EVENT | Barclays ATP World Tour Finals

I was very lucky to get VIP tickets to this year's edition of Barclays ATP World Tour Finals at The O2 in London. This event is called 'unofficial championships' so only the best eight single players and double teams can qualify. I had a chance to see two matches - one double (Stepanek/Paes playing Lopez/Granollers) and one single (Ferrer playing Wawrinka).

The very first thing that came to my mind after finding my seat was 'Did we actually get a separate room with sofas, tv, bar and our own waiter?!' That was something unexpected even though I knew we got those 'special' tickets. So I want to give a massive THANK YOU to the VIP clubs manager of The O2, thank you Natalia so much!

When I finally settled in, I started looking around the venue. WOW, The O2 is so big! What I loved about it, was obviously the capacity and view from the box, you could easily see everything from that place.

Especially interesting for me was to see how media operate on events like this one. On the TV, you can only see the final effect but when you actually have a chance to see it live and how do they work, you realize how many people is involved and how important for the success in teamwork.

After leaving the main arena, I headed to the fan zone to see the live studio, training courts and sponsors stools. It was really close to be able to say that what I noticed is a great crowd management, thousands of people, heading to different sites of the venue and you can still easily explore it, with no interruptions. I even started putting thoughts into sentences and how am I going to describe that and then BOOM - a huge jam, no move for 15 minutes, 'How am I going to get out of here?', 'It's getting hot'... I got out of there after 20 minutes when someone finally took care of managing the situation. There are kids there, people disabled, elderly or like me, suffering from vasovagal response. This is not only about moving quickly, it's also about health and safety, people get irritated, start pushing each other. Improving crowd management is something that The O2 should definitely put more emphasis on. Maybe engage more staff or put barriers dividing the path?

I absolutely love the initiative of Barclays Ball Kids School, it's a very smart idea for promotion, not only tennis but generally sport among school age kids especially in the age of technology and tennis (according to the statistics) being chosen by less and less young people. The kids get special training, theoretical and practical, preparing them for the tournament. Thanks to this, they get a chance to participate in something very exciting and also challenging for them.

For more info go to http://www.barclaysballkids.com/

A couple of more pictures that I took during and between matches:

In summary - good venue management, organisation and service, poor crowd management. And finally, fantastic VIP lounges! :)