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ICSS
I N T E R N AT I O N A L C E N T R E
FOR SPORT SECURIT Y
Vol 1 | No 3
Sport, society
and the
state
Securing sport
Introduction
Get the latest edition of ICSS Journal on your iPad and online,
fusing perceptive and timely insights with sport-security issues that
are affecting the sporting generations of today, and of the future
Mohammed Hanzab
President, ICSS
Dear Reader,
I
ICSS
FOR SPORT SECURIT Y
t seems at times that the issues close to my heart and to that of the ICSS are
rarely off the front pages of the newspapers, too often bringing bad news of
new match-fixing cases or failed drug tests, of violence or racism connected
to sporting events.
It is refreshing therefore to celebrate good news, to congratulate the city
of Tokyo on their successful bid for the 2020 Olympiad, and to welcome
Mr Thomas Bach as the new president of the International Olympic Committee
and applaud his invitation to the United Nations and UNESCO to put forward
new ideas for harmonising international match-fixing legislation, and deepen
international collaboration in the fight against sport event manipulation.
It has also been exciting to see London celebrating the anniversary of the
2012 Olympics with three days of world-class athletics as well as mass cycling
events through the streets of the city. There are many facets to the legacy of
an Olympics, as articles in this edition point out, but it is the sporting legacy,
and the new-found enthusiasm for sporting activity, amateur and professional,
that is the most sparkling.
The ICSS’s own highlights over the summer included our appointment as a
member of the consultative committee for Europe’s Enlarged Partial Agreement
on Sport (EPAS). Membership of the committee will help us share the output of
the ICSS-University Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne research partnership, which
is focusing on the links between international gambling and the manipulation
of sports results for the purposes of betting fraud.
But the ICSS is not only concerned with research, we also have a mission
to provide practical assistance to whichever bodies are involved in protecting
sports integrity. In August, members of the ICSS team were in Australia to
assist the Victoria State police with their investigations into match-fixing and
in setting up a Sporting Integrity Intelligence Unit within the Force.
It is this combination of real-world experience and expertise, along
with in-depth research into the issues faced by governments, organising
committees, and federations that makes me believe the ICSS can make a
difference in developing new approaches to sport’s challenges.
Many of these challenges are addressed in the articles featured in this
edition of the ICSS Journal, which focuses on the interactions and interrelations
between sport, society and the state. for example, we explore the question
and issues around what is the right mix of criminal legislation and sporting
sanctions when it comes to deterring match-fixing? How can attention to
‘integrity’ help in the fight against doping? What should governing bodies
do when faced by protesters using an event as a platform to broadcast their
discontents? How are sponsors impacted by such protest, and how might
they respond? How do you design security into the venues for events, and
how should you train the professionals and volunteers that staff them?
And how is technology, that ever-changing fixture, going to change our
experience of sporting events in the future?
Those are some of the questions and challenges, along with some
answers, put forward in the pages that follow. I hope you will enjoy them.
For more information visit www.icss-journal.newsdeskmedia.com
Yours sincerely,
Mohammed Hanzab
Apple, the Apple logo and iPad are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.
ICSS Journal – Vol 1 | No 3
3
Contents
Contents
38
"Imagine football without fans" – or without police
Citing examples of heavy-handed police tactics and the response they prompt
from supporters – "Imagine football without fans" – Daniela Wurbs argues that
Europe needs to consider a low-profile and interactive football policing model
44
Reputational risks for global sports bodies
In light of a tumultuous three years, James M Dorsey asks how popular uprisings
interact with sporting events and how organisers can mitigate the effects
Security and safety
50
Designing in security for major sporting infrastructure
Roger Cumming examines the ways in which event designers and architects
can balance the enjoyment of spectators with the need for maximum security
56
How should popular protest be managed?
Samuel Logan and Rafael Saliés consider the fallout of this year's protests in
Brazil and the consequences for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Rio Olympics
60
Sport security training: preparing the best for the worst
Integrity
Contents
68
74
Doping, competitive advantage and the integrity of sport
Sport requires a clearer ethical model surrounding the justification of doping bans, according to Dr John Danaher
A review of events and developments
Looking at sport authorities' efforts to combat match-fixing, FIFA's upcoming
summit on doping and the work of INTERPOL's Integrity in Sport unit
8
Sport, society and the state: managing
expectations and development
Dr Shaun McCarthy investigates the tensions between sport, government and
society, and explains how the ICSS Index aims to balance expectations between
the three through a framework for sports development decision-making
Technology
80
88
14
The role of sport in soft power projection
Gary Armstrong and James Rosbrook-Thompson ask how sport's prominent
role in diplomacy can help to promote understanding between nations
20
Sport's role in urban economic development
Chris Gratton examines what we can learn from past major sporting events about their long-term value for communities and economies
26
Fight or flight: sports sponsorship and market-driven morality
With sports events increasingly used as platforms for protest, Simon Chadwick
looks at the relationship between sporting bodies, sponsors and public opinion
32
Social and legal factors in the decline
of English football hooliganism
Richard Giulianotti asks what authorities in other footballing nations can learn from the decline of hooliganism in the English and Scottish games
Eyes in the sky: increasing options
for unmanned aerial surveillance
Dr Ann Rogers looks into the benefits and limitations of the unmanned
surveillance systems that are increasingly used at large sporting events
Does technology affect the integrity of sport?
Emma Dorey examines how technology is changing sport performance and
asks whether integrity and fairness are compromised by such advances
Sport, society and the state
4
Dr Ben Van Rompuy argues for a new approach to dealing with match-fixers
Gianni Foggia/AP/PA Images
News and comment
6
Effective sanctioning of match-fixing:
the need for a two-track approach
Alamy, iStock Images
Vol 1 | No 3
September 2013
ACE Stock Limited/Alamy
Stacey Hall looks at the importance of effective human resourcing in security planning and the methods that best address training challenges
92
Priorities and limitations when
implementing stadia Wi-Fi
Tracey Caldwell explores the challenges that IT directors face in Wi-Fi systems
and their potential to enhance security as well as the stadium experience
Legacy
96
Measuring the legacy
Chris Aaron investigates the value of legacy to the Olympic Games: how have its definition, priorities and evaluation changed?
Last word
102
Twelve years in charge
A look back over Jacques Rogge's tenure as IOC President
5
News digest
News digest
Match-fixing tops agenda for sport authorities
6
three groups of people. The first were
organised by his then sponsor who
opened multiple betting accounts
with various associates. These
accounts were used to place the bets.
The second group were coordinated
by his then manager who placed
almost identical bets. The third was
an individual known to Lee who
placed the same bets independently
of the other two groups.”
The UK’s Crown Prosecution
Service dropped proceedings against
Lee after a two-and-a-half-year probe
by the UK police and the Gambling
Commission, but snooker’s integrity
unit brought its own case before a
tribunal run by Sport Resolutions
UK, and chaired by Adam Lewis QC.
Lewis said in his verdict: “Mr Lee
did not strike me as a cynical cheat
but rather as a weak man who under
financial pressure, succumbed to the
temptation to take improper steps
that he may well have justified to
himself as not really wrong, because
the ultimate result of the match, win
or lose, was the same.
“It is not established that
Mr Lee deliberately lost a match
when he could and should have
won it. Rather it is established, on
the balance of probabilities, that
Mr Lee acted improperly in relation
to matches that he either believed
he would lose or that he believed he
would win sufficiently comfortably
that he could drop the first frame.”
The case reflects the importance
of governing bodies conducting
investigations, bringing cases and
sanctioning offenders.
Meanwhile, integrity issues in
Australian sport hit the headlines
again in September, as six individuals
were charged with match-fixing
offences at the Southern Stars
football club in the Victoria Premier
League. The arrests and charges
followed an investigation by police
who were brought in to help the
Football Federation Australia.
The governing body had been
alerted to potential betting fraud
and match-fixing by betting
monitoring company Sportradar.
Anna Gowthorpe/PA Wire
The fight against match-fixing took
a step forward in September, when
police in Singapore arrested 14
individuals believed to be involved
in organising the manipulation of
sporting events and betting fraud.
Singaporean police agencies
released a statement saying that
“the suspected leader and several
other individuals who are the subject
of ongoing investigations in other
jurisdictions for match-fixing were
among the persons arrested.
“The arrested persons are being
investigated for offences related to
match-fixing activities under the
Prevention of Corruption Act (Chapter
241) and for their involvement in
organised crime activities.”
INTERPOL’s Secretary General
Ronald K Noble said: “Singaporean
authorities have taken an important
step in cracking down on an
international match-fixing
syndicate by arresting the main
suspects in the case, including
the suspected mastermind.’’
ICSS Director of Integrity, Chris
Eaton, told the BBC that the arrests
are “very important because up until
now, we’ve focused on players and
match-fixers. But the real people who
need to be caught are the people
who are organising the betting fraud.”
He emphasised the need to
facilitate information sharing
between all stakeholders and for
“sport, bookmakers, sport betting
regulators and police around the
world to collectively get together
and share information for these
timely operations”.
Demonstrating that match-fixing
can impact all sports and presents
temptations to players at all levels,
snooker player Stephen Lee was
found guilty of match-fixing by a UK
tribunal in September.
Lee was found to have fixed exact
scores, first frame results and overall
outcomes of matches to enable
third parties to make fraudulent
betting wins of more than £97,000
($155,000). The World Professional
Billiards and Snooker Association
stated: “The bets were placed by
In September, an independent UK tribunal found England’s Stephen Lee guilty of match-fixing
Anti-doping procedures under review
UK Olympic legacy
FIFA will hold a summit meeting on
anti-doping issues in concert with the
World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)
and several other international sports
federations on 29 November 2013.
FIFA has issued an invitation
to submit papers on anti-doping in
sport for potential discussion at the
meeting. The meeting will focus on
the use of anabolic agents; biological
profiles of athletes; autologous
blood transfusion; erythropoiesis
stimulating agents; ethical and legal
considerations; and WADA and Court
of Arbitration for Sport perspectives,
according to the FIFA website.
Doping issues hit the headlines
again over the summer, when
Jamaican athletes Asafa Powell and
Sherone Simpson and US sprinter
Tyson Gay tested positive for banned
substances. In the aftermath,
concerns have been raised about
the rigour of Jamaica’s anti-doping
controls, prompting pressure
from WADA on the Jamaica
Anti-Doping Commission to review
its organisation and procedures.
Sky Sports News reported in
September that its own research
pointed to surprisingly low levels
of testing by sports governing
bodies in 2011-12. The report found
that the Amateur International
Boxing Association (AIBA) had no
statistics at all for tests in 2011.
According to the report, an AIBA
spokesperson said: “2012 has been
a pretty complicated year for AIBA
Sports Department, having to face
a complete restructuring which
resulted in a lack of resources for
anti-doping ... At the beginning of
2013, AIBA has doubled its budget
to fight against doping and organise
out-of-competition tests. AIBA regrets
that these tests are very expensive
but is fully committed to eradicate
all kinds of doping from the sport of
boxing, in the limits of the budget
of a small international federation.”
However, the issue of funding
and costs raised by AIBA is not
limited to small federations or small
countries. Associated Press reported
in September that Germany’s
Tourism spending in the UK
increased 23 per cent year-on-year
from July 2012-13, according to the
latest International Passenger Survey
for the country. Overseas visitors
spent £2.52 billion in July 2013,
exceeding the previous monthly
record of £2.43 billion set in August
2012 during the Olympic Games.
Patricia Yates, Director of Strategy
and Communications at VisitBritain,
said: “There is no clearer sign of
Olympic legacy than these hugely
positive spend and visitor figures.”
anti-doping agency faces staff layoffs
and a massive reduction in activity
if it cannot secure $6.3 million in
funding for 2014. Its funding comes
from a combination of federal,
state, sports bodies and business.
In late 2012, David Howman, WADA
Director General, said: “We must
make sure that testing is as efficient
and effective as possible. It is not
about how many tests are conducted,
rather that they are based on
intelligence. The samples taken must
be fully screened and anti-doping
organisations must make better use
of the detection methods that WADA
has developed over the years.”
Among a number of high-profile
cases over the summer, penalties
for a positive test for a banned
substance were imposed on tennis
player Marin Cilic. The Croatian, who
said he would appeal his ban to the
Court of Arbitration for Sport, said
the substance in question originated
from a glucose tablet purchased at a
pharmacy. An independent tribunal
found that Cilic took nikethamide
inadvertently and did not intend to
enhance his performance.
Meanwhile, Sam Chalmers,
a Scottish under-20s rugby
team member, was banned from
playing rugby for two years by the
International Rugby Board after
testing positive for methandienone
and stanozolol — both anabolic
androgenic steroids. Chalmers
observed: “I have been stupid, naïve
and impressionable and would urge
other young players not to give in to
the constant pressure to be bigger
in the manner that I did over a
two-week period in April last season.”
In Bulgaria, the national athletics
federation banned sprinter Tezdzhan
Naimova for life, annulled her results
from the 2013 Goteborg European
Indoor championships and stripped
her of her Gold medal. The 26-yearold tested positive for the banned
anabolic steroid drostanolone after
winning the women’s 60-metre
race in Goteborg, Sweden. In 2009,
Naimova was banned for two years
for manipulating a doping sample.
Easing travel limits
The heads of the Israeli and
Palestinian football federations
resumed FIFA-hosted discussions in
Zurich in September in an effort to
ease the “movement of persons and
goods for football purposes, in and
out of, and within Palestine”. Travel
restrictions imposed generally by
Israeli security forces often make
it difficult for Palestinian players
and officials, and foreign teams,
to organise matches.
Interpol training
INTERPOL held a training course on
match-fixing and illegal betting for 12
police officers from Austria, Germany
and Slovenia in September. Held in
conjunction with the Austrian Interior
Ministry and the Anti-Corruption
Academy, the course was the first
to be run by INTERPOL’s Integrity
in Sport unit. Such courses focus
on improving investigators’ skills in
tackling transnational crime groups
associated with match-fixing, and are
part of the INTERPOL-FIFA Training,
Education and Prevention initiative,
which aims to target corruption in
football. INTERPOL-coordinated
police efforts to clamp down on
illegal betting – Operation SOGA
– have already led to more than
7,000 arrests and seized more than
$27 million associated with illegal
gambling operations, mainly in Asia.
7
Comment
Comment
Sport, society and
the state: managing
expectations and
development
Dr Shaun McCarthy of the ICSS explores the tensions that exist between
the business of sport, government and society at large, and outlines efforts to
build a new framework for helping to develop sustainable sports sectors
8
that has resulted from this is the ICSS Index, a
project in association with the Center for International
Development at Harvard University, which seeks to
develop a mechanism to embed fundamental principles
in the development of sustainable sporting sectors for
cities and countries. I will describe this project in more
detail at the end of the paper.
Managing expectations
The diagram on page 10 provides an overview of the
expectations and tensions that exist in the relationship
between sport, society and the state.
Sport in the context of this article means the set
of economic actors that are involved in a sport-related
economic ecosystem. This stakeholder set includes
professional sports codes and federations – such as
FIFA, the IOC, the IRB, the ICC, the NBA and the NFL
– as well as those service providers that own stadia
and related assets, sports apparel, equipment and
garment manufacturers, sports management, sports
medicine and other direct goods and service providers
Alamy
A
s the articles in this issue of the ICSS
Journal make clear, there is a deeply
entangled relationship between sport in
all its manifestations, society in general
and the state as a legislative, representative authority.
Sport is variously an activity, an entertainment, an
employer, a wealth-creator, an embodiment of ‘values’ of
various kinds, a vehicle for diplomacy and ‘soft power’
projection and a locus of a vast amount of specialised
talent, experience and knowledge.
This multifaceted nature creates wide potential for
sport, but also a range of expectations between sport,
society and the state. The potential and expectations
inevitably give rise to tensions that require managing,
but management itself requires substantial data and
decision-making frameworks.
The ICSS is working on several projects to establish
frameworks for the resolution of such tensions, and this
paper summarises our exploration of the expectations
that exist between sport as an economic sector and
the state and society generally. One of the initiatives
9
Comment
Comment
Analytical framework
Sport (economic ecosystem)
Society
The state
Expectations:
Revenues, rent seeking and conducive
climate by government to transact
Expectations:
Entertainment, opportunity,
integrity and trust
Expectations:
Legitimacy and power
Tensions:
Auction mentality towards hosts;
crowding out of small and mediumsized enterprises
Tensions:
Equal economic and social
opportunities; idolisation of
celebrity athletes
Tensions:
Expectations around
maximising security and
opportunity; allegations of
politics of patronage
LEGITIMACY
and, of course, professional athletes and commercial
sponsors, including media and publishing entities.
Defined as such, sport seeks to maximise commercial
opportunity in the same way as any other business sector.
It is, in effect, rent seeking. Fundamental to success is the
attraction of a spectator base (team-neutral consumers), a
fan base (team-partial consumers) and, for many sports,
a user base (amateur and leisure players). These three
types of sport consumer constitute the market for the
most powerful economic actor in the ecosystem – the
media; sport broadcasting and publishing entities target
the market for subscription revenues and audience
share to sell advertising. Professional athletes are, in
this ecosystem, assets that are in some, though not all,
cases (one can distinguish between football and tennis
sub-ecosystems), bought and sold between commercial
‘owners’ just like any other asset.
