Sterling Event Group

You can hand one Manchester team the sound, lighting, screens, staging, rigging and power for your event, or just hire the kit and run it yourself. Sterling Event Group says it owns and maintains its own equipment, has more than 130 in-house specialists and runs 24/7 support for its venue partners. It started in 1999 as Sterling Sound, a PA hire business set up by managing director Richard Bowden, and now works from a head office by Manchester Airport, with a second office in Leeds.

Services

You choose how much of the job to hand over. Sterling offers three ways to work with it.

• Full service production. Technical design, equipment, logistics and on-site crew, from concept to the live show.
• Equipment hire. Dry hire with an online quote basket. The hire catalogue lists around 400 audio items, 275 scenic items, 179 lighting items, 166 rigging items and 102 vision items, plus staging, drape, power, networking and special effects.
• Venue partnership. In-house or preferred-supplier technical services for venues, with a dedicated venue support team.

Its specialist departments are audio, lighting, vision (LED walls, projection and digital signage), scenic and décor, rigging (with load calculations done in house), temporary power (from venue supply or generators) and creative, which covers event design, content and in-house video filming and editing. It also runs Sterling Studio for virtual and hybrid events.

Sectors and clients

If your event is a conference, awards dinner or staff celebration, Sterling’s case studies show it has done the same kind of job before. Its portfolio is split into corporate events, VIP private events (weddings and bar mitzvahs), sports, theatre and live shows, and virtual and hybrid. Named clients include NHS Confederation, JD Sports, The Fragrance Shop, the British Security Industry Association and the Conservative Party. It lists 35 venue partners, mostly in Manchester, Leeds and York, among them Manchester Central, Emirates Old Trafford and The Midland.

Recent work

• NHS ConfedExpo 2025. At Manchester Central, Sterling produced three parallel plenaries, nine workshops and eight learning theatres it designed and built in the exhibition hall. Its spec lists 21 stages with step-free ramps, hearing loops and live captioning, and 280 set panels made in its own workshop.
• Conservative Party Conference 2025. It handled AV for the fringe programme across about 40 rooms at Manchester Central and The Midland. It reports about 350 sessions over four days, run by a team of 70.
• JD UP! 2026. JD Sports’ careers event filled Central Hall at Manchester Central. Sterling built a 32ft circular stage in the round, a 9.5m by 3m LED screen and a truss-framed exhibition area.
• The Fragrance Shop National Conference and Awards. Sterling says it has worked with this client for over a decade. At Kimpton Clocktower Hotel it supplied 22 LED poster screens for wayfinding, live streaming of the keynotes and an awards dinner show.

Company

The company behind the trading name is Sterling Event Group Limited (Companies House 06877734, incorporated 15 April 2009). Its registered office is its head office at ICON 4, 3 Sunbank Lane, Manchester Airport, WA15 0AF, a new building that the company says is rated BREEAM Very Good. The Leeds office is at Millshaw Park Avenue, and it gives a London phone number. Sterling lists ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001, SafeContractor approval, PLASA membership, IOSH and FFAIR recommended supplier status. It publishes a 2025/26 Carbon Reduction Plan and says it sends no waste to landfill and uses electric vehicles for smaller deliveries.

What to ask before you appoint them

• If your venue is one of its 35 partners, will Sterling be the in-house supplier, and what does that change on price and access times?
• For a multi-room conference, how many crew will you get per room, and who is your single contact across all of them?
• Which parts of your set will come from its own workshop, and can those panels be reused for next year’s edition?
• Do step-free stage ramps, hearing loops and live captioning come as standard, as they did at NHS ConfedExpo?
• Can it give you an emissions figure for your event’s transport, and is carbon-neutral trucking costed separately?

Related on Events Review

• Event production and brand experience agencies
• Conference venues in Manchester
• Comtec Presentations, Manchester
• Riot House, Manchester
• Chameleon Agency, Manchester
• iMP, Leeds
• Manchester Central
• The questions that make agency proposals comparable

Sources: sterlingeventgroup.co.uk, About us, Services, Equipment hire, Venue partners, Accreditation, What matters to us, Contact, its case studies and Companies House, checked 7 November 2026.