New Stadium Details And Discussions
- Thread starter fozzi44
- Start date
- Oct 17, 2006
- 10,701
- 25,259
Link to recent ICE presentation
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium - The Institution of Structural Engineers
A presentation on the structural design of the award-winning stadium, including a look at the cable-net roof.www.istructe.org
Looks interesting but the sound was awful. The people giving the lecture voices were muffled.
spursfan77
Well-Known Member
- Aug 13, 2005
- 46,684
- 104,964
Property values in N17 still high. Although I thought this part of the High Road was all getting demolished as part of the regeneration plans in the future (should they happen) so I'm not sure you'd want to buy it. If it's not included then I could see the attraction to a degree for some investors.
Savills Property Auctions | 479-481 High Road, Tottenham, London N17 6QA
Property Auction Lot: A pair of three storey buildings which have been combined internallyArranged as a ground floor shop unit toget
auctions.savills.co.uk
The Iceland was up for sale a year or so ago for £2.3m from recollection.
Interesting take on venue value . Tottenham ranked #1 with no mention of the cheese shop though. Now if our football can only match our stadium..........
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium ranked ‘best soccer venue in the world’ | Stadia Magazine
With a lot of competition, zeroing in on the world's best sports stadium is no easy task. However, Brand Finance’s Football Annual has been released,
www.stadia-magazine.com
fridgemagnet
Well-Known Member
- Jan 18, 2009
- 2,416
- 2,867
Sorry to drag your post over here I just didn't want to get rogered by @Archibald&Crooks biggest banning baton by filling up the ITK thread with it.
Regards non football events I wonder if we took out an "Acts of God" type insurance cover for such occasions? It would seem un DL like to not have some mechanisms in place especially as it's still not paid for.
Just asking, sorry again @Roynie.
Saoirse
Well-Known Member
- Aug 20, 2013
- 6,163
- 15,641
World Snooker Championship 2020: Fans to be allowed in for final
Fans to be allowed into the Crucible Theatre this weekend for the final of the World Snooker Championship, BBC Sport understands.
www.bbc.co.uk
Trials of fans returning are set to resume this weekend, with fans being allowed to attend the World Snooker Championship Final. Wider return apparently still on track for 1st October, but of course that may change especially with schools restarting soon.
NickHSpurs
Well-Known Member
- Mar 14, 2004
- 13,636
- 11,911
chrissivad
Staff
- May 20, 2005
- 51,646
- 58,072
- Staff
- #47,610
Sounds like the Emirates Stadium
spursfan77
Well-Known Member
- Aug 13, 2005
- 46,684
- 104,964
yeah sounds a bit pointless going doesn’t it?
mil1lion
This is the place to be
- May 7, 2004
- 42,486
- 78,027
So I guess the only atmosphere would come from clapping? It will take some control not yelling or cheering a goal. It makes you wonder whether its worth it especially if the game is on TV.
On another note I did the stadium tour on Thursday. Was great to see the sheer scale of the locker rooms, they let you into both home and away as well as one NFL one. The view from the west stand in the nicely padded seats and the tunnel to pitch side also included. Finally the media room at the end. Seems a little short but still took over an hour. It definitely misses the museum which I'm not sure if they'll add as an option to the tour when it opens or just sell it separately. The one issue was that the sound breaks up at times because they seem to keep playing crowd noises over the talking (forget the guys name but Gavin from Gavin & Stacey). Definitely worth doing but may be best to wait for the museum to open.
On another note I did the stadium tour on Thursday. Was great to see the sheer scale of the locker rooms, they let you into both home and away as well as one NFL one. The view from the west stand in the nicely padded seats and the tunnel to pitch side also included. Finally the media room at the end. Seems a little short but still took over an hour. It definitely misses the museum which I'm not sure if they'll add as an option to the tour when it opens or just sell it separately. The one issue was that the sound breaks up at times because they seem to keep playing crowd noises over the talking (forget the guys name but Gavin from Gavin & Stacey). Definitely worth doing but may be best to wait for the museum to open.
southlondonyiddo
My eyes have seen some of the glory..