Sport, as with other commercial sectors, seeks
brand loyalty among active consumers and respect and
acceptability from society in general. From the state, it
seeks a regulatory, political and social environment that
is conducive to profitable operations, whether this be
at the level of local leagues or for global major sporting
events (MSEs), such as the Olympic Games.
Unscripted entertainment
State
an Rev
d r en
eg ue
ula
tio
n
nd er
e a ow
tig of p
es
Pr acy
itim
leg
Sport
REVENUE
10
Integrity, trust and
equal opportunity
Society
ENTERTAINMENT
Society looks to sport mainly for a form of unscripted
entertainment, though one which also embodies certain
‘values’. Integral is the expectation that the outcome is
unpredictable and that the winner succeeds as a result
of physical superiority and merit, earned in a fair, honest,
even ‘chivalrous’ manner (though a blind eye will often be
turned to ‘tricky’ behaviour that does not go beyond the
pale of social mores – ‘diving’ in football being a general
example). This implies that sport should embody all the
attributes essential to integrity and trust. Furthermore,
society expects the ethos of integrity and fair play to
manifest itself not only on the playing field but also in
the commercial and transactional environment of the
sport ecosystem generally.
Regarding the state and sport, societal expectations
include a demand for transparency and the authoritative
allocation of values in a fair and unbiased manner,
devoid of the politics of patronage and corruption. This
applies to the awarding of state tenders and contracts
associated with the delivery of venues and supporting
infrastructure. Society also looks to the state to ensure
that all citizens are provided with the maximum
opportunity, and that gender and minority rights and
opportunities are maximised. This is the quid pro quo
relationship that generally underpins the devolution of the
monopoly of power to the state by its citizenry. Recent
events associated with MSEs, in Bahrain, Brazil, and in
an indirect manner in Turkey, have emphasised the link
between disaffected publics and the state in relation
to expectations of social and economic development
through MSEs. However, it is not only in the relationship
between society and the state that these tensions occur.
Tensions can surface between commercial sponsors and
society, which highlights the complexity in the linkage
between sponsorship cognition and consumer attitudes
and behaviour when society perceives that the system is
morally flawed. This issue has been brought into sharp
focus through the incidents of political and social unrest
in Bahrain, Brazil and Turkey.
Simon Chadwick highlights the added problem when
cynicism prevails over the link between sponsors and
events and the extent to which investments by the state
lend outright political advantage to the government in
power at the time and in many instances to its cronies. As
he points out in his article on page 26: “The importance
of this issue is especially sharp: corporations spend
large amounts of money on sponsorship in anticipation
of a return on investment (ROI).” MSEs are increasingly
becoming platforms for social and political activism. In
many instances the grievances are legitimate; however,
they detract from the potential ROI and in extreme cases
commercial sponsors run the risk of negative return on
reputation (ROR) instead of a positive ROI.
The state therefore has several motives to support
both the ethical and economic values of sport. As
well as encouraging the active take-up of sport by its
citizenry to help maintain a healthy population and
reduce the healthcare burden, the state can create an
environment that is conducive to promoting local and
inward investment in those commercial firms involved
in sport either directly (the core sport ecosystem) or
on the periphery. This, in turn, can help to generate a
robust, sustainable sport sector, leading to employment
opportunities and the creation and distribution of
product and service knowledge.
In a market where the global annual sports
sponsorship market is estimated by PwC to reach
$45 billion by 2015 (representing almost one-third of a
global sports market estimated to be worth $145.3 billion),
there is considerable economic value to be shared and
built on. Equally, there is considerable value at risk. This
is why it is so important for the state to play an active role
not only in stimulating development, but also in ensuring
that the appropriate legislation and control are in place
to protect sport – its economic value and its ethos.
Sport also presents opportunities for the state. We
have already noted that active populations tend to be
healthier, potentially reducing national healthcare budgets
– particularly in countries with ageing populations. From a
national-prestige perspective, sport can be an instrument
of soft power. Armstrong and Rosbrook-Thompson deal
with this topic comprehensively in their article ‘The role of
sport in soft power projection’ on page 14 of this Journal.
Financial factors
One issue that needs attention is the behaviour of some
politicians and bidding governments who tend to overstate
the potential economic benefits while significantly
underestimating the costs when it comes to convincing the
population that hosting MSEs will be beneficial to the
country. Most sports economists agree that MSEs seldom
deliver measurable economic benefits on the scale that
11
Comment
12
identified and codified as part of a core economic sector
labelled ‘sport’. Double counting would need to be avoided
and the key challenge in this regard is to determine which
service, commercial and industrial activities would be part
of a sports economy ecosystem. Which activities would
be outriders or, in economic parlance ‘multipliers and
outriders’, would also have to be determined. The ICSS,
together with a range of key associates is attempting to
develop a unique methodology that will do just that.
The ICSS Index
Marseille’s Mayor shows France’s then Sports Minister Chantal
Jouanno a model of the city’s Stade Vélodrome expansion.
Marseille-Provence is piloting the ICSS Index, which provides
metrics for the strategic development of sports sectors
National governments can suffer from tremendous
inertia due to political drag and multi-stakeholder
interests, but by starting to take action at the lowest
denominator – the city level – local governments can
seize the initiative and gain credibility by exploring ways
in which they can stimulate and support the development
of a robust and sustained sport sector. This can also help
to deliver extra economic opportunities for other related
and proximity sectors such as tourism, hospitality and
education and technology. Developing sustainable sport
sectors will also demonstrate a positive commitment to
delivering economic and social benefits for society.
The problem, however, lies in the fact that in most
societies and economic structures sport is not recognised
or categorised as a de facto or formal economic sector.
It is difficult to define the precise taxonomy of all related
services, commercial and manufacturing activities that
would fall within this category. Beyond the nuclei of
sports clubs and stadia, most of the other components
of the sport ecosystem are fragmented and therefore
recorded or categorised under numerous other sectors
such as infrastructure, manufacturing, apparel or
garment manufacturing, transportation and management.
Therefore, in order to be able to develop a dedicated or
consolidated economic sector around sport, an inventory
of sport-related and supporting activities would need to be
Gerard Julien/Getty Images
was initially predicted, and there are almost always
significant cost overruns (see Maennig and Zimbalist,
International Handbook on the Economics of Mega
Sporting Events, Edward Edgar Publishing Ltd, part II). The
allocation system for most MSEs is effectively an auction
of the right to host an event, and it generally goes to the
highest bidder (Maennig and Zimbalist, part II). There are
clearly good reasons for events to be awarded to countries
demonstrating economic strength and stability, and a
desire to invest in exciting large-scale projects around an
event, and one can see the difficulty in putting forward a
‘low-budget’ bid; Madrid’s offer to host the 2020 Olympiad
got tagged quickly as an ‘austerity’ Games – not the
image the IOC or anyone else is looking for. But realism in
estimating the costs and benefits of hosting the Games is
increasingly being demanded by a cost-conscious public.
For governments, there is no doubt that winning the
right to host an MSE can be a tremendous mobilisation
factor to justify state expenditure on public-sector projects
and to attract inward investment to rejuvenate public
amenities – from stadia to airports and roads. Chris
Gratton reports that for emerging countries such as China
and Brazil, major sporting events are opportunities to
demonstrate their new economic status (see page 20).
There is often criticism that much of the ‘event’ spending
would have happened anyway, down the line, reducing the
estimated beneficial impact of the event. This is doubleedged, however: if a project has been deemed beneficial
per se, its ‘acceleration’ due to MSE spending can be
seen as a benefit in itself. Furthermore, some beneficial
projects just would not get political support without an
MSE. The environmental cleaning of the London Olympic
Park site would probably not have happened at all, or
only in piecemeal fashion, without the Olympics. Moving
beyond the spending issues, sport is an opportunity
for governments to demonstrate their prowess short of
Praetorian boast. The number of gold medals won by
the national team is a matter of national esteem – and
is used as a indicator of a nation’s ‘soft power’.
One of the underlying issues, however, is that in
democracies, the government that wins the right to host
is not always the same government or political party in
power at the time the event takes place. National elections
occur in between (Maennig and Zimbalist, page 164). This
can encourage incumbent governments at the time of event
bidding to over-promise the potential benefits, and enable
administrations incumbent at the time hosting to softpedal on further investment and under-deliver on legacy.
The state seeks to use sport to mobilise society
to reduce its health bill, project soft power, develop
economically and demonstrate national prestige. Hosting
an MSE can also bring a ‘mood’ boost, having a real
psychological effect on a population in general. Unpopular
governments may seek to take advantage by using the
MSE as a ‘distraction’ from social troubles. But this does
not always work (and in the future will probably rarely
work), especially in circumstances when the level of trust
in the state has eroded – as was demonstrated in Brazil
during the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup.
Comment
The ICSS Index seeks to bring about a better balance
between the expectations of sport, society and the state
by providing principles and metrics (a framework) for
decision-making when considering strategic development
of sports sectors. Predicated on assisting cities to develop
and nurture sustainable sports sectors, this programme is
currently in its pilot phase with Marseille-Provence.
Integral to the development of the Index as a diagnostic
tool would be a number of indicators and metrics based
on principles designed to encourage a more equitable
system that so far has governed the economic advantages
associated with hosting major sporting events. Indeed, it
raises the question as to whether these economics ought
to be included in the taxonomy of what constitutes a sports
economy? The Index is currently consulting international
best practices. It will seek as one of its objectives to
deliberately avoid the inclusion of those metrics that could
perpetuate the current systemic imbalances.
However, what needs to be investigated as fundamental
to any such index is the right methodological approach.
In this regard, we need to examine the merits between
an input-oriented approach that embodies a range of
indicators such as the examples listed below:
■■ entrepreneurship (an environment that promotes
innovation, development and risk-taking);
■■ cross-sector collaboration (public-private
partnerships and holistic development);
■■ comprehensive stakeholder engagement;
■■ social inclusion (including minorities and
gender involvement);
■■ cluster proximity (availability of product/
service communities);
■■ effective land asset management;
■■ operational excellence and human
capital stewardship;
■■ knowledge sharing and management
(product knowledge);
■■ governance and transparency;
■■ legacy strategy (long-term sustainable plans
to extend social and economic impact);
■■ environmental management;
■■ cultivation of a sporting culture;
■■ sport security, safety and integrity;
■■ competitive environment;
■■ volunteer culture; and
■■ track record in hosting major events (optional,
as it is relevant to those cities aspiring to host
a major sporting event).
Or, another approach is to structure an Index
based on output-oriented metrics, such as the volume of
sports products, goods and services that are exportable
by a city or country, or by the number of patents that
have been registered, among others. A key step in the
approach is to examine those cities where robust
sports economic sectors exist and to determine which
factors are central to success and then to structure
metrics based on an aggregated view of these success
factors. The ICSS and its academic associates are
currently under taking this research.
This approach is supported by Harvard Professor
Ricardo Hausmann’s research on economic complexity
and the success factors behind productive communities.
One underlying and key factor in the development
of productive communities is effective knowledge
management. An issue if one only focuses on an outputoriented approach is that it would focus predominantly
on exports and possibly not take into consideration the
inward investments from sports tourism and high-profile
matches. This was one of the key motivating factors in
the second wave of sports investment in the late eighties
and early nineties in Britain, as Chris Gratton points out
in his article for the edition.
In addition to the Index, the programme includes
an effort to understand the productive capabilities of
Marseille-Provence, with a view to designing appropriate
interventions that can better leverage the assimilation
of new capabilities. The end objective is to develop
a powerful, dynamic and robust sports economic
community that helps the broader development of
the region. Marseille-Provence is an interesting pilot
opportunity in that it presents not only a wide array of
sports activities such as football, rugby, water sports,
cycling and abseiling, but it is also a rich mixture of
diverse cultures where European, Mediterranean and
North African communities coexist.
The Index as an initiative is intended to help cities,
regions and countries to identify the core sport-oriented
enterprises and to assimilate them and introduce more
structured and innovative interventions so that existing
businesses and those on the periphery of sport can
discover new opportunities to grow sport as a viable
and durable economic sector.
It is envisaged that, through a more structured and
coordinated approach, a more harmonious balance
between sport, society and the state can be accomplished
for the overall benefit of securing sport – not only in
terms of its ethos, but also as an economic activity that
can deliver economic and social benefits to a wider set
of stakeholders in communities. This project is also aimed
at further research and making a contribution to the body
of knowledge related to the social and economic benefits
that sport delivers to society.
For more information on the ICSS Index™ methodology,
or to volunteer for participation in the Index mechanism,
please contact Dr Shaun McCarthy, Director Research
& Development, at [email protected]
13
The role of sport in
soft power projection
Calling a truce during the Olympics dates back to ancient times,
and examples can be seen throughout the Games’ history
14
ACE Stock Limited/Alamy
Gary Armstrong and James Rosbrook-Thompson
examine the history of sport in ‘soft power’ diplomacy
F
rom the truce called during the Ancient
Olympics to the exclusion of Apartheid
South Africa from international competition,
sport has played a surprisingly prominent
role in international affairs and diplomacy through
history. It even figures, most negatively, in
Shakespeare’s Henry V as the French Dauphin
mocks England’s once libertine young King
with an insensitive present of tennis balls.
The following discussions concerning the
use of sport as a tool for diplomacy aim to explore
the capacities and limitations of sport, ultimately
seeking to determine how best the positive values
of sport can be promoted to foster international,
15
inter-cultural understanding, and to recognise when
it should be kept clear of the negotiating room.
The term ‘soft power’ was coined in the 1990s by
Joseph Nye of Harvard University1, and encapsulates the
power to attract and co-opt a partner in order to reach
a desired outcome. On the opposite end of the scale is
‘hard power’, which involves the use of coercion, payment
and hard negotiation as tools to achieving influence
over a particular outcome. History tells us that soft
power can be achieved through arts, culture or charitable
acts, such as hostile countries sending each other relief
aid during times of crisis. It is easy, then, to see how
sport fits into this context; as a practice that can be
both competitive and inclusive, sport can help establish
dialogue and mutual understanding in an arena where
there is only a game to be lost. It thus has the potential
for influencing and furthering diplomatic relations. The
Institute for Government (IfG)-Monocle Soft Power Index,
which attempts to assess states’ relative ability to project
soft power, includes sport in its cultural sub-index through
a count of the number of Olympic gold medals won by a
state at the preceding Summer and Winter Games.
Perhaps the oldest and best-known example of
sport as a form of soft diplomacy – the practice of soft
power – can be observed through the ritual of the Ancient
Olympics. The tradition of the Olympic Truce dates
back to the eighth century BC. The aim of the truce was
to ensure that the host city was not attacked during
games time and that athletes had safe passage to and
from the games. All warfare, legal disputes and death
penalties were suspended during this time, with the
truce lasting as long as three months.
Nic Bothma/Corbis
Athletes carrying their national flags at the Opening Ceremony
of the London 2012 Olympic Games. The London bid team
promised to reach out to young people and connect them to sport
Sport as a means of cultural exchange
Nelson Mandela shakes hands with Springboks captain François
Pienaar after the national team won the Rugby World Cup in 1995.
Rugby was once considered a symbol of white rule in South Africa,
but Mandela used this match to promote mutual understanding
across racial boundaries, uniting the country behind the Springboks
Sarajevo had hosted the 1984 Winter
Olympics, and two years later, in
1996, Palestine was represented
for the first time at the Atlanta
Summer Olympics. In 1998, then
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
invoked the Olympic Truce in an
effort to resolve the crisis in Iraq during the Nagano
Winter Olympics. In 2000, during the opening ceremony
of the Sydney Summer Olympics, North and South Korea
completed the athletes’ parade together under the same
flag – an event greeted with prolonged and widespread
applause from the crowd.
At the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, the Organising
Committee pledged to revive the spirit of the Olympic
Truce by sending the Olympic torch in a relay around the
globe for the first time. The IOC, with support from
The tradition of the Olympic Truce
dates back to the eighth century BC
better prepared a man for the rigours of warfare and
would thus avoid the type of defeat that France had
suffered in the Prussian conflict.
In recent times, the IOC has worked in conjunction
with the United Nations (UN) to revive the truce, with
several notable results. In 1994, after the IOC visited
the beleaguered Bosnian city of Sarajevo as a show of
solidarity, the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
participated in the Barcelona Summer Olympics and
Lillehammer Winter Olympics, despite the ongoing war.
16
Reuters
The founder of the modern International Olympic
Committee (IOC), Pierre de Coubertin, was keen on
the concept of reviving the Olympic Truce. Having
grown up in the aftermath of France’s defeat during the
Franco-Prussian war (1870-71), Coubertin recognised
the value of sport as a means of cultural exchange,
diplomacy and peace promotion. He believed that sport
the UN, called on all nations to suspend warfare for 16
days. During the 2006 Torino Olympic Games, athletes
and officials supported the truce by signing one of three
walls located in the Olympic villages. In 2010, during the
Vancouver Winter Olympics, various peace-promoting
projects were launched under the title Make Your Peace.
With its ability to transcend cultural, ethnic and
geographical barriers, football has played an increasingly
important role in international diplomacy since the 1900s.
The history of football’s soft power influence is a long one.
During the First World War, British and German troops
called a truce over Christmas in 1914. Part of this truce
was a friendly football match played between the two
sides2. In times of peace, the role of football has had more
far-reaching consequences, including acting as a launch
pad for political movements.
