Trans-Sport.tv
7 October 2025
Sector: Event Management
Location: Bassetlaw
Trans-Sport.tv is a global events company based in Treswell specialising in the transportation and technical delivery of equipment and personnel to major televised events worldwide.
The family business, started by husband and wife, Shaun and Helen Cope over 30 years ago, supply solutions, people, equipment, transport and manufacturing for all types of events but mostly televised, from the World Championship Snooker staged in Sheffield to the King’s Coronation to Tuxford Academy’s school production of Oliver, and everything in between!
For the last 18 years it has been the contractor of choice for the BBC events team covering all royal and parliamentary occasions including the late Queen’s Jubilee celebrations and most notably her funeral, watched by millions of people around the globe.
Although Shaun and Helen are still active in the business their children - William (Operations Director) and Rosie (Managing Director) together with their Executive Team - run the business from rural Bassetlaw, which has excellent access to main arterial roads, rail, sea and air facilities enabling an efficient service on a worldwide platform.
Accolades in 2024 include winning ‘Family Business of the Year’ in the North Notts Business Awards and being finalists in East Midlands Chamber’s Business Awards for ‘Small Business of the Year’.
Most recently the Trans-Sport.tv team is celebrating its win as ‘Small Business of the Year’ at the 2025 Enterprising Women Awards.
Challenges faced
The business has a strong appetite for new and emerging overseas territories. It is ideally placed through existing relationships with UK sports promotors and outside broadcast facilitators to work with and develop key relationships. However, one of its challenges, especially since Brexit, has been in accessing these overseas markets with issues around international documentation, entry and exit rules.
Also, for the business to be able to satisfy and maintain current levels of work, here and overseas, it is critical for Trans-Sport.tv to have the technology and infrastructure to grow in all areas - revenue, productivity, people and processes - year-on-year.
The biggest challenge remains to be centred around recruiting and retaining the right people as well as training requirements to facilitate pushing down and releasing key members of staff to enable more work on, rather than in the business.
Solution – Support Given
Chamber member, Trans-Sport.tv took advantage of Accelerator support last year. This included business advice, a growth grant from Bassetlaw District Council to purchase equipment plus a premises audit and grant towards energy efficiencies. It also benefitted from funding via the Made Smarter East Midlands project for a new barcoding system.
More recently it has worked with Chamber Business Adviser, David Smith in three areas:
- High Growth Accelerator: funding through this EMCCA support project is enabling training and coaching of new rigger team leaders, including the creation of personal development plans, ensuring each person has the skills and behaviours to deliver in their new roles.
This will protect its existing business whilst the coaching and training element is critical to the second part of the process to upgrade its website as detailed below – both projects together will win new business – and are resolvedly linked.
The impact of the coaching and training will ensure Trans-Sport.tv’s market share and trajectory domination of televised world pool events remains on track. - Export Accelerator: The business has worked with David to also secure support and funding from the EMCCA Export Accelerator project which helps new and established businesses to explore or enter new overseas markets.
Funding has been used to refresh its website helping to keep it current and ensure that cultural words, pictures and colours are relevant and not offensive to its emerging overseas markets. The Trans-Sport.tv website acts as its shop window. The challenge is for this to be ‘glitzy’ enough to satisfy some markets yet culturally sensitive enough to satisfy others.
The refreshed website will give the impression the business is big enough to handle projects in these territories and will act as part of the process to win new business. The website is critical but the second part of the process to win new business is capacity, supported by the High Growth Accelerator as detailed above. - Commercial Training Bursary: Being registered on the High Growth and Export Accelerator projects enabled the business to take advantage of a £2,000 commercial training bursary from the Chamber. This funding will support two members of the team for the Director Development and Manager Development training programmes.
Team members have also attended the fully funded Accelerator workshops including Getting Started with HR, Harnessing AI for Business, Recruitment and Selection – how to recruit the right staff.
Impact – The Difference it’s Made
The implementation of a redeveloped website with international markets in mind will improve productivity and enable the business to develop and grow its export markets. More specifically to reach into new territories whilst retaining and growing existing export markets.
Two new positions have been created as a result of the Export and High Growth Accelerator support and the business is anticipating an increase in productivity and a strengthening of its export position. The support has offered a solution to help them access new international markets.
The successful upskilling and release of those key operational team members via the consultancy support and the High Growth grant will directly impact its expansion of market share of global televised sports, enhance productivity and enable the business to take on more work.
In addition, the Director and Manager training programmes will further strengthen its leadership team and increase skills of the staff taking part to lead and deliver their teams forward. This will subsequently support an overall improvement to the services it offers its customers.
The business believes the support will improve its sales conversion rate to 95%.
“Getting and retaining the competitive advantage, whether that’s via our people or processes is a constant challenge for our Executive Team.
With the two-strand approach achieved via the High Growth and Export Accelerator, funding our business will 100% be placed to access new markets, increase productivity, revenue, people and processes.
We are grateful for the ongoing support from the Chamber and the specific projects funded by Government.”
- Helen Cope, Director
This initiative is funded by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) and delivered by East Midlands Chamber.
