 'tinkered' with regularly. It's VERY different from the US practice.

 

State schools - which make up the majority of our schools, rather than the private fee paying schools, confusingly often described as 'public' schools, get their funding either direct from the Government or through the local councils. Probably best to think of these as your states, rather than the small community counties you have. Each County over here, Suffolk, in my case have a County Council - and the old system put them in charge of education policy and funding - the individual schools getting funding roughly based on their catchment area and student numbers. The Government decided to interfere and set up an option for schools to become 'Academies' - usually with some kind of minor specialism. So you get Sports Academies, Science Academies, Performing Arts Academies. Each cutting out the links with the County - but oddly, sometimes buying in their services - as in grass - which might simply be too complex and machinery/staff intensive to manage themselves, where as the County already have the staff and kit to do it locally!

 

Traditionally, school was 5-16 with what was called 6th form covering 16-18. Colleges were 16 to 20ish - depending on the course, and university 18+

 

This too is messed up a little now. Some schools call themselves colleges, and some colleges offer full degrees - as well as taking in 14 year olds on release from local schools for specialist education the schools are not resourced for.

 

Make sense so far?

 

One comment complaint on the new Academy system is that not every school covers all subjects. So the Sports Academies will be the ones you should make top of the list, because the others might not do what you would call sport at all!

 

Even in the Sports Academies, proper outside areas with permanent or even temporary seating are quite rare. Indoor facilities are more common - but frankly, our weather means hot summer days might well be limited to 6 weeks in the summer - exactly the same time the schools are on holiday! The rest of the year things are wet, cold and damp almost everywhere. I suspect this is the main reason outside facilities are limited. A big piece of grass is the most common - you might find a few old cricket practice nets mouldering in a corner, and perhaps in some a long jump and maybe high jump area probably from the seventies. Sports Academies got a big injection of funding to provide facilities, but outside expenditure is minimal because of the environment. All weather facilities are very rare. I live on the border between two counties - Norfolk being two miles away, and I can't think of any school or college who have any proper outdoor facilities at all - there's a big indoor one near me, but not a lot.

 

What you could do, is use Google maps to have a look at schools you find in your research - Google Sports Academies and then you can see the grass. Compared to your system, I suspect you may be surprised how low on the importance scale, we here put sport. Public amenity wise, proper football, not the start/stop football you have over there (sorry!) is still common - cricket is too in the summer when football stops - but the other big grass sports such as Rugby, Hockey etc are rarer.

 

When you google, you might even spot rounders pitches. They look like baseball diamonds, get played with shorter bats and by girls. Google might reveal 400m running tracks - but these are mostly white line marked and get laid down for the spring and early summer period - a few Sports Academies have proper cinder ones, but they are very rare.

 

I hope this helps a bit.

[Junior8]

If you're thinking of say floodlit outdoor pitches with tiered seating etc. with games attended by mases of student supporters and cheerleaders/bands etc. forget it. Student sport in the UK by and large isn't like that no matter what level you can think of. Even inter-school matches take place with only a hardy knot of die-hard spectators gathered near the pitch - and they can talk to each other without the need for a Public Address System. If one is needed they will simply drag out the 100v line set up purchased by the Parents Association in 1958. Mind you my own recollections of school sport make me think it could only be improved by the presence of the likes of Kirsten Dunst in Cheerleader Kit - but Paul's right. Our schools are closed for the few weeks when it might work.

[kerry davies]

Hi Karl and welcome.

It seems that you have done the first step with an EU base and sought some dealership/distribution partners which is a good way forward. There is a move by the present UK government taking funding away from specialist schools and specialist sports schools in particular. The market is also somewhat different from the US in that there is less of an 'audience' at school/college sport here (plus the bloody weather, as Paul says) with equally less demand for PA. Check out http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/specialistschools/ for a list of 3,000 of them anyway. The larger soccer and sporting stadia have fixed installs often specified by acoustic consultants because of neighbourhood noise problems, such as; http://www.amsacoustics.co.uk/Clients.asp

 

At a wild guess I would think that temporary/portable systems may well be the best way into the EU market and, again, distributors with a buy-in to your equipment would be necessary. Networks here work on several levels and there is a topic; http://www.blue-room.org.uk/index.php?show...=43900&st=0 which goes into dealer/distributor/manufacturers agent stuff but I would assume you know all of this already.