In March 1957, under the leadership of the newly
appointed prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana
became the first sub-Saharan African country to achieve
independence from a European power. Nkrumah was
passionate about the power of sport, and recognised the
power that football in particular had to unify and create
a sense of identity. In the same year, the Ghana Amateur
Football Association was officially founded and in 1958 it
was affiliated with the Confederation of African Football
(CAF). Today, CAF continues to organise the Africa Cup
of Nations. Nkrumah’s goals in using football as a vehicle
for diplomacy were twofold: internally, to create a sense
of a unified African continent that would override deepseated tribal and national divisions through the medium of
football; and externally, to raise the profile of the continent
on a global level by showing that African countries could
produce successful professional football teams and
compete at the same level as their European counterparts.
Emancipation through sport
Nkrumah believed that competing as equals on an
international level would lead to the further emancipation
of African countries from their European colonisers.
Africa’s first professional football team, the Ghanaian
Black Stars, was founded in 1957, and Nkrumah charged
Ohene Djan with oversight of Ghana’s football movement.
He also ensured that Ghana was affiliated with FIFA by
1958. Additionally, he established his own club, the Real
17
Republicans, to act as ambassadors for the pan-African
movement and use the message of a unified Africa to
bring players together3. In addition to his use of football
to achieve his two main goals described above, the third
consequence of an Africa with a stronger identity was
political; Nkrumah used football to exert pressure on the
World Cup organisers to gain a more equal footing for
African and Asian nations competing in the tournament.
Nkrumah saw the World Cup as the perfect setting to
promote a united Africa and create a sense of respect for
African football in the international sporting community.
When he realised that African and Asian nations were
each granted only one finals berth at the World Cup, thus
putting them at a disadvantage, he organised a boycott of
the 1966 tournament by all African nations. The result was
a fairer, merit-based allocation of berths. In the decades
that followed, African football has followed a tumultuous
evolutionary path, but it is fair to say that it was the
efforts of Nkrumah and his belief in the diplomatic
importance of sport that led to FIFA having the choice
of three African nations to host the 2010 World Cup.
South Africa was finally selected, and became the first
African country to ever host the tournament.
The role of sport in soft diplomacy can be
observed most poignantly when it opens avenues for
communication between superpowers. Such was the case
in the 1970s and the role of so-called ping-pong diplomacy
in opening lines of communication between the US and
President Jimmy Carter issued an ultimatum that the
US would boycott the Moscow Olympics if Soviet troops
did not withdraw. Subsequently, the entire US delegation
was withdrawn from the games. The US was joined in
the boycott by Japan, West Germany, China, the
Philippines, Argentina and Canada. The United Kingdom,
Australia and France supported the boycott but left the
decision to participate up to their athletes, resulting in
smaller than usual delegations. As a consequence of this
boycott, when Los Angeles hosted the Olympic Games
in 1984, the Soviet Union and 14 Soviet bloc countries
boycotted the games in a tit-for-tat move.
More recently, part of the London 2012 Olympic
Committee’s bid was a promise by the London 2012 bid
team to ‘reach young people all around the world and
connect them to the inspirational power of the Games
so they are inspired to choose sport’. The International
Inspiration programme uses sport as its currency – since
it so easily carries across international borders and
China. In 1971, the US table-tennis team was visiting Japan
for a tournament when they received an invitation to visit
China. They subsequently became the first US delegation
to visit Beijing since 1949. The event paved the way
for Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 and led to a
thawing of relations between the two countries, bringing
China into the arena as a US ally against the Soviet
Union and so creating a pivotal shift in Cold War politics.
At a grassroots level, it helped the US and Chinese
publics to move away from Cold War propaganda and
look for common ground.
As already noted, sport has enormous potential to
bring countries together and open previously closed
avenues of diplomacy. However, due to the very nature
of several sport events, the high profile of sport can
also be used to close down lines of communication and
diplomacy. Sporting boycotts are not a new phenomenon.
The first recorded sports boycott was in 420 BC when
Sparta was banned from the Olympics for breaking the
Olympic Truce. Subsequent Olympic Games have seen
countries either voluntarily withdraw, protest or be barred
from the games for a variety of reasons4.
Sport can be used to achieve a
variety of political and social goals
Olympic boycotts
The most notable example of Olympic boycotts are
the 1980 and 1984 Olympics Games. Moscow was the
appointed host city of the 1980 Summer Olympics.
In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and US
appeals greatly to young people – to improve the lives
of disadvantaged youth across the world. The aim of the
programme was to create a lasting legacy of London’s
Olympic and Paralympic bid. The scheme is designed to
improve the lives of children in several countries, including
Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Jordan,
Malaysia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa,
Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, the United Kingdom and
Zambia. International Inspiration serves as an example
of how young people can be shown that sport improve
lives. This in turn is likely to foster a greater appreciation
of the power of sport diplomacy among such children
when they become adults.
18
PA Images
The role of sport diplomacy
Ping-pong bats depicting former US president, Richard Nixon,
and former Chinese chairman, Mao Zedong. In 1971, the US
table-tennis team became the first US delegation to visit Beijing
since 1949, paving the way for a détente between the countries
boycotts and prejudice, or for political unrest to lead to
the cancelling of sport events for the safety of athletes.
In these cases, sport is transformed from a tool for soft
diplomacy into a vehicle for promoting one political
agenda over another. When sporting events backfire
due to boycotts or terrorist events, the entire nation
suffers. It must also be highlighted that what to one
person is a legitimate form of sport diplomacy may be
to another observer an act of provocation. Examples of
this are in friendly matches, where the visiting nation
may not be welcome in the host country despite the
organiser’s best intentions.
The majority of team sports are ‘invasion’
games; during which one group attempts to enter and
exert their dominance within the territory of another. It
should, therefore, come as no great surprise that the
consideration of sport is by no means confined to the ‘soft’
end of the power continuum; such considerations often
figure in expressions of ‘hard’ power. For example, the
deliberate and targeted bombing of
national sports stadiums in times of
war has led to calls for such acts to
be added to the War Crimes category
of the Geneva Convention. Another
well-known example is the use of
sport in the self-styled ‘civilising
mission’ of the British Empire5,6.
It is precisely because of the power of sport in
international diplomacy that sporting boycotts are
so successful. They achieve the kind of publicity and
acknowledgement that, for example, a boycott of a
film festival would never be able to achieve. It would
perhaps be wise to question whether sport, because of
its presumed absence from politics, has been placed on
a pedestal, and whether other soft avenues of diplomacy
deserve deeper exploration.
As the sphere of global politics continues to evolve, the
role of sport diplomacy has never been more important.
As exemplified here, sport can be used to achieve a variety
of political and social goals, such as providing a neutral
arena for cultural exchange; fostering a sense of personal
and national identity; launching political movements;
launching social initiatives that seek to improve lives
through the medium of sport; reopening channels of
communication between hostile nations; and showing
solidarity for a nation or ethnic group.
That said, it is important to note that there are still
significant gaps in what sport as a diplomatic tool has
been able to achieve. The ability of sport to act as an
effective vehicle for diplomatic outreach is undoubted.
However, striking the right diplomatic balance – to reach
out without overstretching, as it were – is not easy. It is
not uncommon for sporting events to still suffer from
Gary Armstrong is a reader in the School of Sport
and Education at Brunel University in the UK.
James Rosbrook-Thompson is a lecturer in sociology
in the department of Humanities and Social Sciences
at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK
References
1
Nye, J. Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power,
Basic Books, New York, 1990; and Soft Power: The Means to
Success in World Politics, Public Affairs, New York, 2004
2
Eksteins, M. The Rites of Spring, NY: Mariner Books,
New York, 2000
3
Darby, P. Africa and the World Cup: FIFA Politics, Eurocentrism
and Resistance, International Journal of the History of Sport,
2005, vol 22, no 5, pp883-905
4
Goldsmith, M. Sporting Boycotts as a Political Tool,
The Australian Quarterly, The Australian Institute of Policy
and Science, 1995, vol 67, no 1
5
Guttmann, A. Games and Empires: Modern Sport and
Imperialism, Columbia University Press, New York, 1994
6
Mangan, J. The Games Ethic and Imperialism: Aspects of
the Diffusion of an Ideal, Routledge, London, 1998
19
Sport’s role in urban
economic development
I
n the UK, during the 1970s and early 1980s,
government expenditure on sport expanded
considerably. The rationale for this increased
expenditure was that sport made a considerable
contribution to local communities in welfare terms
and, following the publication of the white paper,
Sport and Recreation (Department of the Environment,
1975), it was established that sport should be regarded
as part of the general fabric of the social services.
Most of the increased spending on sport during
this period was made by local government on indoor
sports centres and swimming pools. In 1971, there were
12 indoor sports centres and 440 swimming pools in
Britain; by 1981, there were 461 indoor sports centres
and 964 swimming pools. This expansion came to an
end in the mid-1980s with the public spending cuts
imposed by the Conservative government.
However, just as investment in sport for welfare
reasons began to decline, a second wave of sports
investment swelled up, this time motivated by economic
regeneration. Investment in sport infrastructure in cities
was not aimed primarily at getting the local community
20
involved in sport but was instead aimed at attracting
tourists, encouraging inward investment, and changing
the image of the city. The first example of this new
strategy was seen in Sheffield with the investment of
£147 million ($236 million) in sporting facilities to host
the World Student Games of 1991. There were also the
Olympic bids of Birmingham and Manchester in the
1980s and 1990s. These bids did not immediately result
in investment in facilities since they were unsuccessful,
but substantial expenditure was required just to mount
the bids. More recently, Manchester has spent over
£200 million on sporting venues in order to host the
2002 Commonwealth Games, with an additional
£470 million of expenditure on other non-sporting
infrastructure investment in Sportcity in east Manchester.
In the British context, most of the cities following
this strategy of using sport for economic regeneration
were industrial cities, not normally known as major
tourist destinations. The driver of such policies was
the need for a new image and new employment
opportunities caused by the loss of their historical
industrial base – steel-making in the case of Sheffield.
David Gray/Reuters
Chris Gratton surveys the impact that major sporting events can have
on urban economies, examining the cases of Manchester and Barcelona,
but notes that the long-term economic legacy of events is still far from clear
Australia’s Grant Hackett wins the 1,500 m freestyle in
the Aquatics Centre at the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth
Games – £200 million was spent on venues for the Games
21
The Commonwealth Games held in
Manchester in 2002 involved investment
of £200 million in sporting venues in
the city and a further £470 million
investment in transport and other
infrastructure. At the time, this was by
far the largest investment related to the
hosting of a specific sport event ever
to be undertaken in Britain. It was also
the first time in Britain that planning
for the hosting of a major sport event
was integrated with the strategic
framework for the regeneration of the
city, in particular east Manchester.
In 1999, three years before the
Games were held, the Commonwealth
Games Opportunities and Legacy
Partnership Board was established
West Development Agency in 2004
by Faber Maunsell, in association with
Vision Consulting and Roger Tym and
Partners. The study used secondary
sources and interviews with key
stakeholders. As part of the study, they
measured employment change in east
Manchester between 1999 and 2002,
as revealed by the Annual Business
Inquiry (ABI) data. This showed a 1,450
increase in jobs (both part-time and
full-time) or a four per cent increase
over the 1999 level. However, this is
annual data and therefore it is difficult
to isolate how much of this increase was
due to the Games. The distribution of the
increase in construction (23 per cent),
distribution, hotels and restaurants
There is enough evidence to indicate
that east Manchester has benefited
to manage the legacy of the Games.
Legacy activities were funded under the
2002 North West Economic and Social
Single Regeneration Board Programme,
which operated from 1999 to 2004. This
was the first time in Britain an ambitious
legacy programme was designed around
a major sport event. The objective was
to ensure that the benefits of hosting
the event would not disappear once the
event itself was over, but that rather there
would be a long-term boost to the local
economy of east Manchester.
An assessment of the benefits of the
Games was carried out for the North
(14 per cent), and other services (24 per
cent) jobs is consistent with the Games
having been the main generator of the
increase in employment. Also, out of the
210 new jobs in ‘other services’, 200 of
them were in the ‘recreational, cultural,
and sporting’ category, suggesting again
a significant Games effect.
The net additional value of capital
investment in the Games was estimated
by Faber Maunsell at £670 million,
of which £201 million was for the
sporting venues, and £125 million was
for transport infrastructure. Other major
investment included an Asda-Walmart
In the US, following increased unemployment due to
de-industrialisation in the 1970s and 1980s, cities such
as Indianapolis and Cleveland adopted a similar strategy.
However, in the US, sport-related regeneration strategies
have tended to focus on facilities for domestic professional
team sports rather than on hosting major international
sports events (MSEs). In the rest of Europe and Australia,
we have seen similar city-focused strategies: most notably
in Barcelona with the hosting of the 1992 Olympics; in
Athens with the 2004 Olympics; and in Sydney with the
2000 Olympics. The difference between these cities and
the British and US cases is that they were already major
tourist destinations in their own right prior to hosting
22
superstore occupying 180,000 sq ft
(16,700 sq m) and employing 760
FTE staff and located close to the
main Games stadium.
Using annual tourism data from
the UK Tourism Survey (UKTS) and the
International Passenger Survey (IPS),
Faber Maunsell indicated a 7.4 per cent
increase of overseas residents visitors to
Greater Manchester in 2002, compared
with 2000. However, there was a 6.4
per cent decrease in UK residents visitors
to Greater Manchester over the same
period and a 2.2 per cent decrease in
the number of nights overseas residents
spent in Greater Manchester. Overall
though, there was a 21 per cent increase
in UK residents’ expenditure and a
29 per cent increase in the expenditure
of overseas residents in the Greater
Manchester area in 2002 over 2000.
The Faber Maunsell study does
not give a detailed media analysis of
the Games, indicating only that the
opening and closing ceremonies had
an ‘estimated’ worldwide audience
of one billion. The Commonwealth
Games is an unusual event in that it
does get television coverage across
most continents but is not a global event
in the same way as are the Olympics
and football World Cup. There are key
markets where there will be no coverage
at all. These include the US, the whole
of Europe outside the British Isles,
Japan and China. The event, therefore,
is limited in the potential effect on the
image and profile of the host city.
Some measure of the public-profile
benefits of the Commonwealth Games
is indicated by Manchester moving up
the Olympics and were not facing the same problems of
industrial decline. The objective here was to transform the
image of these cities and elevate them to ‘major world
status’ for both tourism and business.
New economic status
More recently, we have seen emerging economies using
MSEs to indicate their new economic status with Beijing
hosting the 2008 Olympics and Brazil about to host the
2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.
The study of hallmark events or mega-events became
an important part of tourism literature in the 1980s.
Since then the economics of sports tourism at major
Manchester City FC/PA Images
Case study: Commonwealth Games, Manchester 2002
The City of Manchester Stadium, which held the athletics
for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, was renamed the
Etihad Stadium and is now home to Manchester City FC
the European Cities Monitor from 19th
in 2002 to 13th in 2003. The Monitor
is a measure of the best European cities
in which to locate a business compiled
by Cushman & Wakefield Healey &
Baker. It is uses the views of 500 leading
European business professionals to
ascertain the most attractive corporate
locations. For Manchester, it indicates
an improvement in the city’s image from
a business perspective and its greater
potential for inward investment.
Despite the lack of hard evidence
on the economic impact of the Games
on Manchester in 2002, there is
enough evidence to indicate that east
Manchester has benefited considerably.
The City of Manchester stadium is now
used by Manchester City FC as their
home ground, and other sporting venues
sports events has become an increasing part of this event
tourism literature. Many governments around the world
have adopted national sports policies that specify that
hosting a major sport event is a major objective. A broad
range of benefits has been suggested for both the country
and the host city from staging MSEs including: urban
regeneration legacy benefits, sporting legacy benefits,
tourism and image benefits, social and cultural benefits
as well as the direct economic impact benefits generated
by the spending of visitors to such events.
It is well known that cities and countries compete
fiercely to have the privilege of hosting the Olympic
Games or the football World Cup. However, over recent
in east Manchester have become the
English Institute of Sport and are used for
the training of elite athletes. Since much
of the funding for the new investment
for the facilities came from the National
Lottery and central government, this is
a clear economic boost for the area.
We will have to see whether the legacy
benefits are as great as were hoped for,
but the indications are promising.
years there has been increasing competition to host less
globally recognised events in a wide range of other sports
where spectator interest is less assured and where the
economic benefits are not so clear-cut.
It is not a straightforward job, however, to establish a
profit and loss account for a specific event. MSEs require
investment in new sports facilities and often this is paid
for in part by central government or even international
sports bodies. Thus some of this investment expenditure
represents a net addition to the local economy since the
money comes in from outside. Also, such facilities remain
after the event has finished, acting as a platform for future
activities that can generate additional tourist expenditure.
23
Longer-term benefits of hosting major sport events
The Olympic park in Beijing. Emerging countries
like China and Brazil are using major sporting
events to indicate their new economic status
View Stock/Alamy
Although it is still too early to assess
completely the urban regeneration
legacy benefits of Manchester 2002, it
should be possible to assess the longterm benefits of events held 15 or 20
years ago. Unfortunately, there are few
research studies that attempt to measure
systematically such long-term benefits.
There is some evidence, however, that
the summer Olympics do generate a
legacy benefit, one example being the
case of the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.
Research has analysed the benefits
to Barcelona in 2002, 10 years after
hosting the games. The research showed
an almost 100 per cent increase in hotel
capacity, number of tourists, and number
of overnight stays in 2002 compared to
the pre-Games position in 1990.
