US Open Pool

This year the 49th US Open Pool Championship was held in Frisco, Texas for the first time, which meant moving a full production build across the Atlantic to a venue nobody had worked in before.

All of Matchroom’s scenic and production elements shipped door to door from our base in Treswell to the Embassy Suites in Frisco. We installed the feature table, carpets, LED ribbon, scenic flags, banners and other branding elements, and oversaw the overall installation, working with a local team to deliver the event to the standard its history deserves.

Team Days

The start of August brought our summer party, which gave everyone a chance to get together properly away from site, and it was good to see so many families come along.The inflatable assault course was meant for the children, but it did not take long for the adults to claim it for races of their own, where Abbie was declared the winner.🏆

Our annual Wellbeing Day followed later in the month. It started with a barbecue, which disappeared fast enough that nobody managed to photograph it, before the team moved on to Stop the Bleed training. That is a genuinely useful skill for anyone working in live event and broadcast environments, where a site can be a long way from the nearest hospital and what happens before the ambulance arrives really matters. Luke from Handelsbanken then joined us for one to one sessions, giving everyone the chance to talk through mortgages, savings, insurance or anything else on their mind.

Around the Yard

The crew have been busy around the yard this month, building and prepping kit ahead of a full month of events. Design and manufacture is all done in house, so between events the crew are usually working on something, whether that is a bespoke manufacturing piece, a repair on existing kit, or a test build.

Client Feedback

Good planning tends to go unnoticed, which is exactly the point of it, so it was a real pleasure to hear from Abi Theodosiou at Sky Sports after this year’s World Matchplay Darts.