National Exhibition Center
The National Exhibition Center ; NEC for short is a convention center in Birmingham , England .
The center is close to the M42 motorway , Birmingham Airport and Birmingham International Train Station. The facility consists of a total of 20 halls and was built on an area of 2.54 square kilometers , making it the largest convention center in the United Kingdom . Queen Elizabeth II opened the complex on February 2, 1976. The NEC is the main venue for the International Spring Fair (since 1976), Crufts (since 1991), the British International Motorshow (1978-2004) and holds other internationally known exhibitions in its Buildings. The original size of the complex was 89,000 square meters in the 1970s and 1980s . In 1989, the Queen inaugurated the NEC once again with a size of now 125,000 square meters. In 1993 the area of the complex was 158,000 square meters. The NEC campus reached 190,000 square meters in 1998. The complex is owned by the NEC Group , which also owns the Arena Birmingham and the International Convention Center Birmingham .
Resorts World Arena
The Resorts World Arena is a 15,700-seat multi-purpose hall in the National Exhibition Center Birmingham complex and is mainly used for concerts. The arena opened in 1980 as the Birmingham International Arena and was the largest multi-purpose arena in Great Britain at the time. The playing field is 94.8 meters by 51.4 meters. The arena was renovated in 2008 and expanded in 2009. However, the expansion did not refer to the audience capacity. World stars such as Eric Clapton during his Journeyman World Tour and David Bowie during his Serious Moonlight Tour have performed in the arena .
From 1983 the arena was called NEC Arena , then from 2009 LG Arena and from 2015 Genting Arena . Since 2018 it has been called Resorts World Arena .
Web links
- thenec.co.uk: NEC website (English)
- gentingarena.co.uk: website of the Genting Arena (English)