Sports events are increasingly seen as part of a
broader tourism strategy aimed at raising the profile of
a city and therefore success cannot be judged on simply
profit and loss basics for the event itself. Often the
attraction of events is linked to a re-imaging process and,
in the case of many cities, is invariably linked to strategies
of urban regeneration and tourism development.
Cities staging major sports events have a unique
opportunity to market themselves to the world. Increasing
competition between broadcasters to secure broadcasting
rights to major sports events has led to a massive
escalation in fees for such rights, which in turn means
broadcasters give blanket coverage at peak times for such
events, enhancing the marketing benefits to the cities
that stage them. Such benefits might include a notional
value of exposure achieved from media coverage, and the
associated place marketing effects related to hosting and
Sport has the potential to generate substantial
economic and social returns on local government
investment in the sports industry. However, although some
evidence is available on the immediate economic benefits
of sports events and sports tourism, many of the wider,
longer-term economic benefits to a local community have
been poorly researched, and more data is needed.
The average room occupancy had
also increased from 71 per cent to
84 per cent. In addition, the average
length of stay had increased from 2.84
days to 3.17 days.
In 1990, the majority (51 per cent)
of tourists to Barcelona originated from
the rest of Spain, with 32 per cent from
the rest of Europe, and the remainder
(17 per cent) from outside Europe. By
2001, the absolute number of Spanish
tourists had actually risen by 150,000,
but given the near doubling in the
number of tourists overall, this higher
total only accounted for 31 per cent
of the total number of tourists. The
proportion of tourists from the rest of
Europe went up from 32 per cent to
40 per cent (representing an absolute
increase of around 800,000) and from
the rest of the world from 17 per cent to
29 per cent (representing an absolute
increase of around 600,000).
Overall infrastructure investment
prior to the Games was $7.5 billion
compared with a budget of around
$1.5 billion for the Olympic Committee
to stage the games. The Olympics in
Barcelona at the time were the most
expensive ever staged. However,
Barcelona’s use of the Games as a city
marketing factor is generally regarded
as a huge success.
This is evidenced by Barcelona’s rise
in ranking from 11th in 1990 to sixth in
2002 in the European Cities Monitor,
which surveys senior executives on the
best European corporate locations.
The Montjuïc Communications Tower, built to transmit
television coverage of the 1992 Olympics, was part of
Barcelona’s $7.5 billion Games infrastructure investment
Economic regeneration
It is clear, though, that in both North America and Europe
the strategic thinking regarding economic regeneration
and sport has been dominated by a focus on attracting
sports tourists, either spectators or participants, to a city
or region. Such strategies have been relatively easy to
‘sell’ to taxpayers in the local economy since the economic
argument has been reinforced by the additional generation
of social and environmental benefits.
Whether such benefits
justify the expenditure involved
is, however, a difficult question
to answer. When the money for
sporting infrastructure investment
is provided by local taxpayers, as it
was for the World Student Games
in Sheffield, the question arises
of whether other projects might have provided better
returns to the local community. When the money comes
primarily from outside the local community, as it did for
the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, then it is an
unequivocal benefit to the local community in economic
terms but may not be the best use the funds nationally.
So far we simply do not have adequate evidence to
make judgements of this type. The evidence that we do
have relates only to the economic impact immediately
after an event has been held. There is a need for research
to concentrate on the wider urban regeneration benefits
that sport has the potential to deliver, both over time and
beyond the impact on tourism.
broadcasting an event which might encourage visitors to
return in future, or alternatively an investigation into any
sports development impacts, which may encourage young
people to get more involved in sport.
In theory then, there is a wide range of economic
benefits that sports events can generate. The potential
long-term advantages to a city of hosting MSEs such
as the summer Olympics can be substantial: newly
constructed event facilities and infrastructure, urban
revival, enhanced international reputation, increased
tourism, improved public welfare, additional employment
and increased inward investment. In practice, however,
there is also a possible downside to hosting such
events, including: high construction costs of sporting
venues and other related investments, in particular in
transport infrastructure; temporary congestion problems;
displacement of other tourists due to the event; and
underutilised elite sporting facilities after the event,
which are of little use to the local population.
24
Chris Gratton is Professor of Sport Economics and
Co-director of the Sport Industry Research Centre at
Sheffield Hallam University, UK. He also sits on the
EU Workshop on Sport and Economics and chairs
Sport England’s Active People Expert Advisory Group
Ken Kaminesky/Corbis
Cities staging major sports events have a
unique opportunity to market themselves
25
Fight or flight:
sports sponsorship and
market-driven morality
Simon Chadwick examines the complex relationship between sports
property owners, sponsors and the public as major sporting events are
increasingly being used as platforms for the expression of social discontent
Janie Airey/Getty Images
F
26
inancial support in return for an association
with success or popularity is hardly a new
phenomenon in the world of sport, with
records showing that even in Roman times
gladiators received forms of patronage that we would
today recognise as ‘sponsorship’. In recent decades,
however, the relationship between sponsors and
sporting bodies (in all senses) has become more
complex, to the extent that there is now widespread
debate about the organisational and managerial
challenges facing sponsors and the events with
which they seek to associate.
During the 20th century, a North American model
of sport began to predominate and this has had a
profound impact on the 21st century landscape in
which sport now operates. The essence of this model is
that markets rather than governments ought to dictate
sporting activity and that such activity should be funded
privately rather than by the public purse. As a result, the
United States has effectively become the home of sport
sponsorship, something akin to a ‘funding father’.
The numbers backing this up are significant; for
example, between 2007 and 2013, $14.9 billion was
spent on sponsorship in the United States. Several of
27
EPA European Pressphoto Agency b.v./Alamy
the world’s largest ever sponsorship deals have also been
American, including an eye-watering 2003 Nextel deal that
netted NASCAR $700 million. Yet sponsorship growth has
been so dramatic that its impact is no longer confined
to North America. Indeed, PwC recently estimated that
annual global sponsorship revenues will exceed $45 billion
by 2015 (representing almost one-third of a global sport
market estimated to be worth $145.3 billion).
Sponsorship as a global model
In other words, just as sponsorship has always been a
principle source of funding in the US sport model, it now
plays a significant role in the funding of sport worldwide.
For instance, the London Olympics in 2012 cost the UK
approximately £9 billion ($14 billion) to host. To cover the
cost of the Games, around £1 billion was raised through
sponsorship. For global corporations signing deals with
organisations like the International Olympic Committee
(IOC), this in turn can mean big outlays. For instance, it
is widely held that the going rate for a summer/winter
Olympic Games package costs the likes of Coca Cola or
McDonalds around $100 million. Yet sponsorship does not
just enable events to take place, it can also prevent them
happening: the 2011 PGA Madrid Masters golf tournament,
for example, was cancelled due to lack of sponsorship.
Sponsorship has been variously described as a
transaction, a relationship, as a strategic alliance and as
a value-adding partnership. Historically, it involved an
exchange of money (or other benefits in-kind) in return
for legal rights of association with an athlete, a team, a
club, a stadium or an event (commonly referred to as
‘properties’). While, clearly, there are benefits to these
properties in terms of financing, there is a wide range of
benefits for the sponsors too. Though there is an on-going
debate about the impact that sponsorship can have upon
sales, it is most generally held that sponsorship is a good
awareness raising medium for corporations, their brands
and their products. The benefits are that consumers will
become more aware of them, will be more readily able
to recall them, and better able to connect them to the
properties with which they are associated. The cognitive
process underpinning these benefits can also lead
consumers to transfer the image of a property onto
a sponsor; therefore, sponsor an exciting, glamorous
athlete or team, and consumers will confer this image
upon your corporation or brand.
However, the complexity of the link between
sponsorship cognition and consumer behaviour has
been brought into focus by some recent events in world
sport. In particular, issues around political and social
unrest in countries like Bahrain and Brazil have caused
unease among sponsors of events in these countries.
Similarly, some people remain cynical about the link
between sponsors and events, questioning the extent to
which an investment by the former in a country hosting
the latter might be seen as condoning, for example,
a particular political system, set of religious beliefs
or approaches to social problems. The importance of
this issue is especially sharp: corporations spend large
28
Cars in action during the 2013 Formula One Grand Prix
in Bahrain. The event was staged against a backdrop of
confrontations stemming from political issues
amounts of money on sponsorship in anticipation of a
return on investment (ROI). This return is sometimes
measured by peoples’ purchase behaviour of products
sold by sponsors (although there is actually no compelling
evidence to indicate that sponsorships directly increase
sales). Alternatively, ROI is measured in terms of peoples’
cognitions, that is – how they perceive and respond to
sponsors and their products. In either case, any form of
controversy in a host nation is likely to concern event
sponsors, who will worry about the extent to which difficult
situations will undermine ROI, however it is assessed.
The case of the Bahrain Grand Prix
In Bahrain, political and constitutional issues have led to
confrontations in the gulf state that have in turn resulted
in violence and a number of deaths. Against this backdrop,
the country’s Formula One (F1) Grand Prix has continued
to be staged. Senior world motorsport officials, like Bernie
Ecclestone, have stressed that F1 has a contract to run
the race, which will be honoured. However, F1 drivers have
been rather more cautious, indeed some have previously
called for the race to be cancelled.
It is among sponsors, though, that there has been the
most obvious reaction. No sponsors have yet withdrawn
in response to Bahrain’s difficult internal situation, but
several have made some significant statements about it.
At the 2013 race, the financial institution UBS decided
to retain its right of association with the event but not to
activate the deal (activation is the accompanying set of
activities a sponsor normally engages in – like corporate
hospitality and promotional activity). Meanwhile, Thomson
Reuters, a partner of the Williams team, decided to has no
visible branding presence throughout the race weekend. In
to widespread interest in the ‘global game’. Trouble had
been brewing for some time in Brazil, and one would
imagine that World Cup sponsors have been monitoring
the situation both with a degree of moral consternation
and with an element of commercial concern. For several
years, the Brazilian government has been engaged in
‘pacification’ operations, a strategy for dealing with
violent crime in favelas across the country. Many Brazilian
citizens claim their society is now
safer as a result; a likely relief for
FIFA and the IOC and also for the
sponsors that will be associated
with the World Cup and Olympic
Games: their sponsorship investment
is now much safer than it might have
been. However, it is a tough call for
them: commercial benefit, profit and forced relocation of
local populations do not necessarily make for the most
effective marketing mix.
Yet it was during the Confederations Cup itself that
sponsors were probably most alarmed. What started out
as a popular protest against bus fare increases, rapidly
became a demonstration of general dissatisfaction with
Brazilian society, economy, government and politics.
Caught in the midst of this were local and global sponsors
Issues around political and social unrest
have caused unease among sponsors
the minds of consumers, sponsors clearly second-guessed
that death, violence, protest and anger were unlikely to
play out well in local bank branches and shops across
the world, especially when accompanied by intense
media scrutiny.
The situation in Brazil during the 2013 FIFA
Confederations Cup was another example of a sporting
event attracting ‘the wrong kind of publicity’: certainly
the local protests attracted more media attention due
29
such as Emirates, Sony and Visa. Whether they liked it
or not, these corporations very quickly became tainted
by association (although none made any formal public
statements about what was happening in Brazil). More
problematic still for such corporations was the way
in which unrest escalated to become a conduit for a
much broader range of issues such as Brazilian taxation
policy and globalisation. What emerged during the
protests was that Swiss-based FIFA had been granted
tax exemptions, resulting in protests about the negative
aspects of globalisation breaking out. At the heart of
this globalist protest agenda were, entirely predictably,
global corporations like Emirates, Sony and Visa. For the
time-being at least, the problem has subsided; however,
it will come back again, not just in 2014 and 2016, but
for as long as sport retains its links to business through
sponsorship programmes.
With sport and its events increasingly being funded
from sponsorship coffers, and significant levels of financial
resource being allocated to sponsorship by corporations
seeking value-adding benefits through their associations
with sporting events, the experiences in Bahrain and
Brazil raise some interesting questions. Sponsorship has
become a more strategic activity over the past decade
or so, to the extent that decisions to engage or withdraw
are significant at a corporate level. Competitive pressures
have heightened the sense that such decisions need to be
considered ones. It would be very easy for a corporation to
take flight from a deal when faced with problems linked to
local politics. The difficulty is, however, that corporations
would potentially lose substantial marketing benefits if
they did so. Moreover, in terms of competitive strategy,
The decision to take such a stance is consistent with
a currently emerging agenda in sport: that a sense of
corporate social responsibility should be enshrined within
sponsorship deals. In response to violence, protest, and
civil disorder some corporations may take the view that
not being seen to condone such activity is an important
part of their social agenda in sponsoring sport events.
How to respond to instances of political violence,
endemic corruption or widespread civil unrest in the
host nation of a sporting event is therefore an emerging
challenge for sponsors. This demands that corporations
have a notion of what is morally acceptable or
unacceptable in the target markets
where they do business. If the
perception were that consumers
found a sponsor’s involvement in, for
instance, the Bahrain F1 Grand Prix
to be abhorrent, then corporations
and brands would have to make
calls on the extent to which this
affects consumer cognitions of, and behaviours towards,
them. The fight or flight decision in this context therefore
becomes one of market-driven morality.
it might be an ill-considered move as rivals are often
close-by, monitoring opportunities to secure a commercial
advantage through replacing existing sponsors with new
deals. Premature termination of a sponsorship contract
might also provoke legal action and has the potential
to incur defence costs.
The corporate response
The notion that sponsors can ‘fight’ or ‘take flight’ has
recently taken on new dimensions. In an instance of ‘fight’,
the case of Australian sportswear corporation Skins is an
interesting one. Faced with handling and mitigating the
damage to its brand caused by repeated doping scandals
in cycling (a sport in which the company has made a
significant investment), Skins decided to seek opportunity
in adversity. Hence, the corporation’s founder, Jaimie
Fuller, has ensured that the company remains a sponsor
in the sport, yet has repositioned the brand to create a
proposition that Skins is at the heart of ‘clean’ sport.
In order to support this proposition, Fuller established
the ‘Change Cycling Now’ movement.
Instead of fighting, some corporations may choose
to take flight from problematic event sponsorship deals.
The potential for commercial damage can be so great
that some sponsors decide that ‘flight’ is the only option.
When the Benetton-Renault F1 team was found guilty of
race-fixing at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, Dutch bank
ING immediately terminated its deal with the team. For a
brand, product, and company founded on the importance
of trust, integrity and security, the association with a
property that fundamentally undermined these values led
to there being a sense of inevitability in their response.
Sponsorship has become a more
strategic activity over the past decade
Sponsors as mediators
Stringer/Reuters
A demonstration outside Brazil’s National Congress
calling for the country’s public services to be brought
up to the standards of the World Cup stadiums
30
seek to enforce measures aimed at protecting not only the
physical security of events but also their economic value.
For example, in the light of recent civil unrest in Brazil
one can envisage the environment around sponsors at
the 2014 World Cup needing to be controlled in a much
more careful and systematic way.
Such moves may, however, prove to be problematic; at
the event level, there has already been significant disquiet
about growing corporate involvement in sport (through
sponsorship). During the 2012 Olympic Games in London,
there was widespread condemnation of the sometimes
draconian enforcement of ambush marketing laws.
The power of market-driven morality should not be
underestimated by either sporting events or by sponsors.
Effectively, sponsors serve as moderators and mediators
in relationships between consumers and events. Yet rather
than needing to sense or perceive a prevailing moral code,
it might be forced upon sponsors by consumers as well
as society in general. With the rise of social media and
the attendant global emergence of the Occupy movement,
sponsors, events and the organisations that own or run
events are likely to be susceptible to direct action from a
range of disaffected groups.
As a portent of what could happen at sporting megaevents in the future, it should serve as a salutary lesson
to the likes of FIFA, the IOC, Coca-Cola and McDonalds
that 600,000 people are thought to have shut down
their bank accounts in November 2011 as part of the
‘Occupy’ movement’s campaign of direct action. It is
entirely legitimate therefore to envisage a scenario where,
for example, protest groups arise focusing attention on
‘Occupy FIFA’ or ‘Occupy Brazil 2014’. The question for
sponsors in such a situation would seem to be: where do
you want to be as a corporation and as a brand when that
happens, and how will you respond?
If sponsorship is to retain its current role in sport, the
implication is that both event owners and host nations will
need to protect their official sponsors or else change the
sponsorship model they employ. This happens to an extent
already as the IOC in particular obliges host nations to
pass legislation designed to protect their partners against
sponsorship ambushing. FIFA also recently pressed the
Brazilian government to change its law governing the
consumption of alcohol in sports stadiums (ahead of
Budweiser’s sponsorship of the 2014 World Cup). As such,
it is entirely feasible that event owners in the future may
Sports fans and spectators railed against, for instance,
the confiscation of items that rivalled the products of
official Games sponsors. At the same time, businesses
that had no formal or legal right of association, but which
were seeking some commercial benefit from the UK’s
staging of the Games, protested against being prevented
from getting close to the Games. Just how palatable
enforcement measures might therefore be is, for the time
being, a moot point. Indeed, official sponsors may find
protective measures counter-productive if they disaffect
consumers to such an extent that they start building
negative brand associations or, worse still, start boycotting
sponsors and their products. Moreover, there are some
related precedents of this already: during the 2010 FIFA
World Cup, several women working for the Dutch beer
brand Bavaria were arrested for their part in staging a
sponsorship ambush. Such was the furore surrounding
this case that, even though it was an official sponsor of the
tournament, Budweiser felt compelled to publicly distance
itself from FIFA and the South African police’s pursuit of
the matter, fearing a consumer backlash against them.