- Nov 8, 2004
- 12,637
- 15,160
Let’s not kid ourselves. It sounds very much like the NWHL
At least if chanting is completely banned then there’s little point in standing which will be a blessing for most
I wonder if anyone would remember to get up out of their seat if we scored
- Oct 17, 2006
- 10,701
- 25,259
Went in February and experienced almost the same. Had no problem with the talking as was clear and concise. The museum was not ready on my tour, which took 90 minutes and not 60 like yours
- Oct 17, 2006
- 10,701
- 25,259
Looking at the chart, we are No 1, and the other British interests are Wembley No 5, London Stadium No 17, Emirates No 18, Anfield, Old Trafford, Etihad 20, 21 and 22 respectively. It is interesting to note that the London stadium which was not designed as a "soccer" stadium is still ahead of the rest!Interesting take on venue value . Tottenham ranked #1 with no mention of the cheese shop though. Now if our football can only match our stadium..........
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium ranked ‘best soccer venue in the world’ | Stadia Magazine
With a lot of competition, zeroing in on the world's best sports stadium is no easy task. However, Brand Finance’s Football Annual has been released,www.stadia-magazine.com
southlondonyiddo
My eyes have seen some of the glory..
- Nov 8, 2004
- 12,637
- 15,160
Selhurst Park, the 60th best Stadium in the World lol. You couldn’t make that shit up
Where is the San Siro probably the greatest stadium I’ve been to. Old school but amazing
Edit: Just found it at no29. One point ahead of Elland Road and Stamford Bridge lol
- Oct 17, 2006
- 10,701
- 25,259
I didnt see the other list from 26 onwards!
San Siro is No 29 (Also known as the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza)
To be fair, one of the criteria is the game day atmosphere, and the Selhurst crowd are notorious for raising their team's game because of the their involvement.
southlondonyiddo
My eyes have seen some of the glory..
- Nov 8, 2004
- 12,637
- 15,160
You mean 'The Holmsdale Fanatics' dear oh dear. A couple of flags and a constant din of nonsense
Doesn’t do it for me but Ho Hum
- Oct 17, 2006
- 10,701
- 25,259
Does not do it for me either but it does for others, obviously including those that compiled this list. All subjective
Saoirse
Well-Known Member
- Aug 20, 2013
- 6,163
- 15,641
Explained: How football will welcome fans back to stadiums
By Matt Slater and Chris Waugh Aug 15, 2020
53
A mathematician by training, Dr Aoife Hunt has spent the last decade studying how people move through busy places such as airports, hospitals and train stations. She is one of the UK’s leading authorities on evacuation modelling, using data and software to work out the safest ways to get us out of buildings in a hurry.
But in recent weeks, Hunt has been studying a different type of evacuation.
“I have learned a lot about urinal behaviour — which isn’t something I thought I would ever have to say,” Dr Hunt tells The Athletic. “Maintaining social distancing with those big troughs is going to be difficult. And then you have the handwashing, which we want to encourage but I’m told is not something many fans have been doing.
“So clubs will have to look at one-way systems through the toilets, Perspex screens to create gaps and hand-sanitiser dispensers. Some clubs already do some of that and some will be able to do it without too much trouble.
“But every ground is different. Some will have to move the concourse outside the ground and bring in lots of portaloos, some just don’t have the space to do that.
“I suspect you’re only going to quote me talking about toilets now, but the concourses will probably be the biggest factor in working out what each ground’s new capacity is, so toilets are important.”
Sorry to live down to expectations, Doctor, but sometimes the easiest way to tackle the biggest problems is to start with the fundamentals.
The reason Dr Hunt has learned so much about what does and does not happen in the men’s loos at half-time of a football match is that the company she works for, Movement Strategies, is part of an army of experts working on the sport’s plan for the phased return of fans in the COVID-19 era.
As Premier League chief executive Richard Masters puts it: “Football is not football without fans and the Premier League won’t be fully back until we have fans supporting their teams, in person, in our grounds.”
You hear the same message from every other league and every club, and it is echoed by the government and local authorities. If all goes well, grounds will be allowed to open their gates to fans again in early October. It is a goal everyone is working hard to achieve, listening to each other and sharing best practice.
But how we get there will differ for each club and possibly each fan, as the habits we have developed — where we park, where we meet up, how many pints we drink, when we arrive at the ground, who we sit with, what we eat, when we leave — will have to be put aside.
There will be no going back to the way things were before the lockdown — not for the foreseeable future, anyway, and maybe never.
