How to Design Event Security for Large-Scale Sporting Events | an Interview with Russ Simons
If you’ve attended any sporting event — from college sports to the professional leagues — in the last ten years, chances are you’ve walked through a metal detector or had your bag checked by a guard after you scan your ticket. While digital ticketing is a frontline to event security, physical protections still provide final reinforcements to ensure everyone in the venue can safely enjoy their visitor experience.
Design can provide cost-effective, creative solutions to ease bottlenecking at checkpoints while beautifying or showcasing the venue or event’s unique brand. At the Anaheim Angels, concrete bollards shaped like baseballs and baseball bats line the stadium’s exterior to establish a safe pedestrian walkway while evoking the excitement of a baseball game. Beyond that, event security teams like Venue Solutions Group are also looking inward: What happens when visitors leave their seats to purchase food in the concourse? How is technology changing the way sports arenas plan for security?
Ryan Sickman, Gensler’s sports practice area leader, spoke with Russ Simons, Chief Listening Officer and Managing Partner at Venue Solutions Group, about the top trends in sporting event security today and how venues can more critically look toward the future to design more effective solutions for visitor and player safety tomorrow.
Ryan: When you think about large-scale events, how is security different for these large-scale, one-off events…like the Super Bowl and the Kentucky Debry… [and] your Thursday night NBA game that’s going to happen at seven o’clock?
Russ: [For] the Thursday night game, the benefit that they have is consistency. With the procedures and protocols that are in place for the people who are either regular season ticket holders or causal repeat customers, people know how to act. They’ve thought a little bit about what they are bringing into the facility, and they are generally aware of things like clear bag policies.
On a one-off special event, you don’t have any of that cultural consistency, and you have a whole bunch of people who have never been, most likely, to that site before… One of the best things that a customer can do is just be prepared, think about what you are bringing, minimize stuff in bags, and you can actually walk up and walk in pretty quickly to almost any public assembly facility. All five major professional sports leagues now are consistent with clear bag [policies], with walk-through metal detectors, and I think, generally, we are becoming more aware of it.
On the one off special events and festivals, that kind of thing it still hasn’t seeped down… and it creates issues at the point of ingress. That’s the major difference between the two.
Ryan: If you could name three things that you think owners and operators and designers could do to be more proactive in increasing the safety of fans and players and experience of these venues, what would those three things be?
Russ: The top thing for me today has to do with vehicle intrusion. We are reacting to the buildings that have previously been built. I’d love to see us as an industry be a lot more clever in terms of the design when those designs are complete, when we have started to make decisions about cost with regard to things like CCTV coverage, video management systems, and access control door motion sensors. Having that be more complete in the facilities is a really important piece. I’m not sure we pay as much attention to lighting as we need to now going forward in the future. Those are some pretty big pieces of the puzzle.
Ryan: Do you see [autonomous vehicles] changing our approach long-term with respect to vehicle intrusion at these types of venues or large scale public assemblies?
Russ: I’ve been spending a lot of time on autonomous vehicles recently, and it’s been fascinating to me. But I also can’t believe that there won’t be vulnerabilities with regard to somebody being able to hack them with potential for some nefarious intent. When we take a global view of what’s happening everywhere both domestically and throughout the world, the weaponization of these kinds of everyday items means that we have to change our commitment to protect against them.
Listen to the full conversation between Ryan and Russ now on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, iHeart Radio, Spotify, Alexa AnyPod, Google Play, Stitcher and Libsyn.
As always, thanks for tuning in!