There will be some big calls to make on the fields,
tracks and courts of Brazil over the next few years, as
there always are at every sporting mega-event. But there
are also some big calls to be made off the pitch. As
sport’s dependence on sponsorship has grown and as
corporations commit ever more heavily to spending
on sponsorship of events, so the complexity of managing
sponsorship has developed. With sponsors needing to
secure a return on their investment in order to justify their
involvement in events, event owners and host nations will
need to think more carefully about how to protect their
financially irreplaceable partners. But the receptiveness
of consumers, pressure groups and the general public
to such moves may itself prove problematic.
Professor Simon Chadwick is the Director of the
Centre for the International Business of Sport at
Coventry University in the UK
31
Social and legal factors
in the decline of English
football hooliganism
Richard Giulianotti draws attention to the social and economic changes
in the UK that, along with changes in policing and legislation, have helped
to eradicate the worst examples of hooliganism from English football
A crowd of football fans falls over a broken fence
at the 1985 Liverpool-Juventus European Cup Final.
Riots in the stands before kick-off led to crushing,
causing 39 deaths and hundreds of injuries
32
Gianni Foggia/AP/PA Images
“W
here hooliganism was once described
as ‘the English disease’, we now set
an example for others to follow,”
argued the UK Police Minister Damian
Green in November 2012, when it was announced that
arrests at football matches in England and Wales stood at
an all-time low. Most attention on how this transformation
occurred has centred on the criminal justice system and
the assemblage of anti-hooligan legal measures and
policing strategies that have been introduced in England.
As Green observed, the success of efforts to eradicate
hooliganism has attracted police officers and football
officials who come from around the world to learn from
English security expertise. However, many different factors
and issues lie behind the decline in football-related
violence and disorder in England. The picture is complex
and, in many ways, carries a distinctive national imprint.
While legal measures and policing methods have certainly
made major contributions, so too have a much wider set
of social factors and processes. All of these influences
should be considered closely by international police forces,
football organisations and national governments when
assessing what they might learn from the ‘English model’.
To begin, it is worth recording how dramatic the
transformation in English football has been. Back in
the mid-1980s, the English game was stained by a
worldwide reputation for hooliganism as English
fans were regularly involved in major disturbances
in European competitions at both club and national
levels, notably the 1980 European Championships
and the 1982 World Cup finals in Spain.
The most serious incident occurred, of course, at
the Liverpool-Juventus European Cup final in Brussels
in 1985, where 39 fans of the Italian club were killed due
to crowd-crushing, after seeking to escape attacks by
English supporters. English teams were subsequently
banned from international competition for five years.
At national level, recurring episodes of fan violence
were relentlessly and eagerly reported; perhaps the
most notorious was the Luton-Millwall FA Cup fixture
in 1985, when scores of visiting fans invaded the pitch
and, hurling missiles, pursued the police.
Fast forward to 2013, and the initial picture is very
different: English club stadiums appear orderly and
pacified, football-related arrest figures are low, and
England’s international image has been substantially
reinvented. Security assured, the English Premier League
has gone on to become the world’s most lucrative
league, generating an estimated £3.1 billion ($4.9 billion).
The hosting of the London 2012 Olympics without any
serious incident has further improved the wider UK
reputation for security and safety in sport.
Fan violence: focus for legal intervention
Certainly, from the mid-1980s onwards, fan violence
became a significant focus for legal intervention and new
police methods. A raft of football-related legislation was
passed for England and Wales, which included the:
■■ Public Order Act 1986, which introduced
stadium exclusion orders;
■■ Football Spectators Act 1989, which among
other things introduced restriction orders on
some fans travelling abroad;
■■ Football Offences Act 1991, which criminalised
missile throwing, indecent and racist chanting
and pitch invasions;
■■ Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994,
which enhanced police ‘stop and search’ powers
and criminalised the act of ‘causing intentional
harassment, alarm or distress’;
■■ Football Disorder Act 2000, which further
extended police powers over banning orders; and
33
1989 Hillsborough disaster, which occurred at the FA Cup
semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest,
and saw 96 Liverpool fans fatally injured due to crowd
crushing inside one section of the stadium. The 2012
Independent Report into the disaster found that crowd
safety had been ‘compromised at every level’, as policing
and stewarding was based on ‘a mindset predominantly
concerned with crowd disorder’. The report also confirmed
that police officers had deflected blame for the disaster
onto supporters, notably by altering witness statements
and feeding false stories to politicians and media. Police monitor a Watford vs Burnley football match. The
introduction of all-seated stands made it easier for police
to observe fan activities, and to intervene where necessary
Mike Goldwater/Alamy
Civil liberties issues
■■
Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006, which
empowered police to move people on if alcoholrelated offences might occur, and removed time
limitations on football banning orders.
UK football was required to follow the Taylor Report,
published in 1990, which recommended that all stadiums
in leading divisions should become all-seated for safety
and security reasons. All-seated stands effectively
removed the free movement of football crowds, making it
easier for police to observe fan activities and to intervene
in order to remove offenders. Football banning orders have
also come to be used extensively to prevent ‘potential
troublemakers’ from travelling to fixtures in the UK or
overseas; in the year to November 2012, 2,750 bans ■
were in force in England and Wales.
Anti-hooliganism strategies
In addition to legal measures and regulations, UK police
forces pioneered a range of anti-hooliganism technologies
and strategies. The use of police ‘spotters’ – to identify,
monitor and remove perceived troublemakers – had
already been a long-standing practice in English football.
CCTV systems were introduced in and around stadiums
from the late 1980s onwards; their subsequent popularity
among leading police officers and politicians led to
the generalised spread of CCTV networks across UK
34
public spaces. Other technical innovations included
the ‘hoolivan’, a mobile police vehicle which filmed fan
activity; and the use of video faxes at the 1996 European
Championships in England, to assist with informationgathering on supporters inside stadiums. UK police
forces established dedicated football-related intelligence
centres at local and national levels, which contributed to
the building of ‘hooligan databases’. Police conducted
dawn raids (often with television crews in attendance) on
perceived leaders within football hooligan groups. Even
the rapid rise in admission prices to top-division football
fixtures was presented as having a security impact by
squeezing out some of the more violent fans, who tended
to come from poorer backgrounds.
Many of these diverse criminal justice interventions
have had direct, if uneven, impacts in reducing footballrelated disorder. Indeed, many such initiatives have
become standard measures and practices in European
football and more widely, notably all-seated stadiums,
CCTV systems, intelligence gathering, and, in some ■
cases, the commercialisation of sport in order to attract
more wealthy spectators and consumers.
However, some critics have argued that significant
aspects of these criminal justice interventions have
harboured major flaws. The most powerful criticism is that
enforcing public order was prioritised over safeguarding
public safety. The most disastrous consequence was the
Other criticisms have been extended to aspects of English
legal and policing intervention in football. The main points
here have centred on civil liberties issues, for example in
cases where peaceful football supporters are adversely
affected by police interventions; the negative impacts
of tighter social controls on football’s atmosphere, with
some stadiums criticised for becoming over-priced, overregulated, too quiet, and ‘sanitised’; the rules regarding
all-seated stadiums, as many supporter groups argue that
standing areas may be safely reintroduced; and the lack
of success of some measures, for example as many court
cases collapsed against fans arrested in ‘dawn raids’. Moreover, it
should be noted that
UK social policies and
policing strategies on
football hooliganism
have undergone some
significant U-turns. Two
crucial examples arise ■
here from the late 1980s.
First, the Taylor Report
drove a greater focus on safety within football and
insisted, for example, on the removal of stadium ■
perimeter fencing that had proved fatal at Hillsborough.
Second, in the late 1980s, the Conservative government
led by Margaret Thatcher had been committed to
introducing a national football membership scheme for ■
all spectators attending matches at designated grounds.
The proposed scheme had been highly controversial, ■
being opposed by many clubs and fan groups. Following
further criticism in the Taylor Report on the grounds
of safety, the scheme was subsequently dropped from
planned legislation. This correction of policy on football
exists in contrast to the recent advent of supporter
membership schemes in Italian football.
In addition to these points on ‘top-down’ criminal
justice interventions, it is important to recognise a broader
set of social factors – many of which were ‘bottom up’ –
that contributed to the decline and marginalisation of fan
violence, and to the transformation of English football.
First, important social changes occurred from the late
1980s onwards within UK football supporter subcultures
themselves. Football hooliganism had been largely driven
by self-identifying ‘hooligan’ groups who were competing
for status with rival ‘firms’ at other clubs. In the early
and mid-1980s, these groups had developed a particular
casual subcultural style, largely demarcated by the
wearing of branded sportswear and designer menswear.
The size of these self-identifying football hooligan groups
declined markedly from the late 1980s, primarily because
participants grew older and out of these groups, or were
drawn instead into other youth styles and movements,
particularly the rave, dance and acid house scenes. Thus,
grassroots social changes such as these within supporter
subcultures can play critical roles in reducing the scale
and activities of hooligan formations.
Second, football supporters in general developed
stronger political representation and expression. Following
the Hillsborough disaster, the Football Supporters’
Association, led by Rogan Taylor, became a powerful and
thoughtful advocate for the civil rights of fans, arguing
for improved stadium conditions while emphasising
that only a small minority of supporters were involved
in violence or disorder. In addition, the football ‘fanzine’
(fan magazine) movement emerged across the UK, to
convey the diverse and irreverent views of supporters on
a plethora of issues within football. Football fanzines also
contributed to progressive social campaigns on other
issues within football, such as racism. At international
tournaments, ‘fan embassies’ were opened by supporter
organisations in order to
assist visiting fans, and
also served to promote a
stronger image for English
visitors among local hosts
and media. Overall, these
fan movements helped
to empower football
supporters, placed the
problem of hooliganism
into context, highlighted the critical importance of safety
in stadiums and promoted a better dialogue between
supporters and the wider authorities.
Important social changes
occurred from the late
1980s onwards
Changing public portrayal
Third, in the post-Hillsborough context, the mass media
and politicians also changed the ways in which football
supporters were publicly portrayed and discussed. In ■
the 1980s, there had been a recurring ‘moral panic’
on English football fans, as incidents of violence were
amplified or sensationalised, and as supporters were
portrayed as inherently violent and disorderly. In
the 1990s, this coverage of fans changed, becoming
much more nuanced as sensationalised stories and
condemnatory discourses declined. There was also ■
greater recognition that the vast majority of fans were
not involved in football-related violence. Indeed, more
sympathetic stories began to appear on how English ■
fans travelling to football fixtures in Europe were badly
treated or provoked by opposing supporters or host
police officers. In addition, it was recognised that football
hooliganism had not disappeared entirely, while outbreaks
of disorder that did occur tended to be reported in notably
less excited or doom-laden ways.
35
Barrington Coombs/PA Images
Simon Bellis/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Blackpool mascots hold an anti-racism sign for the
Let’s Kick it Out of Football campaign, which is backed
by sports bodies. Fanzines have also helped to create
progressive social movements on issues within football
Legal and economic transformations in the mass
media sector partly underpinned these changes.
Media deregulation enabled new commercial satellite
broadcasters to develop, with Sky television (led by
News International, which also owned three leading
UK newspapers) investing heavily in English football
by buying the rights to live fixtures. Hence, there was a
built-in media interest in working to promote the positive
image of English football. There has also been a vast
increase in the coverage of football in media, magazines,
and fanzines, and subsequently online and through
social media. This has enabled football supporters to
acquire a far greater and more varied range of outlets
for expressing their views on the game, including how
it is policed and regulated. Thus, overall, major changes
in the media landscape may help to shift public and
political focus from football hooliganism.
Following from this, and fourth, there is the now
familiar story of the economic and cultural reinvention of
English football from the late 1980s and early 1990s to
consider. The English game came to be presented as more
glamorous, cosmopolitan, media-savvy and intellectually
vibrant. In 1990, the England team reached the semi-finals
of the World Cup finals in Italy, generating enormous
interest with millions of television viewers watching the
final game. The entry of satellite television in the early
1990s transformed the finances of top-level English club
football, with live coverage of fixtures reaching rapidly
growing national and international audiences, while
supporting the recruitment of world-leading players. A new
wave of fan literature also appeared, reflecting football’s
36
growing stock among middle-class and well-educated
audiences; the book Fever Pitch by the Cambridgeeducated writer and Arsenal fan Nick Hornby was in the
vanguard of this new genre. Thus, the economic and
cultural reinvention of football served to marginalise
further the significance of spectator violence in football.
In the 1990s, Sky television invested heavily in English football
and bought the rights to live fixtures, spurring increased media
interest in promoting a positive image of English football
Significant grassroots developments
Fifth, the transformed identity of English football itself
had a nearby model to consider following, north of
the border in Scotland. Like the English model, while
top-down legal and policing measures tended to be
highlighted, significant grassroots developments were
also important in Scotland. By the early 1990s, the fans
of the Scottish national team had acquired a very positive
international reputation, receiving praise and awards for
their friendly, gregarious and boisterous behaviour at
matches and tournaments abroad. This stood in some
contrast to the prior image of Scottish football, and its
association with violence and disorder at national and
international levels. Regular references were made by
key stakeholders in English football to how England
might ‘learn from the Scots’.
To summarise the changes in Scotland in terms
of top-down measures, policing had become more
coordinated and there was a tightening of legal
regulations on alcohol consumption and drunkenness
in football contexts. However, it might be argued that
bottom-up changes within supporter subcultures,
particularly at national level, were more significant.
In the early 1980s, Scottish fans who were attending
matches and tournaments abroad became much more
self-conscious about their public image, and began to
deliberately adjust their behaviour and demeanour in
order to enhance their treatment by hosts. The aim
here was to promote positive images of Scottishness,
while also defining themselves clearly against their
English rivals, who were otherwise defined as hooligans
by international audiences. There was also greater
restraint in Scottish media reporting of fan disorder,
to the extent that ‘de-amplifying’ of football hooliganism
occurred in Scotland. Thus, while Scotland represents
a distinctive case in many ways, the marginalisation of
football hooliganism did involve, in broad terms, a mix
of top-down initiatives and bottom-up changes that was
later evidenced in England.
To conclude, European and other international police
forces and sport officials should take into account the full
range of top-down measures and bottom-up developments
that have led to the reduction in fan-related violence in
England. First, in regard to security, they need to examine
carefully how these measures have been implemented
in England, how some have been dropped or radically
adjusted, and how some have significant social sideeffects and impacts. Second, outside observers should
recognise that legal and policing measures are not the
single magic bullet, and that there are more complex,
interrelated factors and processes that may lead to the
decline or marginalisation of football-related violence.
Third, from among these various additional factors,
we might highlight in particular the role of supporters.
In England (as in Scotland), important changes occurred
within the relevant supporter subcultures, while the
contribution of organised fan movements has also
been positive. However, in the UK, the safety and
security benefits of strong fan representation in football
continue to be undervalued, particularly compared with
other European countries; an issue that will be explored
in depth in the next edition of ICSS journal.
Richard Giulianotti is Professor of Sociology at
Loughborough University in the UK and Visiting
Professor at Telemark University College in Norway
37
“Imagine football
without fans” –
or without the police
I
s professional football in Europe a safe and
enjoyable event for fans? Several recent incidents,
interventions and measures imposed suggest that
there is still some way to go in building a proper
understanding and constructive relationship between
football fans and those responsible for policing events.
In Germany on 21 August 2013, FC Schalke played
PAOK Saloniki. Schalke fans had put up a fan banner
of a linked group displaying the former national flag of
the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM).
This flag, according to police statements, had provoked
PAOK supporters who allegedly threatened to invade
the pitch, although this is denied by PAOK supporters.
38
As a reaction, more than 100 police officers in riot gear,
equipped with batons and pepper spray, made their
way into a reportedly peaceful Schalke fan section to
remove the banner. As a result, 87 people were injured
by pepper spray and batons, including paramedics
who wanted to help the injured but were at first not
allowed into the section.1
In Spain on 7 September 2013, Cádiz played
Algeciras. Members of the fan groups Brigadas
Amarillas and Bukaneros organised a choreographed
display in the minutes before the match which
celebrated the 20th anniversary of their friendship as
fan groups beyond rivalries. The display contained no
Christof Koepsel/Bongarts/Getty Images
Citing examples of heavy-handed police tactics and the response they prompt
from supporters – “Imagine football without fans” – Daniela Wurbs argues
for greater dialogue with supporters groups, pointing to the evidence of reduced
numbers of incidents when more inclusive policing strategies have been adopted
Police entering the FC Schalke stands during a Champions’
League qualifier with PAOK to deal with provocations. The
police were criticised for their heavy-handed approach
during the incident, in which 87 people were injured
39
Football Supporters Europe
Football Supporters Europe (FSE) is the
biggest independent, representative
and democratically organised umbrella
association of football supporters in
Europe. FSE has members in currently
more than 40 countries across Europe
representing more than three million
football supporters on the continent in
total. The membership of FSE consists of
locally active fans groups, nationally and
transnationally active fans’ organisations
and individual supporters.