The Sports Grounds Safety Authority (SGSA), the government agency responsible for ensuring safety within stadiums in England and Wales, has issued 85 pages of draft guidelines to help football clubs come up with social-distancing plans. This has been reinforced by courses, videos and webinars, with further guidance coming from the Football Safety Officers Association and the leagues.
At the same time, the leagues and FA have been taking part in regular meetings with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, public health experts, other government departments and other sports, while most clubs have also been consulting their trusts and affiliated fan groups.
On Wednesday, the Football Supporters’ Association (FSA) and representatives from six trusts will present their hopes and fears to the Premier League in their first “structured dialogue” meeting since November. As per the new normal, it will be a video-conference call.
There is much to discuss at that virtual meeting and all the others between now and that first fan getting temperature-checked at their allocated entry time.
Here are the key issues up for debate…
Stadium capacities
It is hoped most clubs will be able to operate with capacities of about 30 per cent of their usual maximum, but no two stadiums are the same in terms of dimensions, design and surroundings.
Some clubs, blessed with roomy concourses, wide staircases and plenty of space outside the ground itself to put in the type of temporary concession stands and toilets you might expect to find when they are staging concerts in the off-season, will achieve that target relatively easily, and may even be able to fit a few more in than that figure.
Premier League clubs such as Brighton & Hove Albion, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur will be confident their grounds are in this category.
Fans on the concourse at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in December 2018 (Photo: Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty Images)
Others whose grounds have tight corners, pinch points and close neighbours might struggle to go much higher than 20 per cent, at which point some may have a financial viability issue, particularly those further down the league pyramid. Top-flight clubs Crystal Palace, Everton and Newcastle United should not have that concern, but might not reach the 30 per cent mark under the current guidelines.
Maintaining social distancing once supporters are actually seated is the easy bit.
Each individual, pair or small group of fans will be spaced out around each block of seats to ensure there is at least a metre between them. How each club will configure this will depend on the dimensions of their seats, rows and gangways. Some may have to leave alternate rows empty.
In line with the general rules, fans from the same household will be able to sit together, as will groups of up to six people from two different households. Larger groups will lead to fewer “killed” seats but engineering this will not be easy and clubs will not be able to discriminate against fans who want to sit on their own or with one or two others.
But the major considerations for each ground’s new capacity will be how fans travel to it, how they then get to their seats, how they move around inside the stadium and what happens when they are leaving it.
It is telling that one of the first pieces of advice the SGSA put out was to tell clubs to save their pre-lockdown CCTV footage. The more clubs know about how and when their fans arrive at the stadium, the better. There is no point drawing up clever plans to keep people apart for the two hours or so they are on the premises if no thought is given to what happens outside the gates. This is where the clubs will work closely with their safety advisory groups (SAGs), which help local authorities decide if grounds are safe or not.
Some clubs will likely have to assign arrival times to avoid overloading local buses and trains, crowding at the gates and congestion on the concourses, with fans also being held back after the final whistle to allow for an orderly exit. The leagues are also talking to clubs about park-and-walk schemes and even temporary bike sheds.
All of the factors mentioned above will go into each club’s capacity calculation, and that is before we even mention the possibility of local lockdowns or second waves.
That said, the success of Project Restart and the gradual reopening of the wider economy suggest that whatever number is agreed for the first few games with fans could increase as next season progresses.
Tickets
Once clubs know how many fans they can fit in, they can then start to work out which fans can come in.
Last season, there were almost 800,000 seats available across the Premier League’s 20 stadiums, but three-quarters of those were filled by season ticket holders. If we use 30 per cent as a benchmark capacity for this season, the league’s most loyal fans will only be able to attend one in every two and a half games they have paid for.
Of course, some supporters will not want to attend games next season for health or financial reasons. Others simply might not want to attend games under the current circumstances — masks are likely to be mandatory, sitting down will be enforced and, as mentioned, leaving with five minutes to go “to beat the rush” might not be possible.
In fact, protecting these fans’ rights to stay away next season, without losing tickets or facing any financial penalty, is one of the priorities for several supporters’ trusts. But if, as expected, some do stay away, those who do want to attend games may get to see more than half of them.
But that is not all of them, is it? So clubs will either have to use ballots or loyalty points-based systems to allocate tickets fairly, with season ticket holders receiving refunds for each game where they are not given a seat.
