Game Hire at first direct bank arena, Leeds

Booking an arena for a corporate event means you get a room most venues can't match and a set of practical constraints most venues don't have. The bowl is fixed, tiered seating built for concerts, so the entertainment side of your day usually lives on the concourses and in the lounges rather than in the auditorium itself. Fun Pro supplies interactive games, arcade machines and photo booths into events at the arena. We don't hire out the venue; that's the arena's events team. We handle what goes in it.

We're a family-run business, based in Coventry since 2009, roughly 120 miles down the M1 from Leeds. Every booking includes delivery, staffed setup and collection.

About first direct bank arena as an Events Venue

The arena opened in 2013 on Arena Way, right in the city centre just off the A58(M) inner ring road. It's known for its "super theatre" design, where every seat faces the stage, and it holds up to 12,000 in concert mode.

For events, the figures that matter are different. The main auditorium offers around 2,250 square metres of floor space and takes banquets of 500 to 1,200. There's roughly 400 square metres of ancillary exhibition space plus an outdoor plaza, and smaller rooms scaling down to groups of 10. Leeds railway station is a short walk, Leeds Bradford Airport is 7.5 miles away, and there are over 7,500 parking spaces within a 15-minute walk, though the arena has no car park of its own.

Spaces at the Arena and the Games That Suit Them

The Main Auditorium

Cleared and dressed, the auditorium becomes a large flat-floor space for exhibitions, conventions and awards dinners, with the stage available as a feature. At this scale you want games that read from a distance and hold a queue. Grab A Grand, the Prize Crane and Batak Pro all earn their spot on a floor this size, particularly for exhibitions where you're competing with everything else in the room.

The Black & White Lounge

The Black & White Lounge is a standalone 400 square metre space with its own character, used for conferences, drinks receptions, networking evenings and as an after-show space alongside larger events. It's the room where games tend to make the most difference, because it's where people stand around with a drink rather than sit facing a stage. Arcade machines, a photo booth or a Prize Wheel all suit that setting. Worth noting that the arena's own materials quote this room at both 10 to 100 and 40 to 300 people in different places, so confirm the working figure with their team when you book.

The Concourses

The Level 1 and Level 2 concourses run around the bowl and are used for registration, catering and exhibition stands during conferences. They're circulation spaces, which makes them the natural home for entertainment: everyone passes through them between sessions, whether they intend to or not. Because they're corridors rather than rooms, footprint matters more than usual. Compact upright games like the Batak Lite, Plinko or Crack the Code fit without narrowing the walkway, which matters for crowd flow and for the venue's own safety requirements.

The Mixer

The Mixer is the arena's small breakout space, taking 10 to 40 people, used for meetings, team sessions and presentations. It's too small for most of our equipment. If you're running breakouts here, put the games on the adjacent concourse instead and let people find them on their way past.

What Fun Pro Handles, and What We Don't

What we handle:

• Bringing the games to the arena on your event date and siting them where you need them
• Setting up, testing and safety-checking before attendees arrive
• Running the games through the event with our own staff on site
• Collecting everything at the agreed time

What we don't handle:

• Venue hire, space allocation or floor plans, which the arena's events team manages
• Catering, bar, AV, staging or production
• Stewarding, security or crowd management
• Parking arrangements for your attendees

Planning Entertainment for an Arena Event

City-centre arenas run tighter logistics than most venues, and it's worth respecting that early. The arena has no parking of its own, so vehicle access for setup goes through their service arrangements and needs booking in with the events team rather than assumed. Give us your load-in window as soon as you have it and we'll build around it.

The second thing to sort is walkway widths on the concourses. Anything that narrows a circulation route around a bowl this size will get flagged, so we plan positioning with that in mind from the start and keep our footprint honest.

On timing, arenas run to fixed schedules. If there's a show in the building on either side of your event, your access windows will be firm rather than flexible, and the events team will tell you exactly what you've got.

Lead times are four to six weeks for busy periods, or around two weeks for simpler bookings. Branded games need longer, as we handle design and print ourselves.

The venue has level floor access throughout, which makes it a straightforward site for a mixed group. It's still worth picking a range of games so that people who don't fancy something competitive have an option too.

Getting Games Delivered to First Direct Bank Arena

We're based in Coventry, around 120 miles up the M1. Delivery, setup and collection are included in the quote rather than added afterwards.

On the day, our team coordinates arrival and access with the arena based on your space and schedule. Because this is a city-centre site with a managed service area, we allow more time than we would at a venue with an open loading yard, and we'd rather be early than hold up your build.

You can read about our PAT testing and public liability cover on the safety and insurance page, which the arena will ask for as part of supplier sign-off.

Got a date at the arena? Get in touch with your space and timings and we'll talk through what works.