Urban Tourism Level 3 (Top up)

By. Liang Tianmin (139095623)

Crowd Management premier league football matches in

Newcastle

Degree of Tourism, Hospitality and Events Top up

University of Sunderland

2013

Table of Content

Abstract……………………………………………................................

.......Pg.4

1. Introduction

1.1(Urban Tourism)………………………………………………..Pg.5

1.2(Newcastle)………………………………………………….....Pg.5

1.3(Sport Tourism)

………………………………...........................Pg.5-6

1.4(Crowd Management)

……………….........................................Pg.6

2. Literature Review

2.1(The process of Crowd Management Plan on Sport

events).….Pg.6-8

2.2(The process of Crowd Management Plan on Sport

events)…..Pg.8-9

2.3(Impact of audience characteristic on sport

event)…………….Pg.9-10

2.4(Recommendations for Crowd Management)

………………….Pg.10-11

1. (Prohibition of alcoholic beverage)

2. (Inspect the venue and review crowd

safety arrangement)

3. (Sustainable training on security staff)

3. Methodology

3.1(Introduction)………………………………….………………...Pg.11

3.2(Summary)…………………………………………..…..…...….Pg.11

3.3(Data Collection method)…………………………………...

…..Pg.11-12

1. (Primary Data)

2. (Secondary Data)

4. Result and Analyze

4.1(Probability of Conflict)…………………….……………..

…...Pg.12-14

1. (Crowd Category)

2. (Security personnel and analyze of

riot)

4.2(The security concern)

………………………………………....Pg14-16

1. (The impact on the design of the

stadium for crowd control)

2. (Security flaw of the Stadium Management)

3. (Solution of prevents and avoids future

security issues)

Conclusion…………………………………………...Pg.17

Reference…………………………………………….Pg.18-20

Appendix……………………………………………..Pg.21-22

Abstract

The aim and objective of this report will be based on the

city Newcastle to critically evaluate and have a better

understanding of urban tourism. The structure of the

project will be mainly on literature review on sport

tourism in Newcastle, which will be involve Crowd

Management premier league football matches. Another

important part of the report will be the methodology and

analysis on research as well as the discussion of the

result. The types of research method that will be use are

observation.

The 3 main topics that will be conducted in this research

will be: emergency responds, security personnel

allocation, Movement of people.

After research and analyze I will give recommendation and

suggestion on the Crowd Management premier league

football matches.

1.Introduction

1.1 Urban Tourism

“Urban destinations, seen as a combination of products,

facilities and services that comprise the total tourism

product for the travel experience ”(Buhalis 2003), there

are various area in urban tourism we can discuss, like

the development of cities, the representation of cities,

globalization and the development of urban in post-

industrial cities, types of urban destinations, types of

urban tourists, place-marketing and urban regeneration,

social, economic, cultural and environmental costs and

benefits of urban tourism, urban tourism and new tourism

trends, creative quarters and urban tourism, city

culture(s) as tourism resource. In this report I will

mainly focus on Crowd Management at premier league

football matches in Newcastle.

1.2 Newcastle

Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle upon Tyne, commonly known

as Newcastle, is located at north eastern of England,

which estimate population of 277,800 in 2008(Newcastle

city council 2011). Newcastle United F.C. known as NUFC

was founded in1892, which currently ranking 72 place in

among the world football club (footballdatabase.com,

2013). Although the NUFC is not the top FC in the UK but

with long history it has large amount of supporters

worldwide.

St James’ Park is the sixth largest football stadium in

the United Kingdom. It opened year of 1892. Located in

the center of Newcastle with capacity of 52,404. It is

the NUFC current home stadium, mainly use to host the

club football match and international football match.

Average attendance of year 2012/13 is 50,517. Because the

stadium is located at the center of Newcastle, there are

variety of food, drink.

