How Stadiums Can Safely Bring Back Fans

With football matches behind closed doors for the foreseeable future due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Sébastien Paris, founder and CEO of ONHYS, discusses how new technologies such as AI could help stadiums reopen at greater capacity without jeopardising the safety of fans.

With the rise in cases this winter, the UK Government was forced to U-turn on its return date for spectators, as the country was placed back under a third national lockdown. Many football fans and clubs have been campaigning to get fans back to stadiums as soon as possible after the current restrictions are relaxed. Meanwhile, many facilities managers and venue operators are reluctant to be liable for fans’ safety if they reopen their doors, with so much still unknown. Particularly since the countries that reopened stadiums for fans were forced to close them again due to an ensuing spike in cases.

However, our research found that, with the appropriate crowd management measures in place, large stadiums such as Wembley could actually reopen at 50% capacity.

Current Procedures In Place

The procedures used by governments and businesses today rely heavily on the use of national statistics. Using these statistics, they deem what a safe capacity in a venue would be without any scientific backing or a thorough risk assessment. Governments would then typically apply a blanket rule to all stadiums and venues across the country in a bid to reduce the rate of infection. The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t take into account the specific details of each venue, treating a 5,000 seater the same as a 90,000 seater.

As fans are now very unlikely to return to stadiums in any capacity until later this year, at the earliest, due to the third national lockdown, stadiums and venues have time to develop their plans and take the important steps towards facilitating a safe return. Then, when it’s physically possible to get spectators back, they can do this with ease and at fulfilled capacity. An evidence-led approach will enable stadiums and venues to adapt to the changing conditions of the Covid-19 virus and the risks it creates within different settings and populations.

The Critical Role Of New Technologies

Over recent years, new crowd modelling technologies have emerged to help stadiums manage crowd control to help operators to make informed decisions over how viable different capacity levels are. These new technologies include crowd behavioural dynamics, which are used to predict and simulate crowd movements, and calculate social behaviours and interactions in different environments. The collective behaviours within a crowd will ultimately help to characterise the intrinsic dynamics within a crowd setting. In addition to this, spatial modelling can help to accurately map out environments and their capacities to understand the pressure points within a space. Many venues were already employing technologies to assist with their pedestrian and traffic flows, although amid a second wave of the virus, this has become even more important. The metrics produced by these technologies will allow decision-makers to make data-led decisions around how best to manage the health and safety of spectators, instead of just applying a standard blanket rule.

Combining the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and Building Information Modelling (BIM), new simulation technologies work by simulating the flow of pedestrians, with the implementation of various parameters to measure different scenarios and their impact on the spread of infection. These parameters include the age of the populations, their health status, how the virus is transmitted and the impact of protective equipment on transmission.

Using these technologies, a study in the summer found that with the use of crowd management processes, Wembley Stadium could let as many as 38,000 fans return to matches, whilst keeping the Covid-19 reproduction rate at 0.11%. Of course, these figures would need to be adjusted for the current volume of virus cases in the UK, but using these methods, sports fans could see the end to matches played behind closed doors. A “one-size-fits-all” approach simply doesn’t cut it, especially when all stadiums and venues have different pressure points, entrances and exits, some of which will pose a higher risk of infection. New approaches like these will allow businesses to restore economic momentum, whilst mitigating against the unpredictable challenges of the virus.

Reopening Venues To Spectators

As the economic pressure of this ongoing pandemic builds with the impact of the second lockdown still unknown, facilities managers and venue operators need to take a more dynamic approach to help move the conversation forwards. By demonstrating scientific and evidence-based methodologies that can allow for and mitigate the individual characteristics of their venues, stadiums can make a compelling case for reopening safely.

These new technologies take into account the intricate details of every venue and stadium, and process huge amounts of real-time scientific data - something that can’t be done by humans alone. After almost a year since they first closed their doors, the damage caused by the virus will continue to become greater if we don’t take action and find a way to reopen venues and prevent more livelihoods being lost.