The Event Control Room

Event Control Room, March 2024

When Badminton England accepted me as a volunteer at the Yonex All-England Open badminton tournament in the Event Control Room, very little further information was given about what the role would entail. I think the application process made it sound a bit like my role in the Radio Room at the Warwick Folk Festival, and that's pretty much what it turned out to be.

The event was on about the same scale as the Folk Festival but lasted a week instead of just a weekend. There were similar volunteer teams overseeing liaison, comms, transport, stewarding and management, but with elite athletes from around the world and their managers looked after by the Field of Play and Team Liaison team rather than musicians and their instruments looked after by Artist Reception and Venue Management. The event is celebrating its 125th year and more than thirty years with the same sponsor in the same venue, and at the induction meeting on Monday evening it transpired that there are people who have been volunteering at this event for fifty years. Fifty years! It's a good sign that they want to keep coming back.

It turned out to be a delightful experience. As expected, the Event Control Room (ECR) was deep in the bowels of what used to be the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham, subsequently known as the Birmingham O2, Barclaycard Arena and now the Utilita Arena. The arena usually hosts large concerts, and in fact I went to see a band playing there a few years ago. 

At the induction meeting before the tournament started I met the team leader, who gave me a backstage tour of all the key areas it would be useful to know about. I have a terrible sense of direction but a very good memory, so I ended up knowing about all sorts of interesting locations but not having a clue how to get to them. It was quite a triumph to actually locate the ECR when I came back the next day for my first shift.

There were just four of us on the ECR roster to cover the whole thing, and then one dropped out. I was a little concerned that this didn't seem to be very many for such a big event, but in fact it would be possible to run with just two people if we had to. Our job entails listening in to all the radio traffic and acting on some of it, mainly in passing messages between the event team managing the badminton and the venue team managing the arena. We check whether everyone is ready for the doors to be opened, and field queries from any team, from finding where a delivery of flowers needs to go to checking how many rows of seats need to be reserved for the royal visit. For there was a royal visit - the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh (Edward and Sophie, for those like me who are somewhat behind with all the current titles). Apparently they are 'badminton people', according to the Badminton England team, and they stayed for a good chunk of the day.

Most of the time it is quiet in the ECR, and the IT guys set up a couple of screens so we could watch the on-court play and the practice areas downstairs - there are seven practice courts in the basement as well as lots of facilities for the players (gym, lounge, physio areas etc.), and two courts for final warm up on the same level as the show courts. 

When it is not quiet in the ECR it can be a little frenetic, especially when more than one call comes in at a time or when someone with sub-optimal radio skills and a particularly difficult accent is trying to pass on a message or ask a question. It became very tense on Saturday when there was a morning and an afternoon session scheduled, separately ticketed, and the arena was supposed to be emptied in between. The games in the first session ran on so long that by the time everyone was supposed to be outside there was still one more game to be played. What made it particularly stressful is that broadcast schedules are notoriously inflexible, and it was looking as though the last game would still be on court when the first game of the afternoon session was due to start. People for the afternoon session had started to arrive with the expectation that doors would be open, but because the morning session hadn't yet finished they were kept waiting outside. It was all right in the end, but it was probably the most difficult situation that arose all week.

It's really interesting to see how this type of event runs, and we tend to get all sorts of visitors - the CEO and directors of Badminton England and the tournament itself, the head Referee, the Logistics team, the Stewards, the Volunteer Manager, all of whom come with interesting stories to tell. We had some lengthy discussions about how the Prayer area (created for those celebrating Ramadan) could be kept as quiet as possible in a very noisy venue. One of the most interesting visitors to the ECR was one of the Referees, who described some particularly difficult incidents to do with umpiring, interspersed with some of his personal views on the players. 

Our team leader was also the Health and Safety contractor, and he knew the event well and could probably have done the ECR job alone if everything had gone very wrong. Of the other two volunteers, one had been around badminton for many years, as an umpire and line judge when he travelled internationally, and then in many volunteer roles at this event and others. Some of his anecdotes were well worth listening to. The other volunteer was a medical student who has had to have a break from her studies, and previously was a promising player in the English national juniors before a knee injury took her out of competition. She knew quite a few of the current squad and also had juicy stories to tell.

But all the visitors to the ECR have been universally lovely, whether employed by Badminton England or a contractor or a volunteer. I had learned enough about the job by day 4 to be left on my own at a quiet time while the team leader was at a meeting; luckily I had nothing to deal with beyond a hotel key card being found in one of the practice areas. I was also treated very kindly by the head of Hospitality (quite a senior personage) when it turned out that the pair of free tickets I had been given in return for my volunteering were in a position where the view of play was completely obscured. For my own part I could have found somewhere else, but I had two different friends from my two badminton clubs using the tickets and I thought they deserved a better experience - the head of Hospitality agreed and went to some lengths to find better seats for me.

It was a very time-consuming job, and lots of my jobs at home were neglected for a week, but I enjoyed it immensely and would definitely do it again next year (if they'll have me).