1.3 Sport tourism

Sport ， particularly Large-scale sporting events dating

back to ancient Olympic games ， have long influenced

travel(Keller 2001)

Sport tourism is the about the traveler who observing

sporting events. It include the traveler travel to the

destination, normally the sport event only few hours, and

travelers needs to look for accommodation food etc., it

in the way boost in the local economic. Sport tourism

also include the travel to certain destination to

participate to the sport activities, such as rock

climbing, surfing, parachute，bungee jump. Many countries

try to host the mega sport event, like World Olympic

Games, World Cups， to boost the local economic, develop

the city infrastructure, and broadcast the local culture

to the world The positive and negative impact of sport

tourism has been widely discussion by （ James

highham(2010) Helen Armitage （ 2013 ） Emily Attwood

（2012）Insight Department VisitScotland (2012)）

1.4 Crowd Management

Crowd management is about to controlling the crowd, to

prevent the possible riot and disorder，prevent the case

happen which inflame the emotional of people, and the

mass gang war. For example, the soccer game which

attracted excess people. Control the people who drugs and

alcohol abused in the event. Also prepare for the

emergency situation including fire, terrorist attack.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Sport Tourism effects on Tourism cities

Sport tourism is ranked as one of the most popular

leisure activities for tourists; it involves travelers

who viewing or takes part in a sport event, which is

apart from their original environment. In the past few

years, many government of a city or area throughout the

UK has supported sport tourism into their economic

development, the effect of economic growth in sport

tourism not just the city but in area surrounding the

city as well. One of the successful examples will be the

Olympics game that takes part at London in 2012, the

benefit that London gets from the Olympics event are not

just in economic, but other factors as well, such as the

city image, social context, global investors and many

others. In a tourism sector, the Olympics games brought

about 10 million international and UK tourist into London

and overall generated about 2 million pounds, which

contribute to the GDP. While London receive majority of

these benefits, cities that surround the capital gets a

huge benefits as well, in term of tourist generation and

economic improvement. Other tourism cities such as

Leicester, Birmingham, Sheffield, and Manchester are all

sharing the pieces of benefits from London Olympics

games.

Sport tourism has a huge contribution in development of

urban tourism as well. Certainly sport tourism is one of

the major factors in term of urban regeneration, back to

the 1980s, the government of UK established special

budgets to carry out the planning and construction of

urban regeneration in several major cities. And sport

tourism was used as one of the growth strategy for cities

that required regeneration, it mainly used for cities to

expressing the personality, enhancing the specialty in

order to0 redevelopment in economic and social context.

Regeneration has always measured in term of economic

improvement and environmental benefits for the cities.

However, in recent years, sport tourism has been defined

to emphasis the social community as well, the abilities

of sport tourism has been expanded throughout the years,

including the creation of employments, leisure

facilities, and education for those that decline form the

past generation.

But every aspect of tourism has its positive and negative

response and perception; some of the negative issue that

arises in recent years for sport tourism is security. For

instance, almost every sport events will generally

attract a large amount of visitors, especially for those

big events such as Olympics games or the final game of a

football league, these events not every time but

sometimes does generate problem which involve security,

one of the main reasons was it attract too much crowd.

Crowd Management can be an important aspect for sport

tourism in term of security issues. The method of

handling and controlling the crowd on a large sport event

is critical, the safety and enjoyment of people who

attending the event will depends mostly on the effective

management of the crowd, it is a critical part of a

overall operation plan, the extent of which should

reflect on the risk and popularity of the event. （Douglas

Michele Turco , Roger S. Riley , Kamilla Swart ，2012）

（Ncedo Jonathan NTLOKO & Kamilla SWART 2008）

2.2 The process of Crowd Management Plan on Sport

events

A well-designed crowd management plan is a necessary

process for any sport event management plan as most of

the time it prepared by the director of crowd management

or the security manager. Every crowd management plan can

be different depends on the specific situation of the

sport event, in order to make the plan work effectively;

it may require the following sectors.