The headaches for clubs’ ticket offices do not end there. In the track-and-trace era, clubs will have to know exactly who is in the ground, which means passing season tickets around friends and families, without informing the club, is potentially a huge problem. As this has been happening at some clubs for decades, this has led some fans’ groups to suggest an amnesty so clubs can update their records.
It is also unlikely that season ticket holders will be able to sit in their usual blocks, let alone seats, as the different permutations of groups for each game could see them sent on a tour of the stadium throughout the campaign.
Where this leaves fans who depend on membership schemes, or whatever is left on general sale, to see a few games every year is unclear but the best guess is they will be left on the outside. Clubs will understandably look after their best customers first, not least to avoid dishing out regular refunds.
Which leads us on to another set of supporters who will be some way down most clubs’ list of priorities…
Away fans
There are actually relatively few rules about ticketing in the Premier League and EFL handbooks, as clubs have jealously guarded their rights in this area but there is a rule about allocations for away fans. In the top flight, it is “3,000 tickets or, if the capacity of the home club’s stadium is less than 30,000, such number of tickets as is equal to 10 per cent”.
But with every club trying to ensure as many of their season ticket holders get in, almost all are asking if they have to accommodate travelling supporters at all.
They are also pointing out that managing away fans will be more complicated from both a safe entrance/exit point of view and in collecting track-and-trace information. There are also legitimate questions about the sense of encouraging large groups of people to travel from one part of the country to another, especially if we continue to see localised lockdowns over the next 12 months.
Some fans’ groups, however, have pointed out that all clubs, particularly the bigger ones, draw support from outside their home towns, so that argument is a little overstated. However, nobody will want to test that theory, so it is very unlikely there will be any away fans at games initially.
It is possible, though, that some clubs — perhaps those with bigger capacities — will look to do reciprocal deals on away supporters. For example, two London clubs might agree to house a small number of each other’s fans.
If this sounds a bit sterile, it is simply the way things will have to be until the pandemic is properly behind us.
Even in Germany, which has a proud reputation for a fan-friendly football culture, the 2020-21 season will be very different. In a recent vote, Bundesliga clubs backed four proposals from their FA: no booze, no away fans, no standing, and personalised tickets.
Food and drink
The provision of provisions next season will come down to two considerations: 1) how big and well-equipped your concourses are and 2) if they are not very wide and up-to-date, do you have room outside the ground for “bolt-on” concession stands and toilets?
Tottenham, for example, with their new stadium’s cathedral-like spaces, will be optimistic they can sell their artisan pies, line-caught sea bass and the craft beers they brew on-site, while Everton will wonder which, if any, of their burger bars they can open. Some EFL clubs have already told The Athletic they are assuming they will not be able to sell any food and drink inside their ground at all.
But Spurs, along with Brighton and Manchester City, do not just want to offer as much food and drink to their fans as normal, they would also like to be able to sell alcohol to fans in their seats during games — something that has been illegal in England and Wales since 1985. In Scotland, fans are not allowed to drink alcohol in grounds at all.
The EFL has been calling for a review of this legislation for years, as have fans’ groups around the country. The FA and Premier League have been quieter on the subject but they, too, are understood to believe the law is out of date and unfair.
After all, fans of almost every other sport can drink during games, even when those matches are played in football stadiums, and football clubs can sell beer when they stage music gigs, too, despite fans at them being far more tightly packed than any football crowd.
The three clubs mentioned above believe they would be able to serve fans in their seats, US-style, with orders placed via apps and the stadium wifi. This would alleviate congestion in the concourses and encourage supporters to stick to their allocated entry/exit times. It would also, of course, bring in a bit more cash for clubs.
Other clubs, however, just do not have the connectivity to handle a system that sophisticated.
The Athletic has spoken to several trusts and officials at clubs and leagues, and all of them said they thought the time was right to at least trial the sale of alcohol so it could be drunk within sight of the playing area. They pointed out that it was unlikely any fans would be getting drunk during games next season and if they were, the reduced capacities would make it very easy for stewards to spot them and throw them out.
Some senior sources within the game say there is political support for such a change, too, just as laws have been relaxed to allow pubs without any outside space to set up tables on pavements and public highways. This, they say, is because there is a realisation that the game is facing a massive financial challenge and clubs must be given every possible means to make money.
