Are cost cutting and design aesthetics threatening stadium safety and security?
In a World Cup year, when stadium security and crowd safety will be under the highest scrutiny, Laurence Goode, managing director of UK entrance control solutions provider Broughton Controls, considers whether squeezing budgets and concentrating on design rather than function might be compromising successful crowd control. British football alone carries something of a legacy of spectator tragedies. 306 fans have died and a further 3,500 have been injured over the last century in 27 separate incidents. Admittedly this is from a spectator base in excess of 1.2 billion fans but nevertheless we are not talking about casualties in a war here, these are totally avoidable accidents tragedies that have occurred because of a combination of poor crowd management and sub-standard stadium facilities. Before the death of 96 football fans at Hillsbrough in 1989, crowd control was seen mainly as a case of tackling outbreaks of football hooliganism. Following the tragic events at Sheffield however, Lo