1) The number and type of stewards that is needed for

monitoring the crowd can be critical as most of the time

when the crowd went out of control is because lack of

steward during that period of time, therefore, the first

steps of planning crowd management is to have a

recommended number of steward to prevent any chance of

riot happening. There are many type of stewards use in an

events, the two commonly used type are paid staff and

volunteers, if an events used a mix of both paid staff

and volunteer, it is important to define the role of each

and how they are being manage by the management.

2) Communication between the crowd management director

and the event manager is another important sector as it

is necessary for the crowd management director to have a

basic understanding of the ongoing process of the whole

event. A two-way radio system are normally used for crowd

management communication, basically these system is often

located in the center of the event place and control by

the crowd management team. Two-way radio system have to

be used correctly especially in a noisy environment, the

objective is allowing the management to connect with each

other on time.

3) To having the profile from every audience is extremely

helpful for management to identifying any problems that

may happen during or after the events, especially for

sport events which having both positive and negative

influence on the crowd movement and behavior. Also the

profile from the participant of the event, in sport event

normally is the players and referee or the cheer team who

will be participated the event, management need those

information from them as well.

4) A contingency plan is require for crowd management, it

often used in risk management and often developed to

prepare eventuality, the purpose is to have a backup plan

for any emergency situation. A “Showstop” is a term used

for an agreed procedure to stop an event immediately if

there is a threatening of life, it can be a bomb threat,

chemical incident, fire or a crowd collapse. Crowd

management should prepare a Showstop policy as part of

the contingency plan, it may include of identify key

person that involved of the events and those who are part

of the management, director of the crowd management have

to provide an formal briefing of the detail of the whole

event, and most importantly organize a process of

monitoring the security issues during the event. （Chris

Kemp，（2012）Lavi Industries, （2008））

2.3 Impact of audience characteristic on sport event

Audience involved in a large scale sport event can be

extremely complex as it involve both young, elderly and

children, therefore the knowledge and ability are very

different on protection, in addition, the social level,

interest, hobbies and others are difference as well which

result safety issues that may be encounter during the

event are not consistent. The complexity of the subject

makes many potential conflicts exist between individuals

and groups, leading to a safety hazard events from

multiple sources, while individual response

characteristics of affairs to presents risk such as

diversity, these factors resulted in an increase in

security issues. (Proulx, G., Fahy, R.F. and Walker, A.,

(2004.))

Although the audience of a large sport event came from

different social level, but their main objective is to

participate and observe the event, therefore the audience

often needs some tendency. This tendency can be different

depending on the size of the event and activities, the

more the complexity of the event, the less the tendency.

At the same time it help to release the pressure of the

crowd management, the management can set different

strategies for different type of audience.

Large sport event is able to attract a large amount of

crowd in a very short period of time, audience often

centralize in the venue of the event. Base on different

district, staff from the security side will be in

different status as well. For football events, audience

often centralizes either at the gate or around the VIP

area. Even though the organization is able to predict the

amount of audience that will participate the event, but

due to various impacts, complexity of relation, and the

actual amount of audience are all factors which making

the event become unpredictable especially for those

audience that do not seat on their actual seat, not

attending on time. The actual situation is far way than

what is planned. （ Lavi Industries, （ 2008 ） Mike

Masterson（2008））

2.4 Recommendations for Crowd Management

1) Prohibition of alcoholic beverage

The sale of alcoholic beverage should be prohibited or

limited in majority of large sport events, especially for

football event where quite a number of the audiences are

under the age for alcoholic drink and it may cause a high

percentage of occurring security issues arise by those

unruly audience. (Mike Masterson（2008）)

2) Inspect the venue and review crowd safety arrangement

The crowd management should critically analysis the venue

of the events including each entrance, seat, and

facilities rooms and collates and assess information

about safety and healthy record from previous record in

the same venue if possible. As well as reviewing the

crowd information, background and data check, monitoring

activities of each area, and arrangement for safety

prospective.

