Governing Bodies Back Family Sports Show
A new family sports event has launched with the backing of a number of sporting legends and national governing bodies and will take place for the first time at the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) in June 2016.
The inaugural ‘Sports Show’ has already had official signs of approval from the likes of the RFU, England Netball, Table Tennis England and Badminton England, while Sport England has also backed the event.
The event has been created to inspire children to play sport and will host tens of thousands of visitors at the Birmingham venue.
The Sports Show is the brainchild of Superskills founder Ed Rusling and rugby legends Will Greenwood and Austin Healey.
Rugby World Cup winner Will Greenwood commented: “We are very excited to announce that we already have NGB’s and Sport England on board, it’s very important to us to have the backing and support of these sporting institutions and they will be the first of many we announce.”
For the first time ever the NEC has taken a 25% stake in the event that will last for three days between 24th – 26th June. On the Friday the legends will host businesses for a competitive Sports Day, while the Saturday and Sunday will be dedicated to families.
Paul Thandi, CEO of the NEC Group, said: “We’ve made some positive changes to the way we are structured to work with our existing and new customers, and workingalongside Ed and his brilliant team is a great example of how we’ll be working with our customers in the future across all of our platforms. Sports and family experiences are already close to us,so this is something we just love doing.
“We are really looking forward to being part of this project and turning the NEC into a fantastic sporting venue over the three days of Sports Show. This is an amazing opportunity for families and kids to take part in a large number of sports all under one roof and learn from sporting heroes.”
There will be more than 25 different sports including rugby, football, netball and athletics available to try, with a number of sporting heroes – both former and current athletes – on hand to share their expertise and coaching, the event promises to be a fun day out for all the family to share.
Ed Rusling, director of the Sports Show, commented: “The Sports Show is going to be a playground of fun for kids across the country, we will be taking over most of the NEC and we plan to pack every inch with as many different sports as we can.”
Meanwhile John Probyn, former COO of Live Nation, has joined the event team this following almost 14 years delivering shows in music.
Probyn said: “I am very excited to be joining the Sports Show, it’s a challenging project but I will be part of a world class team and the opportunity to deliver something that has never been done before was just too hard to turn down.
“My time at Live Nation has been fantastic, a real challenge, where we achieved a huge amount of success, however my focus and attention is now firmly on delivery the biggest sporting event that the NEC has ever seen. I’m very eager to get cracking, June will come around awfully quickly and there’s lot of exciting things to deliver in between.”
