‘Venue crowd management a tricky proposition’

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Eileen Williams has her ear to the ground as her task is to ensure that the safety quotient is high in the venue (Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in UK) as well as monitoring the fan behavior. It is quite a challenging job as the fans do not always put their best foot forward when it comes to their behavior. They can suddenly turn unruly and Williams and her team are required to be on guard while in the venue.

She ensures that events held at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London (UK) are hitch-free. Crowd management comes with its own challenges and Williams also has to deal with the disorderly fans.

Eileen Williams, Head of Event Safety, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, UK, tells Andy O’Sullivan, CEO, Olympia London (event venue), UK, in an exclusive for ‘Coliseum’ that “Football is quite an emotive crowd management plan as well where one has to deal with overexuberant fans and we need to manage fan behavior as they present themselves and for that matter with any customer engagement you need to deal with behaviors as they present themselves.”
 

Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is the home of the Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur F.C. in North London (UK). With a seating capacity of 62,850, it is the third-largest football stadium in England and the largest club ground in London. It is designed to be a multipurpose stadium and is the home of the National Football League (NFL) in the United Kingdom. It features the world’s first dividing, retractable football pitch which reveals a synthetic turf field underneath for the NFL London Games, concerts and other events.
 

‘Euphoric’ Fans

Eileen Williams told Andy O’Sullivan in a very enthusiastic manner that the supporters’ behavior on seeing the plush Tottenham Hotspur Stadium when it opened in April 2019 was “nothing short of euphoric. They were absolutely delighted and wanted to know more about the building”.

O’Sullivan could not agree more and said that he remembered people “doing the rounds of the stadium”.

He wanted to know more about the gameday preparations to which Williams informed that “We train our staff to be able to assist the people. We are very good at telling people about the features of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. We open quite early in terms of three hours for general admission (GA) so that it gives people the opportunity to maneuver around the building. The building itself is free flow within the general admission areas so you can be in the stands much before the game starts. It is a real learning experience for our guests.”
 

Fan Behavior

O’Sullivan wanted to know about the fan behavior during different events held at the stadium and as “fans don’t always behave as they should do” it did come with its set of challenges.

Williams’s perspective on this was “Any event will always bring you challenges. You are bringing in customers to your venue and in the first instance that everybody is a guest and they need the guest experience, they come to the venue and expect a great in-venue experience. We just need to manage fans’ behavior as they present themselves and it is indeed a challenge.”

She also pointed out that since the pandemic struck there has been a cost-of-living crisis and while attending a major event in a sleek venue one has to spend a good amount of money. Williams wanted to drive home the point that COVID has had a detrimental effect and it reflects in the fans’ behavior too in a post-pandemic world. The fans’ behavior, she said, does prove to be challenging at times but “we have been able to manage well”.
 

Sum-up

Eileen Williams wrapped up by telling O’Sullivan that the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is also the ‘Employer of Choice’ and she knows the art of keeping the staff happy and retaining them – “We have a number of our agency staff who has worked for us consistently since we have opened and they have made the choice to come and work for us as well. We do like to look at the welfare of our staff – people have a hot meal when they come here and so forth. So, we do quite a lot of behind-the-scenes work to make sure my team, my steward management team are actually engaging with the people, we look after the welfare of people in game and ensure that we do some follow-up of people. But all of those are metrics of good people management and overlay of the customer service as well. We have done a program with our Supervisors and they have gone on to become the mentors and coaches of the new staff. It is almost like remobilizing the stadium with another new workforce and that’s been really successful and the retention is high.”

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