3) Sustainable training on security staff

Security staff involves in the event should have training

regularly in order to face different situation that may

happen, this help to improve the standard of the staff

and increase positively and negatively experience as well

as create a better extensive knowledge and face-to-face

teamwork.

Under certain circumstances, stainable training should be

implementing as a crowd control strategies for year for

event.

（Sean Grimsby（2013）NEW ZEALAND MAJOR EVENTS（2013））.

3. Methodology

3.1 Introduction

The goal of the research is to get the information of the

crowd management strategy of the St. James Stadium and

give recommendation. The major challenge I am facing is

lack of manpower. Due to I only have myself, other

classmate are study on different topic, even same on

sport tourism, the area we are looking for is different.

My Research methodology requires gartering the relevant

data from the people crowd of football matches before and

after.

3.2 Summary

The crowd management in this study is define crowd

control, security personnel allocation，movement of people

stream, audiences allocation, design of the stadium, My

data collection method is observation, so above three

elements are the main things I observe. I have study

about time consuming of entering and leaving the stadium,

how is the security personnel allocated, the route of

entering the stadium, from the road design and barriers

allocation ， emergency responds. Due to lack of manpower,

I have taken the video clip to help me to analyze after

the observation, in case something was missing during the

observation.

3.3 Data Collection method

I use observation check list, to check the item I have

listed in a form, by filling the form, I could have a

more clear data to analyze, and secondly I use my mobile

phone to take the video of the events, to check anything

I was missed, or take wrongly. I have also search the

relevant information about St James’ Stadium and football

matches.

1) Primary Data

Primary data collection means it’s not available from any

other sources, and collected by the using his or her own

effort.

On 23rd Nov 2013, there is a match between Newcastle FC

and Norwich City FC, in Newcastle on 15:00. I went to the

stadium two hours before the match. Found there are small

group people start moving to the stadium. I have walked

around the stadium and take the note of different routes

to entering the stadium. There are two main route people

coming, one is from Terrace Place, the other one is from

strawberry place. There are also crowd coming from Leazes

Terrace. I watched the whole match and during the match I

have observed the things from the checklist.

2) Secondary Data

Secondary date collection is the data collected by

someone else rather than the user.

I have watched several video about the football match

riot. And using the map which I found on the ticketing

website to analyze.

4. Result and Analyze

4.1 Probability of Conflict

1) Crowd Category

In the crowd management there are many ways to categorize

the crowd in a football match, based on the ages,

interest of the football club, etc. Based on the study

objective, conflict I have rated the audiences in three

categories based on the dangerous level, I use the three

different colors to show the different categories.

Red，Yellow, Green. I have drawn a picture to show how

there three different categories sited. Picture 1.

Red, first is the highly dangerous and emotional, those

people could be hard-core fans from two different

football club, people who have disorder behavioral.

Normally this category are sitting just right behind the

home and away.

Yellow, second is the normal match watchers, this

category could include the normal football club fans, or

not a fan of any of two teams. Those people could

influence by the situation emotionally and behaviorally.

This category could sitting beside the first category or

any other part of the stadium.

Green，third is low risk people, in this category people

could be the elderly people or children which do not have

ability to start or join the riot, but still could be

influenced or influence to other audiences emotionally.

This category normally have company with other audience

which could be family or friends. Green category could

sit anywhere of the stadium.

2) Security personnel and analyze of riot

During the match the goal and referee umpire have the

huge emotional impact on the audience, in the match the

referee was booed for his decision, the for the sport

event organizer they couldn’t control the umpire and

score in the game, so the security personal allocation is

very important, in the stadium during the match for each

seat square there are two security stewards station in

front the square, and observed the audiences, total

around 300. And there are mobile stewards move around, if

anything happen unexpected the station steward will

report to the HQ, and the HQ to ask the nearest mobile

steward to handle the case. In the field the security

stewards was allocated beside the grandstand each 25

meters, to prevent the audience running into the field.