But The Athletic understands the issue is just not on Westminster’s agenda at the moment. That might change, but the idea there will be an Act of Parliament to temporarily suspend the Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol etc) Act 1985 in time for someone to bring you a pint of Beavertown Neck Oil just after kick-off this autumn is a bit of a reach.
Checks, masks and passports
We have left off vaccinations, as we are all still waiting for those, but there is a feeling that going to football matches next season will be a bit like going on holiday. German club Union Berlin are even considering trying to stretch the “bio-secure bubble” idea to include their fans by testing them for COVID-19 within 24 hours of kick-off. Nobody in British football is talking about that, though.
What we are expecting, however, are temperature checks for everyone on arrival and the wearing of masks. That has certainly been the case for everyone who has been attending behind-closed-doors games as a journalist, club official or steward: basically, anyone outside each stadium’s “red zone” that is reserved for the players, coaches and essential staff.
The Premier League is also keen on “clinical passports”, an app-based checklist for COVID-19 symptoms and contributing factors.
How effective these will be in actually controlling the spread of the virus is open to question but they may provide another layer of “reassurance”, which is the word that keeps coming up in conversations with clubs and leagues.
By Matt Slater and Chris Waugh Aug 15, 2020
A mathematician by training, Dr Aoife Hunt has spent the last decade studying how people move through busy places such as airports, hospitals and train stations. She is one of the UK’s leading authorities on evacuation modelling, using data and software to work out the safest ways to get us out of buildings in a hurry.
But in recent weeks, Hunt has been studying a different type of evacuation.
“I have learned a lot about urinal behaviour — which isn’t something I thought I would ever have to say,” Dr Hunt tells The Athletic. “Maintaining social distancing with those big troughs is going to be difficult. And then you have the handwashing, which we want to encourage but I’m told is not something many fans have been doing.
“So clubs will have to look at one-way systems through the toilets, Perspex screens to create gaps and hand-sanitiser dispensers. Some clubs already do some of that and some will be able to do it without too much trouble.
“But every ground is different. Some will have to move the concourse outside the ground and bring in lots of portaloos, some just don’t have the space to do that.
“I suspect you’re only going to quote me talking about toilets now, but the concourses will probably be the biggest factor in working out what each ground’s new capacity is, so toilets are important.”
Sorry to live down to expectations, Doctor, but sometimes the easiest way to tackle the biggest problems is to start with the fundamentals.
The reason Dr Hunt has learned so much about what does and does not happen in the men’s loos at half-time of a football match is that the company she works for, Movement Strategies, is part of an army of experts working on the sport’s plan for the phased return of fans in the COVID-19 era.
As Premier League chief executive Richard Masters puts it: “Football is not football without fans and the Premier League won’t be fully back until we have fans supporting their teams, in person, in our grounds.”
You hear the same message from every other league and every club, and it is echoed by the government and local authorities. If all goes well, grounds will be allowed to open their gates to fans again in early October. It is a goal everyone is working hard to achieve, listening to each other and sharing best practice.
But how we get there will differ for each club and possibly each fan, as the habits we have developed — where we park, where we meet up, how many pints we drink, when we arrive at the ground, who we sit with, what we eat, when we leave — will have to be put aside.
There will be no going back to the way things were before the lockdown — not for the foreseeable future, anyway, and maybe never.
The Sports Grounds Safety Authority (SGSA), the government agency responsible for ensuring safety within stadiums in England and Wales, has issued 85 pages of draft guidelines to help football clubs come up with social-distancing plans. This has been reinforced by courses, videos and webinars, with further guidance coming from the Football Safety Officers Association and the leagues.
At the same time, the leagues and FA have been taking part in regular meetings with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, public health experts, other government departments and other sports, while most clubs have also been consulting their trusts and affiliated fan groups.
On Wednesday, the Football Supporters’ Association (FSA) and representatives from six trusts will present their hopes and fears to the Premier League in their first “structured dialogue” meeting since November. As per the new normal, it will be a video-conference call.
There is much to discuss at that virtual meeting and all the others between now and that first fan getting temperature-checked at their allocated entry time.
Here are the key issues up for debate…
Stadium capacities
It is hoped most clubs will be able to operate with capacities of about 30 per cent of their usual maximum, but no two stadiums are the same in terms of dimensions, design and surroundings.
Some clubs, blessed with roomy concourses, wide staircases and plenty of space outside the ground itself to put in the type of temporary concession stands and toilets you might expect to find when they are staging concerts in the off-season, will achieve that target relatively easily, and may even be able to fit a few more in than that figure.