Formally established in 2008, FSE
has been recognised as the official
interlocutor on fans’ issues and as
one of the key stakeholders of UEFA
and has an observer status in the
Council of Europe Committee on the
Convention on Spectator Violence in
Sport (T-RV) and the EU Expert Group
on Good Governance.
Areas of activity
■■ FSE’s core activities focus on a
set of key topics per year to be
elaborated and pursued with a
detailed agenda with the aim
to substantially contribute to
messages inciting racism or violence and, according to
the fans, was authorised by the club. Despite this, 17 fans
involved in the organisation of the display were identified
and subsequently issued with fines of €6,000 ($8,100)
each. The reason for the fine was stated to be security
concerns: police claimed to have had no information
from the club about the choreographed event in advance.2
Apart from these recent incidents that suggest
policing can be heavy-handed, there are longer term
indications of extensive control of fans. In Italy and Poland
for several years, there has been a legal obligation for
all fans to present ID details with every ticket purchase
and special national ID cards for fans were introduced,
without which no season tickets can be obtained. The
Swiss authorities have been debating the amendment of
anti-hooligan legislation which may pave the way for full
intimate body searches upon entry to stadia, among
other measures. In the Netherlands, so-called ‘bubble
matches’ have been the norm for years. This measure
means that fans are unable to travel to away matches
individually, but have to come to central meeting points
from where only those fans in possession of (often)
personalised tickets can travel jointly with official means
of transport provided by the club. Similarly in Turkey,
there has been an away travel ban for all supporters of
the biggest teams in Istanbul and Trabzon.
Of course, this may be viewed as a one-sided
presentation of the facts: there is no question that there
is another side to these reactions and measures – the
intention to prevent or combat violence in football.
Spectator violence cannot be denied or ignored, and
there is much unpleasant evidence that has been
documented in police reports and covered by the mass
media. However, authorities and football officials keep
stressing that it is always a minority of supporters that
are actually involved in such incidents, while at the same
time implementing measures and protocols that impact
on large numbers of fans collectively, drawing an image
of football fans among the wider public and in the media
which is, overall, negative.
40
■■
■■
an improvement in all key
areas mentioned above.
Alongside the annual core
activities, other areas will
be covered by ongoing side
projects and activities (for
example the publication of
a regular fanzine, network
of fan lawyers, fans’ embassy
activities and so on).
Organisation of networking
events by fans for fans and
other stakeholders in football
at European and national
Can the picture be examined from a different
angle? Should the crucial question be whether there
are incidents, or much rather whether traditional, often
repressive safety and security measures, focused on
police interventions and exclusion of fans, have helped
to solve the problems surrounding spectator violence
in football? Incident figures in the above mentioned
countries suggest the opposite.
What measures such as the ones described above
have definitely done is to foster, on the one hand, a public
perception of fans as a ‘problem’, and on the other the
formation of enemy stereotypes among many fans against
the police. ‘ACAB’, which stands for ‘All Cops Are Bastards’
is an increasingly popular slogan among many organised
football supporters. This may be seen as pure provocation
by some, but shouldn’t it also be considered a worrying
indicator of a problem, as it suggests an increasing
number of fans are growing into a fanbase that have
had too many negative experiences vis-à-vis the police?
Is there an alternative approach?
Imagine smiling police
Over many years, the predominant focus of safety
and security strategies in football and policing of
football supporters has been based on the perception
of violence as acts perpetrated by aggressive individuals
only. However, contemporary social science theories
have put a greater focus on crowd behavior overall and
its environment – the leading scientific model in Europe
being the ‘Elaborated Social Identity Model’ (ESIM) of
crowd behavior developed by Professor Steve Reicher
at the University of St Andrews, Dr John Drury at
Sussex University and Dr Clifford Stott. ESIM has
been validated through various studies, in particular
in football, and suggests that inappropriate and
“indiscriminate use of force can create psychological
processes in the crowd that draw into conflict those who
had come to the event with no prior conflictual intention”.3
As a consequence, safety and security tactics should focus
on avoiding such processes and on facilitation of peaceful
■■
■■
■■
level, in particular an
annual European Football
Fans’ Congress.
Organisation of European
campaigns and projects on
all key topics relevant to fans
at grass-roots fans’ level, with
a focus on the respective
annual priorities.
Lobbying for fans’ interests
with football governing bodies
and institutions
in regular meetings.
Fostering of the formation of
■■
national fans’ organisations
and local and regional
fans’ networks.
Provision of guidance and
advice via case work with
fans at local/regional level
on all topics relevant to
football supporters.
Key topics
Key topics include: good hosting, safety
and security, legislation and sanctions
affecting fans, self-organisation and
self-regulation of fans, commercialisation
behaviour within football crowds and dialogue before,
during and after the match as an integral means
of effectively preventing incidents.
This understanding echoes the long-term calls of
supporter organisations for more differentiated treatment
and facilitation of fan activities in and around football
stadia. It has been endorsed by the football governing
bodies in Europe as well as by the European Union and
the Council of Europe, which have since placed greater
emphasis on promoting the involvement of supporters
in safety and security strategies in football, stressing
that “the underlying basis for minimising safety and
security problems lies in the development of effective
partnerships between all stakeholders […] including
supporter groups”.4
So, could there be more smiling police and stewards
as a consequence? The Pan-European Police Football
Training, which is organised by an EU Experts Think Tank
promotes exactly such principles and encourages police
to proactively and critically reflect
on policing tactics – in consultation
with the supporters and other
stakeholders. The training is based
on the ESIM model, which is why
Football Supporters Europe (FSE)
– the biggest fan organisation in
Europe – is backing the project.
Already, at a local level, football supporters have observed
the introduction of dialogue police units in football in
Sweden and Denmark with positive interest and welcomed
the impressive evidence produced by a courageous match
commander in Kortrijk who turned conventional policing
tactics in Belgium upside down. He started about four
years ago to put a focus on plain-clothed police officers
and low-profile policing around football matches, including
proactive consultation with fans, including risk groups,
and the facilitation of a positive match experience for all.
Kortrijk police has since been able to reduce not only
budgets but also police deployments on match days
significantly, from numbers as high as 85 riot police
and governance of football, ticketing,
kick-off times, usage of tifo material,
fans and media, safe standing, sociopreventive work in football, fans and
players, pyrotechnics, competition
structures, match-fixing and corruption.
You can download the FSE
Handbook on Supporters Charters,
which is available in English, German,
French, and other useful publications
of FSE, such as the REVIVE THE
ROAR! Fanzine Special Edition –
The FSE Vision of Football through
www.fanseurope.org.
officers to as few as eight to 12 plain-clothed officers
per match – and (not surprisingly for the fans) with
incident figures going down rapidly at the same time.5
The replication of examples like this across the
continent sooner rather than later could make the biggest
contribution to the reduction of enemy stereotyping
against security authorities from’ a fans point of view.
Imagine clubs involving fans
Not only safety and security authorities, but also
the clubs themselves have a responsibility for their
local environment and can be a driving force for
nurturing community relationships and economic
prosperity. However, as a consequence of the commercial
exploitation of modern sports, there is an increasing
conflict of interests and alienation between fans and
clubs across Europe (for example, rising ticket prices,
fixture lists prioritising media interests, an ever-growing
focus on security aspects).
The activation of fans through
partnership work enhances security
This development runs the risk of genuine supporters
feeling excluded. Interestingly, this phenomenon and the
rising tensions between different parts of society during
the post-2008 economic crisis have been accompanied
by an increase in incident figures and media reports of
spectator violence and racism in football.6
On the other hand, academic findings from across
Europe indicate that the activation of fans through
partnership work enhances security and helps to improve
the financial well-being of clubs, as the majority of
supporters are then more likely to organise responsibly
and engage for the creation of a trouble-free environment.7
Against this background, fan organisations such as
41
Dialogue between fans and the police
before, during and after a match can help
to prevent incidents, according to research
SD Europe assists football supporter
organisations in achieving formal
structured involvement in their clubs and
associations and developing supporter
ownership of football clubs. SD Europe
also advises clubs on their ownership
and governance structure and works
with football associations, leagues,
clubs, UEFA, the European Commission
and other stakeholders. SD Europe also
has a close partnership with Football
Supporters Europe.
Established in 2007 with funding
from UEFA, SD Europe has helped meet
these objectives by advising football
fans in over 20 countries across Europe,
increasing the resources at their disposal
to improve both the governance of sport
and the social function it serves.
Together with UEFA, SD Europe
developed Article 35 of UEFA’s
Club Licensing and Financial Fair
Play Regulations, which provided
for the introduction from the 2012-13
season of Supporter Liaison Officers
(SLOs) at all clubs applying for a
licence to play in the UEFA club
competitions, the aim being to ensure
a proper and constructive dialogue
between clubs and fans.
Football Supporters Europe (FSE) and Supporters
Direct (SD) in conjunction with their members across
the continent, have for some time called on clubs,
football governing bodies and institutions to close
this gap and consider the views of supporters “as
the major long-term ‘cultural investors’”.8
Supporter Liaison Officers
Together with UEFA, FSE partners from Supporters Direct
Europe (SD Europe) developed Article 35 of UEFA’s Club
Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations, which
provided for the introduction from the 2012-13 season of
Supporter Liaison Officers (SLOs) at all clubs applying for
a licence to play in the UEFA club competitions; the aim
is to ensure a proper and constructive dialogue between
clubs and fans. SD Europe has been helping UEFA to
implement Article 35 since 2010.
One of the tasks of the SLO is to work to enhance
the security situation on match days through education,
communication, prevention and de-escalation. SLOs
should therefore be in regular contact with the club
security officer, the police, stewards, transport
between the main stakeholders, reducing tensions
and prejudices, and promoting a more positive
matchday experience for all concerned.
The handbook on supporters
charters in Europe
To provide a useful tool for supporters, SLOs and other
football officials on how to establish this structured
dialogue on a continuous basis, Football Supporters
Europe (FSE) created a European handbook on ‘supporters
charters’ in consultation with football supporters and
football governing bodies and institutions across Europe.
In line with the Council of Europe definition of
supporters charters, and contrary to the general belief,
a supporters charter should not be defined as a code of
conduct, but as a negotiated agreement between fans and
clubs.9 In the supporters charter they define their relation
and positions towards each other on an equal footing. As
a result, mutual understanding should be enhanced, rather
than the often feared creation of more restrictions or a
top-down dictate of acceptable behaviour.
This was the first time that representatives from
UEFA, the EU, the Council of Europe,
the European Professional Football
Leagues (EPFL), the international
professional players union FIFPro
and the European Club Association
(in an observer role) and supporters
had ever come together to develop
a consensual position and practical
guidance for the establishment of a functioning dialogue
between fans and clubs. The result of this process is
presented in the Handbook that is available in five
languages and is already being circulated among fans
and clubs in Europe.
All representatives involved in the working group
considered the result a real opportunity and a tool
for improving relations between supporters and
clubs to ensure a safe, secure and welcoming
Facilitation of a positive fan experience
works best to ensure safety
companies and so on. They should also debrief with the
aforementioned after match days to identify problems/
trends and collect feedback on positive/negative
incidents. For the avoidance of doubt, SLOs will assume
no responsibility for safety and security, but can play
a support role if requested and appropriate. With their
understanding of fan culture and credibility among fans
(assuming the right person is appointed), the SLO can
play a vital role in improving the flow of information
42
SD Europe has been helping UEFA
to implement Article 35 since 2010.
You can view the UEFAs Supporters
Liaison Officers handbook as well as
country-specific SLO handbooks and
further information about the project, as
well as the SD Europe Position Paper,
The Heart of The Game: why supporters
are vital to improving governance in
football, which was launched in the
European Parliament in November
2012, at www.supporters-direct.coop.
The full paper and summaries are
available in English, French, German,
Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.
Daniel Hambury/EMPICS Sport/PA Images
Supporters Direct Europe
environment for all fans.10 Furthermore, the FSE Handbook
on Supporters Charters was formally endorsed by UEFA
President Michel Platini and EU Commissioner on
Education and Culture Androulla Vassiliou.
References
1
Alarm gemacht, 11 Freunde, 2013
2
euros-cada-uno-por-un-tifo-en-carranza.html,
Cadiz Directo, accessed 22 August 2013
3
Stott, C. Crowd Psychology and Public Order Policing: An
Overview of Scientific Theory and Evidence, University of
Liverpool, School of Psychology, 2009
4
Conclusions of the high-level Conference: Towards an EU strategy
against Violence in Sport, Council of the European Union,
Brussels, 28-29 November 2007
5
Magnussen, Christina & Riecansky, Michal, Fans on tour…
or not?!, European Football Fans’ Congress, Brondby and
Copenhagen, 1 to 3 July 2011; Hamburg: Football Supporters
Europe, 2012, p11
6
Supporters Direct, What’s the feasibility of a
Supporters Direct Europe?, London, 2009, p8
7
HelenMatthewsConsulting, Economic Evaluation
of the IFA’s Football For All Project, Irish Football Association,
2012; Feltes, T. Fußballgewalt als misslungene
Kommunikation. Lösungsansätze abseits von Represssion,
Neue Praxis, 2010, pp405-421; Spaaji, R. Football Hooliganism
as a transnational phenomenon: past and present analysis:
a critique – more specificity and less generality,
The International Journal of the History of Sport,
2007, volume 24, no 4, pp411-431
8
UEFA Supporter Liaison Officer Handbook,
English version, UEFA, Nyon, 2011
9
Standing Committee (T-RV), Recommendation REC (2010)
1 of the Standing Committee on Supporters Charters,
Council of Europe, May 2010
10
Daniela Wurbs is the CEO of Football Supporters Europe
Cadizdirecto/Martinez, D. Updated 12 September 2013,
http://www.cadizdirecto.com/multados-17-hinchas-con-6-000-
Imagine fans and football united
One argument that fans’ organisations hear repeatedly
from both their own members and from institutions and
football governing bodies and clubs is: ‘What you’re saying
sounds nice, but in our country/at our club, things are
totally different and this can never work’. But over the past
few years, we have learnt that it does work everywhere; if
adapted appropriately to the respective local situation.
While there is certainly no one-size-fits-all approach,
there is the overarching principle of safety and security
in football as an integrated approach involving the key
stakeholders, the supporters. Contrary to a traditionally
one-sided and restrictive approach, governmental
statistics on incidents demonstrate that facilitation of
a positive fan experience, including, or even in particular,
for risk groups, works best to ensure safety, whether you
look at small or larger football countries.
This shows that it is time for more clubs, associations
and countries to change perspectives and imagine that
fans are the solution, rather than a problem. Football
stadia without the need for the presence of police or
stewards and still a great atmosphere … what a nice idea!
However, that also requires safety and security
authorities and clubs and football governing bodies
to be courageous, as well as confident enough to turn
some conventional perspectives upside down and accept
this scenario as a possible alternative to work towards,
together with their fans.
Bock, A. Zum Polizeieinsatz bei Schalke gegen Paok,
Supporters Charters in Europe, Football Supporters
Europe, Hamburg, 2013
43
Reputational risks for
global sports bodies
James M Dorsey examines how the protests associated with societal
transformation across the globe may come to affect international sporting
events and their organising bodies
T
he past three years have seen popular uprisings
and revolutions in the Middle East and North
Africa, as well as intense public protests in
Europe, parts of the United States, Russia,
India, Chile, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and Bulgaria.
While each of these expressions of public discontent
has been sparked by a particular, local issue – whether it
be public transportation costs or the fate of iconic trees, a
lack of economic opportunity or police brutality, autocratic
rule or local corruption – several common factors underlie
the level of discontent seen in these protests; those are:
■■ an erosion of confidence in existing institutions;
■■ perception of a political, economic and social
leadership that fails to listen and is held to
different standards of accountability for wrong
decisions, misguided policies and mis- or
improper management;
■■ perception of a failure to root out corruption at all
levels of political, economic and social leadership;
■■ perception that economic progress has failed
to ensure that public infrastructure, health and
education facilities keep up with the lifting of
huge numbers out of poverty, resulting in a
mismatch of expectation and reality; and
■■ demands for social justice, dignity
and inclusiveness.
The 2013 Confederations Cup in Brazil was hit by protests
that used the event as a platform for the expression of social
discontent. The placard in this image reads ‘Go out FIFA’,
highlighting how sporting bodies can incur reputational damage
when their events are used as stages for demonstration
44
Sergio Moraes/Reuters
The impact of protests on sports events
Such protests are likely to continue for a decade or
more, as they are a response to shifting geopolitical
and economic foundations resulting from the impact of
globalisation and technological change. It is interesting to
note that most of the protests have been led by the urban
middle classes – precisely the demographic that is being
most disrupted by global changes. That their protests are
not solely economic, but also involve a claim to a stake in
shaping the urban environment and cultural identity, has
particular consequences for major sporting events.
While few are directed at sport or a major sporting
event per se, protests have frequently involved organised
groups of football fans. Moreover, they are starting to
demonstrate that they could impact on major sports
events and their organising bodies in four ways:
1. Major sporting events attract a global audience
and global media coverage. This makes them
a platform that has been and will be used by
political activists of all types to communicate
their message and promote campaigns of all
kinds: particularly on labour, gender, national,
ethnic and religious rights. This means that
political demonstrations and protests are likely
to become regular occurrence at major sporting
events. The 2013 Formula One public relations
disaster in Bahrain, trade-union pressure on
Qatar and controversy over Israel’s hosting of
the UEFA European Under-21 Championship
finals, illustrate the point.