During the match, there is no any disorder or crowd lost

control on that day. But historically many football match

riot happened in UK, most case happen is Derby Match

(Means a sporting fixture between two teams from the same

town, city or region). And most case are happened after

the match, the riot happen at the point which crowd joint

together, in this case is the cross between Strawberry

Place and Leazes Terrace and Strawberry Place and Barrack

Road, car parks, and St James’ Park Metro Station, Which

I highlighted in red, the picture 2. So if derby match

which is Newcastle FC VS Sunderland FC, more security

personnel is required.

4.2 The security concern on emergency situation

and solution for future development

1) The impact on the design of the stadium for crowd

control

The current design of the stadium provide a unobstructed

view, which allows all the audience to look through all

the area of the stadium, this also provide an advantage

for the security side to observe the process of the

ongoing event as well. There are several conceal

dangerous element for large sport event such as lost

control of the crowd, bombing, fire and other issues

which proven from the past that cause huge consequence

for both the management and the audience that involve.

Base on the observation, even though it did not happen

any security issues, but the lacking of security concern

for both audience profile and solution for emergency

situation have to be improve by the management in order

to prevent future safety problems. The seating layout for

the audience including the East stand, Milburn stand,

South Stand and Sir John Hall Stand are all surrounding

with exist door for the management in case for any

contingency situation to evacuated the crowd.

For large sport events, especially football match

comparing to other sport events, the crowd are the most

happening to run out of control, it can be cause by a lot

of factors such as a wrong decision that made from the

referee, the result outcome from the match or even small

detail can make the crowd lost control if the management

did not act on time toward the issues. Large security

such as firing and bombing, even though it did not happen

often but it is extremely important to avoid these issues

as it can result tremendous consequence.

2) Security flaw of the Stadium Management

The stadium did not require audience profile check and

item check from audience could be difficult for the

security to monitor either anyone bring any suspicious

item into the stadium, it can be understandable as there

are too much audience enter at a time, but back to 1985,

the stadium did occurred a fire accident due to lack of

monitoring, and it did cause a huge lost for the stadium,

as well as the marathon race accident which happened in

Boston which is harmful for sport organization. However,

it also provides a lesson for sport management to set out

protection plan to avoid such incident happen again.

3) Solution of prevents and avoids future security issues

Solution for security issues in sport events can be

research and develop and tested in live and simulated

situation, crowd management is not just base on

experience; crowd disaster could have been avoided by

simple advance planning and management techniques. As the

management is able to understand the time for audience to

moving in and out, the peak period of the crowd and

stream of where most of the crowd is gathering, these

information helps the management to prevent and prepare

not just the normal process but also any emergency

situation that might happen. Customer comfort and safety

is always the top priority for any sport, the right

knowledge and skill of crowd control need to be in place,

as well as the objective of the risk that has been

identify in the past.

Conclusion

Urban tourism provides total experience of travelling

within a city. And sport tourism as one of most fast

growing aspect in urban tourism. Urban tourism benefit

most of the large developed city including Newcastle.

Promote the economic and sport culture of city. Sport

tourism also have a huge impact on the city development,

including infrastructure. But if the accident, unexpected

situation, riot happen to the sport events, it not only

will have negative effect of the sport events itself, but

also will do a huge damage on the city image. So the

crowd management play a very important role in sporting

events. There a quite number of aspects in process of the

crowd management and by observed the real football

matches, studied about the crowd flow, and understand

security person allocation, I am able to define some

general the possible issues in crowd management.

There are different categories in a crowd, but basically

could identify them into three categories. And possible

location of potential riot happening, where the people

concentered. The design of the stadium is very important

for evacuation if emergency situation happen. There is no

security device to check the audience who bring dangerous

item.