Premier League clubs such as Brighton & Hove Albion, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur will be confident their grounds are in this category.
Fans on the concourse at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in December 2018 (Photo: Tottenham Hotspur FC via Getty Images)
Others whose grounds have tight corners, pinch points and close neighbours might struggle to go much higher than 20 per cent, at which point some may have a financial viability issue, particularly those further down the league pyramid. Top-flight clubs Crystal Palace, Everton and Newcastle United should not have that concern, but might not reach the 30 per cent mark under the current guidelines.
Maintaining social distancing once supporters are actually seated is the easy bit.
Each individual, pair or small group of fans will be spaced out around each block of seats to ensure there is at least a metre between them. How each club will configure this will depend on the dimensions of their seats, rows and gangways. Some may have to leave alternate rows empty.
In line with the general rules, fans from the same household will be able to sit together, as will groups of up to six people from two different households. Larger groups will lead to fewer “killed” seats but engineering this will not be easy and clubs will not be able to discriminate against fans who want to sit on their own or with one or two others.
But the major considerations for each ground’s new capacity will be how fans travel to it, how they then get to their seats, how they move around inside the stadium and what happens when they are leaving it.
It is telling that one of the first pieces of advice the SGSA put out was to tell clubs to save their pre-lockdown CCTV footage. The more clubs know about how and when their fans arrive at the stadium, the better. There is no point drawing up clever plans to keep people apart for the two hours or so they are on the premises if no thought is given to what happens outside the gates. This is where the clubs will work closely with their safety advisory groups (SAGs), which help local authorities decide if grounds are safe or not.
Some clubs will likely have to assign arrival times to avoid overloading local buses and trains, crowding at the gates and congestion on the concourses, with fans also being held back after the final whistle to allow for an orderly exit. The leagues are also talking to clubs about park-and-walk schemes and even temporary bike sheds.
All of the factors mentioned above will go into each club’s capacity calculation, and that is before we even mention the possibility of local lockdowns or second waves.
That said, the success of Project Restart and the gradual reopening of the wider economy suggest that whatever number is agreed for the first few games with fans could increase as next season progresses.
Tickets
Once clubs know how many fans they can fit in, they can then start to work out which fans can come in.
Last season, there were almost 800,000 seats available across the Premier League’s 20 stadiums, but three-quarters of those were filled by season ticket holders. If we use 30 per cent as a benchmark capacity for this season, the league’s most loyal fans will only be able to attend one in every two and a half games they have paid for.
Of course, some supporters will not want to attend games next season for health or financial reasons. Others simply might not want to attend games under the current circumstances — masks are likely to be mandatory, sitting down will be enforced and, as mentioned, leaving with five minutes to go “to beat the rush” might not be possible.
In fact, protecting these fans’ rights to stay away next season, without losing tickets or facing any financial penalty, is one of the priorities for several supporters’ trusts. But if, as expected, some do stay away, those who do want to attend games may get to see more than half of them.
But that is not all of them, is it? So clubs will either have to use ballots or loyalty points-based systems to allocate tickets fairly, with season ticket holders receiving refunds for each game where they are not given a seat.
The headaches for clubs’ ticket offices do not end there. In the track-and-trace era, clubs will have to know exactly who is in the ground, which means passing season tickets around friends and families, without informing the club, is potentially a huge problem. As this has been happening at some clubs for decades, this has led some fans’ groups to suggest an amnesty so clubs can update their records.
It is also unlikely that season ticket holders will be able to sit in their usual blocks, let alone seats, as the different permutations of groups for each game could see them sent on a tour of the stadium throughout the campaign.
Where this leaves fans who depend on membership schemes, or whatever is left on general sale, to see a few games every year is unclear but the best guess is they will be left on the outside. Clubs will understandably look after their best customers first, not least to avoid dishing out regular refunds.
Which leads us on to another set of supporters who will be some way down most clubs’ list of priorities…
Away fans
There are actually relatively few rules about ticketing in the Premier League and EFL handbooks, as clubs have jealously guarded their rights in this area but there is a rule about allocations for away fans. In the top flight, it is “3,000 tickets or, if the capacity of the home club’s stadium is less than 30,000, such number of tickets as is equal to 10 per cent”.