2. Major sporting events and the organising bodies
behind them are likely to be subjected by the
public to the same evaluations and criticisms that
are applied to governments (local and national)
and other parts of the political and social fabric
of a country. This means that the values and
operations of organising bodies will be scrutinised
intensely and may be tainted by association
with host-state governments.
3. Security responses to protests that are using a
major sporting event as a platform may damage
the image of that sporting event if they are not
entirely proportional and controlled. This includes
possible image problems – such as the Olympics
being perceived as ‘fortress Games’ – as well
as flashpoints that emerge from protests and
which can escalate rapidly. The use by police of
indiscriminate force swells protests that might
initially be focused on a specific issue; it lifts the
lid on far broader, deeply felt, pent-up anger and
frustration and, as demonstrated in the cases of
Brazil and Turkey, makes it difficult to put the
genie back in the bottle.
45
4. Sponsors for major sporting events tend to
be seeking global rather than local audiences;
however, the prospect of brand damage from
negative images associated with an event may
deter some sponsors, and corporate social
responsibility agendas may see some sponsors
begin to concern themselves with rights issues
within a host country.
The consequences for organising bodies
These potential impacts raise various issues for organising
bodies and their relationships with host countries, their
governments and public:
1. It will become harder for organising bodies to
claim a separation between politics and sport as
political protests occur more frequently around
sporting events. Sporting events and organising
bodies often and increasingly promote certain
‘values’, which can come close to promoting
‘rights’, and this puts them in a triangular
relationship with host publics and governments.
Any discord between the three apexes of this
triangle raises political issues; at worst, this leads
to claims of hypocrisy and reputational damage
for an event or organising body.
2. Organising bodies must be prepared for
intense scrutiny of their integrity, financial and
operational management and their relationships
with governments, sponsors and suppliers; they
will need to be transparent to this scrutiny. Such
scrutiny and any criticisms will be more intense
when there is an existing level of discontent with
local and national governance; public grievances
tend to focus on a major sporting event, and any
echo of national or local problems will reverberate
and encourage a kind of ‘guilt by association’.
3. Policing and security approaches will be an essential consideration for organising bodies, which will not be able to disassociate
themselves from any problems that arise in
ensuring public order. As policing and security
are sovereign responsibilities, an organising
body’s influence on this issue has to be through
agreement with the host government and the
criteria in the selection process. The impact of policing was evident recently when Tokyo
was awarded the 2020 Olympic Games by the
International Olympic Committee (IOC). Istanbul
lost its position as frontrunner for the games in
no small measure as a result of what was seen
as a heavy-handed response to anti-government
protests months before the IOC vote.
4. Similarly, organising bodies will need to adopt
policies regarding rights to demonstrate. While
organising bodies can rule on what political
demonstrations can be made within an event
itself, bodies will probably need to include
assessments of freedom of expression in their
selection criteria. The late economist Albert
Hirschman argued that protest can lead to “a new,
more cohesive democratic order being produced”.
Protest is no longer simply a disruptive element
for a major event. Instead, major events, by
becoming platforms, can contribute to the
development of healthy societies.
5. Given the dependence on sponsorship for a
substantial part of major sport-event financing,
organising bodies may need to pay further
attention to ‘rights’ issues in their selection
criteria as global corporations seek to protect
their own brands from negative associations with protest and public unrest.
The decade between 9/11 and the first
popular Arab revolts in 2011 illustrates
the clarifying effect of protest, even in
its most violent form, and the risk in
failing to recognise and acknowledge
simmering discontent.
In the immediate aftermath of the
al-Qaeda attacks on New York City in
September 2001, government officials,
think tanks, pundits and the media
blamed the attacks on widespread
discontentment with repressive rule
in the Middle East. That assumption
was reinforced by recognition that a
policy that gave priority to stability by
supporting autocratic regimes rather
than to ideals of dignity, justice and
economic opportunity had created
the circumstances that made the
9/11 attacks possible.
In response, much attention was
focused in the wake of 9/11 on the
‘Arab street’ – public opinion in the
Middle East and North Africa. The
expectation was that the Arab street
would express its aspirations. Attention
to the street diminished when it did not
live up to the expectations of officials,
analysts and journalists, who began to
deride those who stressed the need to
be more attentive to Arab public opinion.
Like the autocratic regimes against whom
they revolted, Western officials, analysts
and journalists wrote off a whole
generation and class.
In reality, however, while the change
in mood in Western capitals was a
46
Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters
A short history of protest in the 21st century
The deaths of Khaled Saeed and Mohamed
Bouazizi became rallying calls for
protesters in Egypt and Tunisia, sparking
the uprisings of the ‘Arab Spring’ of 2011
reaction to the fact that the Arab street
did not conform to the West’s time frame,
nothing on the ground had changed.
Pent-up anger and frustration had not
withered. On the contrary: it continued
to fester and boil at the surface. The only
thing that was not predictable was what
would cause that anger to boil over –
and when that might happen.
It should have been clear from the
outset that once Tunisian fruit vendor
Mohamed Bouazizi’s suicide as a result
of a bureaucratic merry-go-round was
widely reported, his cry was not simply
one for justice, freedom and economic
opportunity but, first and foremost, an act
of desperation in the face of humiliation
– a cry for dignity that resonated with
the masses across the region, as well
as around the globe. From São Paulo to
Istanbul and from New York to Cairo,
the outcry was against the indignity of
crony capitalism and neo-liberalism,
which ensured that rules are rigged in
favour of elites and to the disadvantage
of the middle classes. For Bouazizi
and the millions he inspired, it was the
daily humiliation and reported police
brutality meted out by repressive officials
and their cronies that dominated their
ordinary lives. For those in the US, it was
the Troubled Asset Relief Program; for
Indians, the corrupt telecommunications
licence auctions.
Theirs is a massive denunciation
of years of political and institutional
decay, the voices of long-standing
criticism of the status quo, as well as
the generational desire for political
change and safeguards of democratic
freedoms, rather than the expression of
new ideas. At times, the denunciation
is preceded by the emergence of
political groupings that are as much
characterised by discontentment with
the status quo as they are by ideology.
In Egypt, it was the Kefaya (‘Enough’)
movement that pioneered the use
of social media, mastered the art of
symbolic demonstrations and carved out
space in the media; in the US, it was
the Tea Party, a populist and libertarian
movement that advocates the return
to original interpretations of the US
Constitution; in Europe, there was the
electoral turn towards both far-right
and green political parties.
In virtually all cases, including
Occupy Wall Street, the anti-Putin
demonstrations in Russia and the series
of revolts sweeping the Middle East
and North Africa, the instigators were
more often than not young, middle
class and educated, with no prior
political affiliations, driven by a
globally shared perception that their
political and economic systems were
broken. Unlike the countercultural 1968
student protests, recent protesters have
far more at stake. And, unlike the 1989
abolished the monarchy and established
the French republic. As then, when a
small act of protest mushroomed into
a mass movement fuelled by the
technology of the time – telegraphy,
railroads and printing presses – today’s
protests are enabled by the internet,
social media and technology that
circumvents censorship and enables
free communication.
In the Arab world, it was those
like Mohamed Bouazizi or the shabab
(youth) of the Middle East and North
Africa – that lost the most blood in
revolts and displayed the most bravery,
perhaps because they had the least to
lose. While religion may be a major
influence in their lives, electoral politics
has not, despite the emergence of
Islamist forces, provided the channel for
the pursuit of their political ambitions
The instigators were more often than
not young, middle class and educated,
with no prior political affiliations
demise of communism, their protests are
sparked by a sense of disintegration
across society, not just at the system’s
nerve centre. Perhaps the most apt
comparison for 2011 as a ‘year of
protest’ is the 1848 revolt in Paris that
largely because they, like many
protesters across the globe, are driven
by what they don’t want, rather than
by a thought-out concept of what it
is they want. The cases of Egypt and
Turkey have illustrated this point.
47
Issei Kato/Reuters
The responses of some countries to recent protests
associated with sporting events has failed to improve
their popular perception and media coverage; rather, it
has encouraged activists wishing to highlight issues
of human, labour and/or gender rights. Furthermore,
the response by rights holders and governments to
these protests has fallen short on sensitivity and has
reinforced the negative perceptions that they were trying
to reverse. This has strengthened calls for such rights as
human, labour and gender to become key criteria in the
awarding of future ‘mega-events’. It has also rendered
the separation of sports and politics a fictional ideal,
and focused attention on the need to develop systems
that acknowledge the relationship, but eliminate conflict
of interest and ensure that it is not abused for partisan
interests on the individual, national, regional and
international scale. In an indication of the trend, former
English Football Association Chairman Lord Triesman has
called for countries’ human-rights records to be one of the
criteria for establishing whether a state entity or member
of a ruling family passes the ‘fit-and-proper person-test’
for ownership of an English Premier League club.
If reputational damage and failure to achieve a key
goal is a host-nation’s primary risk, activists may see
achieving that as a moral victory. Similarly, they are
likely to claim any progress – such as an improvement
of workers’ material labour and living conditions – as a
success, even if they were unable to meet their ultimate
goal. The message for host countries is that major sports
events constitute a platform for showcasing a country’s
positive aspects, but also give critics a focus for attack.
The question that potential hosts have to ask is what price
they are willing to pay in terms of reputational risk if they
are not willing or able to address their vulnerabilities.
Major sports events give
critics a focus for attack
That question becomes all the more acute as
international sports bodies, such as FIFA, come under
pressure to make human, labour and women’s rights
part of the criteria for awarding events. In doing so, they
are likely to raise the barrier to a country’s opportunity
to host a major event. Emerging countries and aspiring
host cities and nations need to develop and integrate
sustainable sports sectors if they wish to justify hosting
major international sporting events. Proactive sports
associations should see the global trend that is defining
legitimacy, social justice and dignity as greater inclusivity
and accountability. Understanding this trend and its
consequences on the streets of the world’s major urban
centres may require a shift in approach, including:
1. A recognition that sports and politics are
intertwined. Evidence for this is seen in the direct
involvement of rulers, politicians and governments
48
Tokyo resident Kohei Jinno has twice had to leave his
home in order to make way for Olympic Games-related
construction – first in 1964 and now for the 2020 Games
in the boards and executive committees of
regional and international sports associations, the
use of mega-events by nations and governments
and the role that global governing bodies play
in the legitimisation of rulers. That recognition
should lead to the creation of a charter and/or
code of conduct that governs the relationship
between sports and politics.
2. A revisiting of the criteria for the awarding of
mega-events. This would involve the inclusion of
international human, labour and gender standards
in the awarding criteria, as well as greater public
engagement in the decision-making process,
enhanced transparency of the infrastructural
requirements a host has to meet, and the terms
of the agreement between the sports association
and the host. Sports associations will have to
balance the infrastructural requirements of a
tournament with the long-term needs, cultural
identity and popular aspirations of host cities
and ensure that the tournament’s demands
are in line and balanced with overall urban and
municipal policies, rather than at their expense.
3. A restructuring of regional and international
sports associations that is governed by regulation
of the relationship between sports and politics,
takes grass roots into consideration and ensures
that their voices are heard, and enshrines
independent oversight, monitoring and auditing
that gives credibility to combating and preventing
abuse of power, mismanagement and corruption.
This entails not only structural adjustment, but also
a shift in the mental paradigm and a cultural transition.
It is not an agenda that can be achieved with the stroke
of a pen, and it is likely to take significant time. The road
ahead will be bumpy, with sports-related protests, such as
those in Brazil, which will often involve organised sports
fans. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff ensured that her
government stayed ahead of the trouble by recognising
the legitimacy of non-violent demonstrations, describing
them as an enhancement of her country’s democracy,
and responding to protesters’ complaints. Her proactive
approach, similar to that of Morocco’s King Mohammed VI
to the Arab Spring demonstrations in his country, offers
governments and international sports bodies a glimpse
of how to navigate the turbulent waters ahead.
James M Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S Rajaratnam
School of International Studies and Co-Director of
the Institut für Fankultur
49
Security and safety
Security and safety
Designing in security
for major sporting
infrastructure
In the first of a two-part article, Roger Cumming explores the challenges
that designers of major sports venues and infrastructure face in unpredictable
security threats and the importance of ensuring a positive spectator experience
An artist’s impression of the Nizhny Novgorod Stadium,
planned for the 2018 Russian World Cup; it can be
difficult to assess security events this far in advance
50
Getty Images
I
n the summer of 480 BC, the Athenian Olympic
games celebration was disrupted by fears of a
second invasion by the Persians, the first having
been defeated at the Battle of Marathon, 10 years
earlier. The Athenians consulted the Oracle of Delphi
for guidance on how to defend themselves and were
advised to place their trust in a “wall of wood”. Taking
this to be a reference to ships, the Athenians prepared
their fleet and subsequently used it to evacuate Athens
and later defeat the Persians at sea.
The organisers of today’s major international
sporting events do not need to rely on Delphic
predictions for security advice; there are highly
sophisticated systems available to assess and respond
to immediate threats and well-developed levels of
information sharing and international cooperation
to support the host country.
However, the infrastructure for the sporting event
is likely to have been designed many years before the
event takes place when it would have been impossible
51
Security and safety
to know with any accuracy what kind of threats it would
need to withstand. This article looks at some of the
challenges facing architects, designers and engineers
to ensure that sporting events can take place safely
and securely in a variety of threat environments.
Security and safety
The security building in Kiev, Ukraine for the
2012 European Football Championship
Former UK prime minster Gordon Brown looks at
the designs for the 2012 Olympic Stadium. Early
interaction between security professionals and
architects is vital to ensuring safety at events
The wider context
The first guideline is for the design process to take
account of the wider context – for example, a national
security strategy or plan that is set by a higher authority
(normally the national government). The security
planning for most international sporting events will
take place within the context of the host country’s
strategic planning framework. This is likely to consider
a range of risks to people, events, and physical and
that might bear upon the event; they cannot reduce the
threat by themselves. It is therefore important for them
to understand the broader risk environment and how the
national (and local) response machinery is organised.
The way to achieve this is to establish long-term working
relationships with the relevant organisations, which then
can be utilised to respond to a particular event, from a
one-off match to a major sporting event like the FIFA
World Cup or the Olympics.
Impact-driven design
The second guideline is to focus the design on minimising
the impact of a hostile event (for example a terrorist
bomb or cyber attack). Designers and architects are very
familiar with the need to ensure that sports stadia and
other infrastructures are built to ensure the highest levels
of safety at times of an emergency such as a fire. There is
no reason why security should not figure as prominently
in their considerations. There is a considerable body of
knowledge about how to protect against the effects of a
blast from a terrorist bomb (whether carried in a vehicle
or on a person) or against shots from a weapon. There is
a similar wealth of knowledge about how to defend against
cyber attacks. It is essential, therefore, that designers
and architects engage early with
security practitioners to understand
the impact that a catastrophic event
might have on the sporting venue
and its occupants. However, all
too often, designers focus on the
likelihood of an attack, rather than on
what impact it would have. A mindset
that considers impact ahead of likelihood will produce a
design that is capable of withstanding a variety of threat
scenarios, including new ones and those that may change
in nature over the lifetime of the infrastructure.
To achieve this, the designer should have a clear
understanding of what is critical to the functioning of
the infrastructure and venue. Some of this may emerge
It is possible for designs to be safe and
secure – and aesthetically pleasing
logical infrastructure. Underpinning this should be a
comprehensive set of relationships between the event
organisers and the government agencies, especially law
enforcement, responsible for assessing security threats
and disseminating advice about how to mitigate them.
The organisers of a major sporting event must work with
these agencies to address any issues relating to threats
52
Paul Edwards/PA Images
Infrastructure of any type, sporting or otherwise, takes
a long time to plan and build, and will last even longer.
At the sport security Experts’ Summit organised by the
International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS) in April,
participants observed that it takes an average of eight
years from the decision to build a major piece of sporting
infrastructure to its becoming operational. The prevailing
threat that might bear upon that infrastructure when it is
used will be impossible to predict accurately that far in
the future. Furthermore, the threat can change much more
quickly than any defensive posture arranged to protect it.
An unexpected terrorist attack, for example, is likely to
cause an abrupt re-assessment of the threat. New cyber
threats and avenues of attack can appear very rapidly, a
situation that is unlikely to diminish in the short term and
may get significantly worse. If protective measures need to
be added retrospectively, it is invariably at great expense
in terms of time, money and disruption.
How do those designing infrastructure and sports
venues build in protection against threats that they cannot
accurately predict? The answer is that by following a
few strategic guidelines, it becomes possible to produce
designs that not only satisfy the sporting requirements,
but are safe and secure, aesthetically pleasing, and –
importantly – capable of withstanding changes to the
risk environment in a flexible and cost-effective way
throughout any legacy use.
Ukrafoto Ukrainian News/Corbis
Strategic approach
naturally from consideration of the safety aspects (for
example having multiple entrances and exits that can
be used in the case of a fire), but others may not be
so evident. Sometimes, good design and good security
design may not be the same thing. For example, placing
the back-up to a critical system alongside its master
may be elegant in design terms and cheap to implement,
but a bomb designed to damage one may take out the
back-up as well. The designer needs also to place critical
systems as far away as possible from the public domain to
minimise the chances that intruders can quickly penetrate
a protective perimeter and cause damage.
