The NEC has announced a partnership with the Sports Show, a new family event created to inspire kids to play, love and live sport.

The Birmingham venue has taken a 25 per cent stake in the inaugural event, headed up by Superskills founder Ed Rusling and rugby legends Will Greenwood and Austin Healey. The show will be held on 24-26 June 2016 at the NEC.

This is the first time in its history that the NEC has financially invested in an event where the venue team will play the role of joint organiser as well as host.

Ed Rusling, director of the Sports Show, said: “The Sports Show is going to be a playground of fun for kids across the country. We will be taking over most of the NEC and we plan to pack every inch with as many different sports as we can.”

The Sports Show will bring together a variety of sports and fun activities under one roof, where visitors will be able to try out more than 15 different sports including rugby, football, netball and athletics across the NEC’s indoor and outdoor event space.

The organiser is working closely with national governing bodies to ensure that each sport is delivered to the highest standard. The Rugby Football Union, England Netball Association, Table Tennis England and Badminton England have already given the event their official sign of approval, added the firm.

Paul Thandi, CEO of the NEC Group, said: “We’ve made some positive changes to the way we are structured to work with our existing and new customers, and working alongside Ed and his brilliant team is a great example of how we’ll be working with our customers in the future across all of our platforms.

“Sports and Family experiences are already close to us, so this is something we just love doing. We are really looking forward to being part of this project and turning the NEC into a fantastic sporting venue over the three days of Sports Show. This is an amazing opportunity for families and kids to take part in a large number of sports all under one roof and learn from sporting heroes.”

John Probyn, former COO of Live Nation joined the Sports Show team earlier this month, commenting: “I am very excited to be joining the Sports Show, it’s a challenging project but I will be part of a world class team and the opportunity to deliver something that has never been done before was just too hard to turn down.”