Swindon Town are looking to continue building their concert offering with a new and improved event with Clubland in May.

The Nigel Eady County Ground hosted its first concerts for ten years last summer and they will return again this May with Vengaboys and Tinchy Strider headlining the Clubland event.

Swindon’s Commerical Officer James Watts said that after a successful first year with more than 5,000 people attending across the two days, the club have learned their lessons of how to deliver an even better show.

He said: “We are looking good based on last year, we are about ten per cent up at the same time in terms of sales.

“Last year was the first event for ten years and we have learned from the little mistakes we made; we are looking at extra bar space, more food vendors inside, and a more vigorous idea around how the VIP will work.

“Those were the three big lessons we have learned from last year and I feel like we are more prepared now having done one last year.”

This is just the second year of concerts at The County Ground but Watts said that the success of last year has helped the club take the concerts where they want them to go.

He said: “The big thing that the bigger acts look at is the numbers that these events get and the marketing around the Chris Moyles set specifically showed other artists that The County Ground was really busy for that.

“There are a lot of venues but in Wiltshire, there aren’t really any and that probably extends to between Bristol and London that there aren’t a lot of places which can host big acts.

“Realistically in the long-term, I think that we can look at a 10-15,000-people event, but that has to be built up over a number of years.

“Over five years, we are hoping to add five to ten per cent to the numbers each year and if we can do that then when you do that the agents of bigger acts will come and ask about the opportunity.

“We have put ourselves in the shop window to be able to do larger scale events and attract people not only from Swindon but the wider area.”

This year’s concerts are taking place on May 23 and 24, the weekend of the EFL playoff finals, but this will not be at the same time as the League Two playoff final and the concert could even have a benefit for that.

Watts said: “Before we even booked the concert we asked the EFL about the playoff dates and they guaranteed that League Two would not be on the Saturday and that is why we moved it to Friday and Saturday.

“We could finish the concert on Saturday night, everyone gets on the bus to Wembley to cheer the boys on and then come back for a party and everything is already set up.

“We have already discussed that as well, the stage is already set for a promotion party.”