Hull Kingston Rovers have announce a new project called ‘Craven Streat’ which is intended to transform the matchday experience for the club’s supporters.
Offering live stage entertainment, a marquee with bars, local independent street food and big screen in a relaxed ‘festival’ atmosphere, the club hopes that it can attract supporters to spend more time at its stadium on match days.
The name of the new food and drink fans village, Craven Streat, is based on the name of Hull KR’s first East Hull based stadium, Craven Street which it departed almost 100 years ago.
Rovers Chief Executive Paul Lakin hopes that the concept will revolutionise the matchday experience.
“We are delighted to bring something new and exciting to the city and the sport,” said Lakin.
“Our vision is for gamedays to be a whole day or evening out and about so much more than just 80 minutes of rugby.
“First and foremost, we are excited about the return of supporters to Hull College Craven Park in May, but have been working on this concept for some time in the background, and it has always been our intention to launch this as soon as covid restrictions were lifted.
“Whilst in North America pre-match carnival atmospheres are commonplace, we feel like we are offering something not only unique to the region in terms of a pitch side event space, but to Super League as a whole.
“We are confident we can create a real family friendly party atmosphere around the stadium where fans want to spend the whole day with us. It provides so many opportunities for us to focus our efforts into creating one special area with lots going on, rather than this being watered down across various bars within the stadium. Offering there will be a quality choice of food rather than the usual burger and pie. We get five home games in 2021 to really test the concept, with a view of growing it to become even bigger and better over time.
“We see it as a key part of attracting new fans to the stadium in the medium to long term and the space will provide a unique backdrop for a whole array of non-matchday opportunities. Private hire including weddings, Winter Wonderlands, live bands in the summer and barbecues.”
Lakin is hoping that local businesses will want to get involved.
“It’s really exciting to offer local street food vendors the opportunity to showcase their offerings to our supporters,” he added.
“Our supporters are going to really enjoy the variety of different cuisines on game day. We invite them to come forward and apply to get involved. We know our supporters are going to love tasting all the flavours of the world that they’ll serve up each gameday.”
The recently announced temporary South Stand and East Stand extension, which will be installed to increase the short-term capacity of the stadium whilst social distancing measures are in place, will be removed, with Craven Streat set to open for the visit of the Warrington Wolves in July. The space will be a focal point of all gameday entertainment moving forwards. Additionally, the area will be available for private bookings and special events.