Amadeus darts

Held at the Barclaycard Arena in Birmingham on 27th April, final figures show revenue reached over £119,000 at the popular event which saw the world’s top darts stars return to the 15,800 capacity Arena for round 13 of the 2017 tournament. With over 32,500 individual items sold, F&B sales increased by 10% in comparison to the 2016 tournament, also held at the Barclaycard Arena.

Increased speed of sale across the venue and a bespoke product offering tailored to the visitor profile are credited with the surge in spend – Amstel was the most popular product on sale with over 6,000 pints pulled during the evening.

Nick Cole, Amadeus General Manager at the Barclaycard Arena, said: “The Barclaycard Arena has a varied and diverse event programme so customer numbers and profiles differ for each and every event. After each event we analyse customer purchasing patterns to understand what F&B products were popular helping us to make informed decisions that benefit the customer experience at future events.

“After catering for the darts tournament for over 10 years, we knew what worked well and what we needed to change – for example, the popularity of beer at the 2016 event led us to employ mobile ‘beer bugs’ in addition to our static bars this year to ensure we met increased customer demand.”

The venue’s hospitality business, Amplify, also catered for nearly 300 covers as part of its ‘Freestyle’ VIP package comprising of complimentary drinks vouchers and a two-course dining experience.  

Sally Walder, Amplify General Manager added: “Birmingham is known as the curry capital of the UK, so we wanted to treat our guests to some traditional flavours of the region.  Starters of lamb and vegetable samosas, spinach pakora and onion bhaji were served, followed by various curry options including paneer saag and jeera spiced cod tail, to set off what was a fantastic evening of darts.”