Leading sound, lighting and AV designers and installer’s Metropolis AV and FX has completed the design, supply and installation of an entire lighting, sound and AV system at the new Sports Café in Glasgow.

The £1.7m project has seen an empty building in Glasgow’s famous Sauchiehall Street, turn into a busy, 1600 capacity, modern sports-themed environment. The building has a colourful history;it was a local ABC cinema before being converted in the latest Sports Café Bars roll out. During the renovation, whilst digging for the service trenches, an array of animal pits were discovered which dated back to when the building was used by Hadlers Circus, complete with livestock housed in the basement.

The venue caters for sports enthusiasts and socialisers of all persuasions. Facilities include 6 bars, a dining area and a large dance floor. The venue entrance is off the street, and leads along a corridor to the reception/greeting point, followed by the horseshoe bar and seated dining area and booths. Around the corner after the first bar/dining, the venue really opens up, revealing two more bars and a large dance floor, complete with large roll down video screen. Up the stairs is the first floor Pool Lounge, complete with 16 tables and its own bar. Around the corner from there is the champagne lounge, a dedicated quieter zone of the venue for those wanting to chat and enjoy a lower level of music. Also on the first floor is the Team Room, fully self contained and hire-able for private functions.

Metropolis fitted 68 Panasonic TV screens - a mixture of 32 and 28 inch, installed throughout the venue and rest rooms, plus nine 42 inch Panasonic plasmas behind the bars. A total of eighteen 15” TFT screens were specified, 6 of which are in the dining booths allowing the diners to control the picture at their booth. Twelve screens were fitted into the rear wall of the reception desk all showing different pictures from the available 12 satellite decoders.

There is one Sanyo (SL-15 POAP) projector with smoke-proof housing installed on the dance floor, plus a Sanyo (SU31 POAP) in the Team Room on the first floor. All A.V. and satellite outputs can be patched to any screen destination via two Kramer VS-162V 16x16 Matrix Switchers, picked for their full flexibility, easy set up and maintenance.

Sound was an important area. There was lot of space to cover and considerable control was needed to minimise sound spillage between the audio zones. The zoning of the audio system allows the Team Room to be used as a separate venue with audio, video and computer connection points within the room going back to the main system. Metropolis also piped audio into the toilets via 8 JBL Control 24C’s, as no 21st century loo is complete without the very coolest and highest quality sounds! The Sports Café’s system processing is achieved via an Allen & Heath iDR-8 processor utilising the PL-8 Button control for a fire alarm interface. A Cloud Z4 Zoner divides the venue into four zones.

The brief included making the dancefloor area lighting colourful and stimulating. Metropolis also undertook staff training for all the various technical areas, which are designed to run smoothly with minimum interference.

Please see Metropolis AV & FX for more information.

Thanks to Louise Stickland for her kind permission to use the attached images.