Enhancing Football Fan Safety With Collaborative Security Operations

By Steve Green, UK Business Development Manager, Genetec.

A damning report from the UK Home Office has cast a long shadow across British football. It appears that the excitement of returning to live games has been too much to contain for some fans, with the data showing that the 2021-22 season saw the highest number of football-related arrests since the 2013-14 season.

This eight-year high saw incidents reported at 53% of all football matches played. There was a 127% increase in pitch invasions on the previous season, including high-profile incidents involving assault on players. What might be most concerning for the FA and its clubs is that 70% of arrests were of fans aged 18-30. The belief is that if this trend is not curbed now, it will remain a problem for the next 20 years.

But while the focus inevitably leads to kick off and the thousands of fans inside the ground, there is the wider matchday economy either side of the game to consider. The train stations that are filled, the bars that spill out onto roads, where people go once the final whistle has been blown; it’s all connected under the fan experience, which means compounding risks in multiple locations.

To make the matchday experience safe for fans at all times, a collaborative effort is required, one that involves all relevant parties. That includes stadium security, traffic manager teams, public safety teams and law enforcement, to name just a few examples. The practical benefit of this is to make the most of the available capacity and expertise across all security officials. The effectiveness of the overall operational response is significantly enhanced within a security culture that has been designed to break down silos.

Encouraging collaboration, and stopping teams from working in isolation, is key to opening up visibility across all touchpoints frequented by fans. Maximum visibility means that teams can be proactive in their safety operations. They can start procedures earlier in the day, reallocating resources based off actionable, up-to-the-minute information.

For example, stadiums that can reach into a train station’s CCTV feed and see how many fans are about to descend onto the ground can proactively open gates to manage the flow of people. This makes managing fans easier for staff and improves the visitor experience by avoiding overcrowding, particularly avoiding agitating fans.

Equally, when disorder does take place, simplified evidence sharing significantly improves the response. A police officer reliant on collecting evidence after the fact can only hope to use it to establish liability and to begin efforts to identify the suspects. Whereas a steward or officer who gains access to footage in near real-time can intervene sooner, to prevent an incident from escalating or to apprehend the individual before they leave the ground.

Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam relies on a Digital Evidence Management system (DEMs) to collect and share digital evidence with authorised stakeholders via the Cloud. This eliminates the lengthy process of Dutch police travelling to the stadium to collect a DVD of footage and helps reclaim hours of vital investigation time.

With mutual access to video streams and data, it is easier for security teams to collaborate to identify high-risk individuals and anticipate threats to fan safety. Unification improves visibility, communication and operations and is the best choice to protect fans for years to come. Where previous operations could only respond retroactively, a fan experience monitored by unified security teams can respond to threats in the moment by using the technology in a more collaborative way.