 

Events demanding PA are fewer therefore hire is, I think, more cost-effective than purchase and hire competition is pretty hot. Trade shows play a big part and facilities shows might be best for install work with technical and event shows better for temporary equipment marketing. Don't forget the trade mags if seeking dealer partners and try crowd management as an area to explore. http://www.crowdsafetymanagement.co.uk/

 

Note that BR is primarily a technical theatre forum which has been infiltrated by outdoor guys like me, though the PA hire guys do read and post here often. Take a trawl through posts in 'Sound' and see what you think BR members can do for you ....and, of course, vice versa!

[Jivemaster]

Many times a school will have basic sports facilities, but will have neighbours so close that noise nuisance is a problem.

 

Decent weather is usually reserved for exam weeks and the summer vacation.

[Stan Hope-Streeter]

With the UK about to be hit by the biggest Austerity regime since the 1940's, this is not a good time to be trying to sell to schools and Universities. Especially with a top of the market professional product, at a time when "cheapness" is more in favour than "long-term value". And as has been pointed out, these institutions don't host bigtime sports shows like you have in the States.

 

-------------

 

The major Athletics events in this country are serviced by the usual audio hire companies - RG Jones seems to do quite a few of them.

 

There are a couple of smaller companies that provide audio for the new (noisy) style cricket matches and similar events. Given our unpredictable climate they need waterproof speakers capable of full range music playback and it would be nice if they blended in with the scenery.

 

You could try the theme park installers too. I've seen a few places that were equipped with those Bose plastic dustbin things (and wished they had gone to you instead)

 

Best of luck...

[ojc123]

FWIW I looked at your website and thought "I couldn't dream of getting that kit for Sport or any other outdoor application." There is no need. For instance, our girls Rugby League Team won the National Cup recently and there were a handful of people at the Final. That's the way it is. Some public (private) schools might be able to justify it and perhaps a very few state schools but I can't see a big market.

 

I can't comment on the US/UK difference because I know nothing of the US and only a little about my local UK area.

[Technomad LLC]

Hi BA People!

 

Thanks VERY much for all of the useful replies. I really appreciate the insights.

 

@ Paul and Kerry, the Sports and (maybe) Music Academy schools seem like worthwhile outreach candidates. Thanks for that idea and background.

Being a niche manufacturer, we're quite OK with the ready-fire-aim approach, as long as we learn something with each attempt.

Kerry, re BA being a bit more of a theater hang-out, is there another good forum to chat with the install / sound world?

 

@ Stan - yes, the theme park installers are our friends in the US (and surprisingly in Asia as well). We'll see if we can connect with the UK installers too.

 

Thanks again, everyone, see you around on the board!

 

 

-= Karl

 

 

A concurrent post has been automatically merged from this point on.

 

Oh, a followup question -

 

I've heard that in some countries, youth sports are handled by private 'sporting clubs' vs as part of the actual state-sponsored school - so a kid in Germany might go to an after-school program at a sporting club where he'd play football. Is there an equivalent to this practice in the UK?

 

I was also curious as to private football clubs - not the Man U scale operations, but the smaller regional or local groups. We figure they might have the need for portable game-day audio systems, training systems, etc.

 

From all of your feedback it seems the way to go is to promote the indoor/outdoor, multi-purpose functionality of our turnkey PA systems, vs really emphasizing their usefulness for stadiums...

[smalljoshua]

I don't know about nationally, but locally, there is an Active8 scheme which runs various sports clubs out of school grounds. There may be similar schemes on a larger scale.

 

Josh

[Simon Lewis]

Hi, Karl,

 

The larger football clubs are subject to fairly stringent standards for public address systems (c.f. the Taylor Report), covering such areas as intelligibility, zoning, overide facilities, fire warning (i.e. voice alarm) stand by power, fault monitoring inspection and testing. It is not unusual to see Community, Renkus Heinz etc. being used here.

 

Smaller, less cash rich clubs where standards are not required to be so rigorous may well depend upon large horns & 100V compression drivers or even re-entrant devices for the more lowly clubs.

 

With regards to training etc., my inlaws have a championship (one level down from the top flight) training ground near them, and the coaches simply shout ;-)

 

Simon

[Andrew C]

Some public (private) schools might be able to justify it

Not this one, and we're the top (academic, but not in size or cash terms) school in the country. You'd need to be looking at very sporty schools, or very rich ones, even amongst the public schools.

 

We occasionally host a local marathon and that is the ONLY event that PA is used for, and it is hired in by the local amateur athletic club. Re-entrant horns, and it is truly nasty.