But with every club trying to ensure as many of their season ticket holders get in, almost all are asking if they have to accommodate travelling supporters at all.
They are also pointing out that managing away fans will be more complicated from both a safe entrance/exit point of view and in collecting track-and-trace information. There are also legitimate questions about the sense of encouraging large groups of people to travel from one part of the country to another, especially if we continue to see localised lockdowns over the next 12 months.
Some fans’ groups, however, have pointed out that all clubs, particularly the bigger ones, draw support from outside their home towns, so that argument is a little overstated. However, nobody will want to test that theory, so it is very unlikely there will be any away fans at games initially.
It is possible, though, that some clubs — perhaps those with bigger capacities — will look to do reciprocal deals on away supporters. For example, two London clubs might agree to house a small number of each other’s fans.
If this sounds a bit sterile, it is simply the way things will have to be until the pandemic is properly behind us.
Even in Germany, which has a proud reputation for a fan-friendly football culture, the 2020-21 season will be very different. In a recent vote, Bundesliga clubs backed four proposals from their FA: no booze, no away fans, no standing, and personalised tickets.
Food and drink
The provision of provisions next season will come down to two considerations: 1) how big and well-equipped your concourses are and 2) if they are not very wide and up-to-date, do you have room outside the ground for “bolt-on” concession stands and toilets?
Tottenham, for example, with their new stadium’s cathedral-like spaces, will be optimistic they can sell their artisan pies, line-caught sea bass and the craft beers they brew on-site, while Everton will wonder which, if any, of their burger bars they can open. Some EFL clubs have already told The Athletic they are assuming they will not be able to sell any food and drink inside their ground at all.
But Spurs, along with Brighton and Manchester City, do not just want to offer as much food and drink to their fans as normal, they would also like to be able to sell alcohol to fans in their seats during games — something that has been illegal in England and Wales since 1985. In Scotland, fans are not allowed to drink alcohol in grounds at all.
The EFL has been calling for a review of this legislation for years, as have fans’ groups around the country. The FA and Premier League have been quieter on the subject but they, too, are understood to believe the law is out of date and unfair.
After all, fans of almost every other sport can drink during games, even when those matches are played in football stadiums, and football clubs can sell beer when they stage music gigs, too, despite fans at them being far more tightly packed than any football crowd.
The three clubs mentioned above believe they would be able to serve fans in their seats, US-style, with orders placed via apps and the stadium wifi. This would alleviate congestion in the concourses and encourage supporters to stick to their allocated entry/exit times. It would also, of course, bring in a bit more cash for clubs.
Other clubs, however, just do not have the connectivity to handle a system that sophisticated.
The Athletic has spoken to several trusts and officials at clubs and leagues, and all of them said they thought the time was right to at least trial the sale of alcohol so it could be drunk within sight of the playing area. They pointed out that it was unlikely any fans would be getting drunk during games next season and if they were, the reduced capacities would make it very easy for stewards to spot them and throw them out.
Some senior sources within the game say there is political support for such a change, too, just as laws have been relaxed to allow pubs without any outside space to set up tables on pavements and public highways. This, they say, is because there is a realisation that the game is facing a massive financial challenge and clubs must be given every possible means to make money.
But The Athletic understands the issue is just not on Westminster’s agenda at the moment. That might change, but the idea there will be an Act of Parliament to temporarily suspend the Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol etc) Act 1985 in time for someone to bring you a pint of Beavertown Neck Oil just after kick-off this autumn is a bit of a reach.
Checks, masks and passports
We have left off vaccinations, as we are all still waiting for those, but there is a feeling that going to football matches next season will be a bit like going on holiday. German club Union Berlin are even considering trying to stretch the “bio-secure bubble” idea to include their fans by testing them for COVID-19 within 24 hours of kick-off. Nobody in British football is talking about that, though.
What we are expecting, however, are temperature checks for everyone on arrival and the wearing of masks. That has certainly been the case for everyone who has been attending behind-closed-doors games as a journalist, club official or steward: basically, anyone outside each stadium’s “red zone” that is reserved for the players, coaches and essential staff.
The Premier League is also keen on “clinical passports”, an app-based checklist for COVID-19 symptoms and contributing factors.
How effective these will be in actually controlling the spread of the virus is open to question but they may provide another layer of “reassurance”, which is the word that keeps coming up in conversations with clubs and leagues.
