Radio hire for events

There is no doubt that the events industry – especially in an age in which music-streaming services have shifted the music industry’s focus to live gigs and people thirst to see their idols in person – is big business; as illustrated by the way that tickets for next year’s Glastonbury sold out in a mere 34 minutes. It is also growing fast, according to Steve Luscombe, director at DCRS: “Over the last few years we’ve seen the event and exhibition industry grow, and the events are more frequent and getting larger. New festivals [frequently pop up] and are well attended by the public.”

Given that the success of an event hinges on perfect and seamless co-ordination between many people (who are often scattered across a large venue) and the need to ensure the safety and security of attendees, two-way radios are an essential tool.

With this and the increasingly busy event season in mind, when is best to start thinking about hiring radios for your event? “Most people start to think about this towards the back end of the [year prior to their event] or certainly the January/February of the year of the event,” says Matt Bostock, project manager at Roadphone NRB. “We’re already starting to plan our purchasing for summer 2020 for our hire fleet and making sure that we’ve got enough stock. The earlier the better is always what we say, but generally once March comes round then we really need to have dates in place, [as we need to make] sure that we have stock reserved for all of the key events that take up a large proportion of our [inventory].”