Sporting arenas can be busy places, but usage is often seasonal, with summer months seeing non-stop activity from local teams practising and competing in tournaments and leagues. However, at other times of the year, footfall may be considerably less, impacting revenues and causing cashflow headaches to the management team.
The answer could lie in using automated and mobile telescopic bleacher seating to transform your sports venue into a multipurpose building: host a lively basketball game one night, an afternoon fun kids show the next day, followed by a modern take on Romeo and Juliet that evening, by modifying seating configurations and set ups quickly and with ease, in between performances.
Fold bleachers away into a compact storage position
Retractable stands can be an option at just about any location, in fact. Built-in electrical systems allow for efficient venue transitioning at gymnasiums and basketball, volleyball and handball arenas. Simply draw in or extend the stand in any number of rows, depending upon your requirements. And when entirely folding up the stand before wheeling it away, look forward to reducing the stand’s depth to a single row.
But, with all this accordion-like stacking and unfolding going on, how stable and secure is a telescopic stand at, say, a lively basketball venue regularly welcoming capacity crowds? While the traditional bleacher stand may have the reputation of being rather wobbly and precarious, the modern retractable seating system is a totally different creature.
Is the aluminium or steel under-structure compromised? Has frame strength been in any way ‘sacrificed on the altar of flexibility’ at design stage?’ Au contraire. Not if a leading company in telescopic seating has utilised their expertise, that is.
Automated stands – telescopic bleachers with integrated motors
Telescopic seating designers incorporate special mechanisms into stands: integrated motors that make forwards, backwards and even 360° turning all options. When retracting, and with zero damage to floors, one by one the stand’s tiers will draw in consecutively (from the bottom row to the top) and safely in a concertina-type fashion, until the entire stand has folded up into a sleek, slimline unit.
Where only partial retraction is required, motor operators have total control over how many rows to leave out. What’s more, after an event, once the crowd has made their way home, the room can be fully furnished again in as little as 15 minutes, ready for the following day’s fixture. Retracting and extending bleacher rows generally only requires two operatives, making it virtually effortless. It’s a quiet operation, too.
Low-ceilinged halls can still achieve required seating capacity
For excellent visibility – offering spectators a full and unobstructed view of a basketball court or other performance space – choose single row bleachers as part of a retractable seating system (which can also be curved, as an optimised visibility configuration). Each platform will have just one row of seats, which can be fixed benches or plush chairs.
Chances are that wherever you’ve seen bleachers when attending events, they will have been single row bleachers rather than double. Telescopic double rows do have their place, though, being ideal at low-ceilinged halls where two rows of seats per platform (two rows of rear-mounted, tipped forward seats) means that the required hall capacity can still be achieved, despite the restricted space. What’s more, the second staggered row behind can be raised thanks to a built-in adjustable height mechanism. And the fabulous flexibility of retractable bleachers doesn’t end there…
Individual chairs can fold away into integrated compartments
If you’d like the dual option of individual chairs and long benches, a mobile bleacher seating design team can create a bespoke solution for you – benches with mounted individual chairs that can be folded away beneath the benchtop, thanks to a specially integrated section. Again, chairs and benches can also come with padding, without costs escalating too much. You could leave some bleachers set out as bare benches, while other rows have foldaway chairs, to allow children to sit away from parents at some events.
With all this, then, venues opting for modern-day, high quality telescopic bleachers can look forward to unbeatable versatility and the opportunity for year-round revenues, matched with unyielding stand strength and rock-solid firmness, meaning that enthralled sports fans are always kept safe, no matter how boisterous they become as a tournament final atmosphere escalates to fever pitch!
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