Different sport events will have different audience,

different situation. So the result does not apply to

every sport events. For a sport events crowd management

we need to understand who the audience is, what the city

and street design, the design of the facility, and apply

the security system on it and revise and study again and

again to adapting the new challenge. You could not

expecting an the architect who built hundred the stadium

in hundred years ago to consider the terrorism, also you

could not ask the city designer hundreds years ago to

foresee the population explosion in 20 century. There is

no perfection in safety concern, so effective crowd

management require sustainable development on planning,

monitoring, analyzing, corresponding and most importantly

responding on time

Reference

1. Buhalis, D.,2003 Urban destinations, seen as a

combination of products, facilities and services that

comprise the total tourism product for the travel

experience

2. Buhalis, D., 2003. eTourism: information technology for

strategic tourism management. Harlow:

Pearson Education.

3. Newcastle city council 16 August, 2011

https://www.newcastle.gov.uk/your-council/statistics-

and-census-information/population-current last access

23/11/2013

4. footballdatabase.com, 2013

http://www.footballdatabase.com/clubs.php?Id=183 last

access 23/11/2013

5. Newcastle FC official website The St James’ Park

History

http://www.nufc.co.uk/page/Club/History/StJamesPark

(last access 30/11/2013)

6. The stadium guide, St James’ Park

http://www.stadiumguide.com/stjamespark/(last access

30/11/2013)

7. Keller, P. 2001 Sport and tourism: Introductory

report.

8. James highham 2010

Sport as an Avenue of Tourism Development: An Analysis of

the Positive and Negative Impacts of Sport Tourism

9. Emily Attwood October 2012 Parks and Recreation

Departments Benefit from Sports Tourism

http://www.athleticbusiness.com/articles/article.aspx?

articleid=3918&zoneid=10 (last access 25/11/2013)

10. Helen Armitage 10 March 2013 The economic benefits of

sports tourism

http://purposeofvisit.co.uk/2013/03/10/the-economic-

benefits-of-sports-tourism/ (last access 25/11/2013)

11. Insight Department VisitScotland 2012 Sport Tourism -

The Scale of Opportunity from hosting a Mega Event

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Swart, 2002 Sport Tourism

13. Ncedo Jonathan NTLOKO & Kamilla SWART 2008SPORT

TOURISM EVENT IMPACTS ON THE HOST COMMUNITY: A CASE STUDY

OF RED BULL BIG WAVE AFRICA

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International Centre for Crowd Management and Security

Studies

Available at: http://www.crowdsafetymanagement.co.uk

(Last Accessed: 22 Oct 2013)

15.Spiro G. Doukas, (2006) ‘Crowd Management:Past and

Contemporary Issues’, ISSN:1543-9518, Vol. 1, pp. 45-76

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device and crowd control management philosophy. Available

at: http://www.lavi.com/crowd-control-management.html

(Last Accessed: 22 Oct 2013)

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INVESTIGATION, Crow Management Adopting a New Paradigm

Review. Pp. 20-50

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management strategies. Available at:

http://www.ehow.com/list_7523674_crowd-control-

strategies.html

(Last Accessed: 22 Oct 2013)

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the risk of overcrowding, pp 5-20. (Last Accessed: 22

november 2013)

Appendix

Observation Check List

1. What Time people starting to move towards to the

stadium?

2. What Time people finish entering the stadium?

3. What time is the peak time for people entering the

stadium?

4. When is the security personnel allocation?

5. How many Security Personnel Used inside and outside

the stadium?

6. How many routes people use to entering the stadium?

7. Where is the gathering point which stream of people

join together?

8. How many entrance and exit of the stadium?

9. Any device to check the individual carry suspicious

item?

10. The emotional effect on the crowd during and after

the match?

11. Any emergency plan, if the conflict happen? How

long it take the security take action?

12. Design of the stadium for emergency situation?

13. How are the people sited based on the different

category?

Picture 1.

Picture 2.