Maiden wins £20m Manchester City Council outdoor sites brief

Maiden Outdoor has won the contract for Manchester City Council’s large-format outdoor sites. The contract, which will run for ten years, is worth £20m.

The appointment, made on Tuesday this week, will be a disappointment for Clear Channel, which has held the existing contract for the past five years.

The Manchester contract is one of the most important in outdoor because the city is considered the UK’s second-largest city by the industry and is within the Granada TV advertising area. Maiden also beat off competition from JC Decaux. The tender process has been running since last December (MW December 16, 2002).

Maiden will take control of the contract in the autumn and plans to raise the number of sites from 80 to 200. All billboards will be built on council property, and comprise mostly 48-sheets. Maiden Outdoor’s managing director David Pugh says that the company also has plans to build 96-sheet sites and scrolling 48-sheet sites on council property.

Earlier this year, Maiden lost the contract to run the adverting sites on Network Rail’s bridge-spans. The contract was awarded to Van Wagner, which has just started building sites across London and several other major UK cities.