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Rugby World Cup Sets New Standards for Corporate Hospitality
The Rugby World Cup 2007 saw Rugby Travel and Hospitality '07 Ltd (RTH07), the official travel and corporate hospitality programme for the event, seriously raise the hospitality bar with an offering that marked a new generation in luxury, technology and scale.
Exhibition and live event company, Colour Coordinate was appointed to design, produce and manage the project for RTH’07 and the International Rugby Board (IRB). In turn, project director Geoff Wakefield appointed Essential Lighting and Pin Point to supply and manage the lighting and audio-visual elements, designed to immerse guests in a complete rugby experience.
Almost a year of planning culminated in a total of 58 hospitality areas around France and the UK, which catered for more than 110,000 guests over the tournament’s eight week period, with 20,000 attending the October 20th final alone.
Six hospitality suites were situated in Paris alone with Platinum, the largest and most prestigious, featuring a landscaped courtyard with outdoor aerial effects, including the new BigLite searchlights, from Essential and a large Unitek LED screen displaying pre-recorded footage of the tournament, supplied by Creative Technology (CT), with sister company Dimension Audio providing sound requirements, overall management of which was in the hands of Pin Point’s Mick Jones.
Lighting throughout was designed by Jon Bromley for Essential, who’s mood lighting for the reception area carefully integrated with video elements and the centerpiece, a giant sculpture of a rugby ball, keeping true to Colour Coordinate designer Sue Hague’s vision.
“The ball, measuring 4.5 x 3m, was covered in more than 2,000 Barco OLite612 LED tiles with video content from the tournament seamlessly playing across its surface,” explains CT’s project director Scott Burges. “It took around six weeks to engineer, one and-a-half weeks to program and about three days to reconstruct on site.”
Beyond reception, ‘The Experience Tunnel’ featured 10m x 2m rear projection screens situated on either side of the tunnel, designed to make guests feel they were part of the pre-match dressing room build-up.
The far end of the tunnel opened to reveal The Atrium, a brightly lit central space leading to ten 300-seat restaurants. Amusement areas were positioned along its sides, continuing the pre-match atmosphere and allowing guests to play a rugby video game, have their ‘team’ photos taken, view memorabilia or try their skills at an interactive ‘Kick the Ball’ game.
A 75m hi-resolution vinyl graphic showing iconic images from each of the competing nations was suspended along the centre of The Atrium’s curved ceiling. Above, the majority of The Atrium was covered in a curved white casement. “We created representations of all the competing nations flags using Colour Kinetics ColourBlaze battens, fixing mainly on the two competing nations at any particular fixture,” explains Bromley. “As a background we used subtle wipes of the green and blue colours of the IRB creating a dynamic and constantly evolving mood throughout. The lighting in the restaurants was a contrast, being subtle and designed to create an exclusive, comfortable atmosphere.”
Outside Paris, many of the group games were held around France and several in the UK. “The logistics of transporting all this around France, where there are no direct routes from one location to the next, were phenomenal,” said Geoff Wakefield, “On any one day there could be three games in different locations and the following day four more games, all in different locations again.
“The key to the completion of the project was based on how all of the crews worked together and with the support of our logistics department each team was able to concentrate on the job in hand despite the intensity of the schedule. The result, a resounding success for all involved.
Mick Jones concludes: “The quality of the equipment, detailed planning and dedication of crew were a perfect match, helping us to deliver a premium service for a platinum event.”
5th December 2007
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