Good physical security need not detract from the
aesthetic impact of the venue. Planned in advance, it can
be built into the fabric of the venue and its surroundings
in such a way as to be pleasing to the eye, discreet and
highly effective. The challenge for the designer is to use
the natural lie of the land, and existing geographical
features, to avoid the need to construct defences that
might present a more stark appearance. A stream or ditch
might easily be adapted to control the flow of vehicles or
block potentially hostile ones. Earth banks planted with
attractive foliage can protect buildings from the effects
of a blast. Where defensive structures need to be built,
they should be merged into the surrounding ‘streetscape’
as much as possible. Raised flower planters, bicycle
racks and street lighting fixtures might all be adapted to
act as hostile vehicle mitigation of some form. A major
north London football club has some of its hostile vehicle
mitigation measures constructed in the form of giant
letters of the club’s name. Other barriers might be hidden
behind stone balustrades or constructed from materials
that blend in with the surrounding architecture and
heritage of the site. All that is required is for the designer
to engage early with the security professionals so that
the artistry of the former blends with the requirements
of the latter in as attractive a way as possible.
Taking an holistic approach
Acquiring a comprehensive understanding of what is
critical to the functioning of a venue leads to the third of
the strategic guidelines – taking an holistic approach. The
complex nature of modern communications and control
systems leads to myriad interdependencies between the
physical and logical elements in a modern stadium. Entry
gates, CCTV monitors, public-address system and display
screens will all be controlled across communications
networks, which themselves are based on internet
protocols (IP). Such networks will be flexible and able
to adapt to changing requirements, but unless they are
53
Security and safety
Security and safety
technology is just one piece of a complex jigsaw that will
eventually deliver a safe and secure celebration of sport.
A multidisciplinary team is needed to ensure that physical
assets and information are safeguarded appropriately and
a positive security culture is fostered among staff.
At this stage, it will also be necessary to consider
any legal and compliance issues set by a higher authority,
for example regional or national government. There are
numerous relevant national and international industry
standards that might be adopted. However, it will be
important for the leadership of the venue to ensure
that the focus remains on effective and proportionate
risk management and not just slavish obedience to a
particular standard. The danger of adopting standards
is that the focus of management effort switches to
achieving compliance with the standard rather than
holistic management of the risk.
A security planning exercise in preparation
for the 2012 London Olympic Games
Adrian Dennis/Getty Images
Getting there
So often, security is considered well
after the start of the design process
properly protected, they also will be vulnerable to cyber
attack. This could result in sound physical protection
measures being compromised in some way. Any holistic
approach must also include the people who operate the
physical and cyber measures at a venue.
However, an holistic approach means much more
than just considering physical, cyber and personnel
risks together in some way. Security functions that
are organised in silos are inefficient and obstruct the
identification and mitigation of risk. It is important that the
governance of the various security functions is structured
in such a way as to support an holistic approach. Having
different reporting or line management chains for these
functions will stretch channels of communication and
introduce potential gaps from which greater risk is likely
to emerge. In our follow-up article in the next edition of
this journal, it will also become clear why it is important
to embed this holistic approach throughout the supply
chain for both the build and operation of an event.
Effective security starts at the top of the organisation
and should be embedded throughout it by a culture in
which the everyday attitudes of staff contribute effortlessly
towards an organisation’s protective security regime. It is
vital that event organisers work to achieve such a positive
54
culture and one that takes an holistic,
not siloed, approach to security
– designed to minimise physical,
information and personnel risks
and protect spectators and staff.
The cyber threat to a venue
will manifest itself in many ways, not just in relation to
the operation of physical elements. Information in many
forms will be vital to the successful design, construction
and operation of any sporting venue, not only for its
immediate use, but also possibly for many years of
legacy beyond that. Authorities need to take action in
a number of areas, including:
■■ Protection of documents relating to the design
and construction of the venues. Inappropriate
disclosure could allow the identification of weak
points or vulnerabilities in the construction that
could be exploited.
■■ Protection of documents relating to the operation
of the venues, especially during sporting events
when the risks are greatest. Inappropriate
disclosure could allow security regimes to be
subverted or compromised.
■■ Protection of information in all media. While
the majority of information will be carried via
electronic systems and networks, the use of
paper will still be necessary in certain cases. It
is important that the information protection plan
encompasses both mediums and enables venues
to be confident that portable media (paper,
■■
memory sticks, CDs and so on) is protected as
effectively as that carried on the many (cyber)
networks that will be necessary to support events.
Identification of new threats as they emerge.
The rapid development of cyber threats is
unlikely to diminish in the short term and may
get significantly worse. It will be particularly
important for sporting venues to have confidence
that appropriate protection is in place to counter
the most sophisticated of these.
The last point underlines why it is so important
to adopt an impact-driven approach to the security of
cyber infrastructures in particular. Focusing on a threat
that can change so rapidly and far more quickly than
defences can be reconfigured will not lead to a secure
cyber infrastructure that will remain resilient in the face
of uncertainty. However, by understanding what is critical
to its operations, a venue can start to build a cyber system
that can deter, detect and defend against the inevitable
attempts to compromise its operations.
An effective and holistic security risk-management
regime will therefore have a number of components,
including: senior management support; capable people;
efficient processes; and the selection of appropriate
physical and technical controls. Each component should
interact with and support others in a holistic manner. It is
important to seek a balance between these components
as the model is compromised if any one component
is deficient or fails. Organisers should understand that
The three guiding principles – considering a wider context,
being impact driven and taking an holistic approach – may
be easy to say, but are much more difficult to achieve.
It is vital to get things right from the very start and
have security considered at the beginning of the design
stage, not as a post-build ‘add-on’. Early engagement
between security professionals, designers and architects
is essential. This can save money in the long term and
produce a design that enhances the spectator experience
by inducing a greater feeling of safety and security.
Achieving this requires good communication
skills and the ability to keep the communication going
throughout the design and build of a project and its
subsequent operation. But that is easier to say than do as
personal relationships, group dynamics and overarching
governance structures can all interfere in the process
and allow differing elements to drift off in their own
directions. So often, security is considered well after the
start of the design process when changing plans becomes
expensive and time consuming. While getting it right
at the start is vital, so is the ability to keep that level of
engagement going. This requires continuing commitment
and leadership from the management and an engaged as
well as supportive workforce, ready to embed the security
objectives into their everyday actions.
As we will consider in part two of this article, it
becomes even more important to achieve this once the
design phase is over and construction begins. As the real
venues start to emerge and the number of people involved
in the project rises, different challenges emerge. However,
by following a simple set of guidelines, it is possible to
achieve a safe, secure and highly enjoyable celebration
of sport – and provide a lasting legacy for generations
to come, whatever the prevailing threats of the time.
Roger Cumming is the Technical Director of Atkins’
security business. Atkins, an international design,
engineering and project management consultancy, was
heavily involved in the design of the infrastructure for the
Olympic Park and temporary venues for London 2012
55
Security and safety
Security and safety
How should popular
protest be managed?
The protests that occurred during the Confederations Cup revealed a large divide
between the Brazilian government and the general public. Samuel Logan and
Rafael Saliés argue that the nature of the police response, and the potential for
further disruption, must be concerns for the 2014 World Cup and the Rio Olympics
I
n early June 2013, a group of São Paulo citizens
protested against an increase in bus fares. These
protests later spread to the rest of Brazil, as the
demonstration resonated with struggling middleclass commuters concerned with escalating bus fares
right across the country.
Brazilian bus fares typically increase in January,
a month when most people are away on vacation, and
several fare hikes have come and gone with little or
no accompanying civil disobedience. However, in early
2013, President Dilma Rousseff had asked governors
and mayors to suspend the perennial January increase
until May, to ease government concerns over inflation in
January. The unintended consequence of the change was a
tide of protest when bus fare increases snapped into place
at an unusual time (May 2013). Commuters travelling to
work, and not on vacation, were immediately affected by
this otherwise routine policy.
The last of the bus fare-related protests occurred
in São Paulo on 13 June 2013. For another seven days,
however, the protests increased in multitude and claim as
hundreds of thousands of Brazilians across the country
organised crowds on social media, among other platforms,
to exercise their right to denounce the government for
a range of perceived injustices. Themes ranged from
corruption to gay rights, and while many were on the
streets as organised partygoers, local media exposed the
core of this social vortex: ire over perceptions of excessive
spending in preparation for international sporting events.
Demonstrators, calling for better education, health and
public services during the 2013 Confederations Cup,
protest outside the National Congress in Brasilia
56
Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters
An international voice
Millions of dollars spent on preparing the country for
the 2013 Confederations Cup, the 2014 World Cup
and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, contrasted
again and again on the street and in Brazilian media with
the reality of hunger, poverty, insecurity and squalor that
millions of Brazilians face daily. Hundreds of bloggers,
academics, journalists and analysts had for years been
concerned with this split in Brazilian society – now they
had the chance to give an international voice to the
grievances expressed by the millions of Brazilians in
protests that reached their peaked on 20 June 2013.
What seemed like a smart decision to ease pressure
on inflation effectively pierced the international veil that
shrouded Brazilians, where social tension over 2014
World Cup spending had been brewing for years. Until
June 2013, the global public did not realise the extent to
which ratcheted-up social tension in Brazil had twisted
upon itself. Months later, there is little to no indication
that the Brazilian government can prevent a similar
social upheaval at the 2014 World Cup.
Police tactics
The Brazilian government is on a decidedly reactive
footing. As wave after wave of social upheaval swept
across Brazilian cities in June 2013, the immediate
solution rested on protocols that have been in place
since the early years of the country’s most recent military
dictatorship: in a word, repression. Police armed with
clubs, rubber pellets, tear gas and riot shields lined up
against the agitated street protesters. Although, one irony
not lost on many of those behind the shields was a shared
sense of marginalisation. Many of the men and women in
uniform who enforce the law across Brazil share many of
the same reasons for pointing fingers at the government,
not least on the issues of wages and cost of living.
These protests portrayed the very image that the
current Brazilian government most wanted to avoid,
and splashed it across international papers: angry
citizens facing off with disjointed groupings of police
officers relying on crowd-control training that was more
reminiscent of Brazil’s military dictatorships than the
modern country the current government wishes to
promote on the global stage. Thirty years ago, social
activists were limited in what they could say and do
about the concentrated events of police abuse, and
images were limited in timing, scope and clarity. The
‘CNN effect’ had not yet been leveraged as it is today.1
57
In 2013, Brazilian police are still using old tools
while activists have updated their skill set and toolbox.
In the most recent round of clashes between police and
protesters, Brazilians proved that smartphones, linked to
a live video feed and shared with the world on platforms
such as Twitter and Facebook, can be more powerful
than tear gas canisters, bludgeons and rubber bullets.
One video uploaded on seven September 2013, revealed
a military police non-commissioned officer in Brasilia
declaring that he used pepper spray on peaceful protesters
not because he was ordered to but because he wanted
to.2 In another case, a young man who was arrested for
carrying Molotov cocktails in his backpack was later found
innocent when investigations into his arrest revealed that
both the military and civil police officers had lied.3
Rarely are police in any country able to maintain a
passive position and peacefully resolve protests, but the
combination of citizen journalism and social media in
June 2013 accelerated the velocity at which otherwise
obscure human rights violations, such as scenes of
violence, could be shared in real-time with a global
Security and safety
thousands of Brazilians out of poverty during his eightyear tenure in the 2000s, the truth is that his efforts were
only the beginning of what should be a protracted and
sustained social project to right the wrongs committed
upon well over half of Brazilian society since, arguably,
the conclusion of the War of Canudos in 1897. Historians
consider that the conclusion of the War of Canudos, in
which the nation in its early republican years battled
against a rebellion in north-east Brazil, led to the eventual
establishment of the Brazilian slum, or favela, in Rio
de Janeiro, the capital city at that time. Government
soldiers who had not been paid during the war returned
to Rio to squat land while awaiting payment, which never
arrived. Today’s favelas, and the social inequities that
they represent, have their origins in part as a result of
this initial refusal or inability to make good on payment.
Under President Dilma Rousseff, many of Lula’s social
policies retain significant traction, though political realities
and corruption have undercut some of her administration’s
efforts. Ultimately, however, the realities of hosting a major
international sporting event forced her administration
to make some hard decisions that
Rousseff, who knows very well
what it is like to suffer at the hands
of a repressive regime, may have
regretted. The tension between social
spending and World Cup preparation
is not lost on Rousseff.
The realities of Brazil’s
complicated public contracting system, where corruption
is still a significant challenge, and the outward signs
of development designed to satisfy international
visitors present a daily reminder of government focus
in cities where locals starve. This contrast presents too
tempting a target for Brazilians, who have challenged
the government’s perennial reticence to make required
investments in sustainable social improvement. Some
men and women protesting in the street are the very
locals who are starving, having been organised and
wrapped around leftist political agendas, but most are
the members of the middle class, close enough to the
social drop-off into poverty, who simply cry unfair. It’s
as if Lula’s social victory generated a critical mass of
educated young Brazilians now in place to speak out
against the establishment on behalf of all Brazilians.
They are a mobilised, connected social core who will
act on Twitter hash tags such as #vemprarua (‘come
to the street’) and who believe that Brazil can be a better
country if only the government would pay attention to
their voice and act on what they collectively think is right.
Divided as they may be by agenda, class, creed and race,
all protesters agree on one fundamental fact: Brazil’s
position on the world stage presents an opportunity for
Brazilians to press their government into reformist action.
Months after the June protests, it is clear to see that
government and some international targets attracted
the most attention and vandalism, while fans attending
Confederations Cup matches were forced to put up with, at
most, some unfriendly shouting. Though walking through
On a national level, protesters could
easily cause massive, systemic disruption
viewing public. These windows into a limited measure
of police brutality exacerbated an already tense social
environment, adding excessive use of force to the long
list of grievances that stand unresolved.
Haves and have-nots
If pockets of police brutality captured and shared in
real-time add fuel to the fire, where is the spark? To
a casual observer on a diet of international cable
news, it would appear as though social activists and
other protesters across Brazil were all organised with a
specific raft of complaints focused particularly on major
sporting events. The friction that is caused when the
reality of high spending rubs against those hundreds
of thousands of Brazilians who strongly believe that
the money should be spent on poverty reduction –
that is, education, combatting hunger and job creation
– produces a spark that kicks off protest. But that
explanation is only partially correct. History helps
give context to the rest of the answer.
Since the early 1900s, generations of leaders in the
Brazilian government, at federal, state, and local levels,
have participated in the marginalisation of large sections
of Brazilian society, to the point where the disparity
between the haves and have-nots has generated one
of the widest wealth gaps in the developing world. The
most striking image of this reality can be viewed in Rio
de Janeiro, where the city’s slums sit cheek to jowl with
wealthy neighbourhoods. Though President Luiz Inácio
‘Lula’ da Silva should be lauded for lifting hundreds of
58
Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters
Security and safety
Brazilian riot police close off a road outside
the Castelão Stadium in Fortazela prior to the
2013 Confederations Cup semi-final match
a crowd of angry protesters is not the ideal experience
for anyone who is visiting a host country to attend an
international football match, it is far from what FIFA, the
Brazilian government and football fans worldwide most
fear: direct harm done to tourists or direct, disruptive
attacks on tournament locations.
Power of disruption
But angry shouting is more likely to be the norm than the
exception, especially in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo,
where the protests were the most intense and widespread
at the city level. On a national level, protesters could easily
cause massive, systemic disruption in several cities by
simply clogging Brazil’s already limited routes of travel
through airports, along major highways, and along city
routes, where options to travel from a concentration of
hotels to the stadium and back are limited.
What is worse is that while the government has the
police and protocols to protect critical access points,
such as the airports, there are simply not enough lawenforcement personnel to attend to what could again
become a need to disperse hundreds of thousands of
civilians in the streets.
Deeply rooted social injustices, going back decades,
have met an unprecedented opportunity to raise a unified
voice on an international stage. The Brazilian government
must react, if only to save face. Federal, state and local
governments do not have the resources to stop crowds
from gathering, and though the games will go on as
planned, every step taken towards kick-off will come
with a chance for a small grievance to strike a spark
and ignite a city or the country. Social activism in
Brazil may never again have the opportunities that
are presented by the World Cup and Olympics, and as
disparate as the various groups may be, they will pay the
price, including limited police brutality, to raise their voice.
The government’s response to this potential for social
protest is limited in the short time it has before the first
World Cup match. Protests are symptoms of deeply rooted
problems that will take years not months to rectify. In
addition, there is a deep mistrust of the Brazilian political
class that complicates any effort. In the short term, publicprivate partnerships that facilitate communication and
generate a sense of greater inclusion may help ease
some of the tension.
Looking past the World Cup of 2014, however, the
government’s best option is to learn from the protests of
the Confederations Cup, as well as any civil disobedience
during the World Cup, and apply these lessons across
the country so that Brazil and Brazilians can make the
most of the opportunities offered by the Olympic Games
in Rio in 2016.
Samuel Logan is the founder and Managing Partner of
Southern Pulse, a field-based investigations firm focused
on security, politics and business in Latin America.
Rafael Saliés is a Brazilian security and defence analyst.
He has worked for Southern Pulse since 2012, and is a
member of Team Flamengo, focusing on political, security,
and social issues of Brazil’s upcoming sporting events
References
1
Strobel, W. P, The CNN Effect, American Journalism Review,
May 1996, accessed 19 September 2013,
www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=3572
2
BHProtesta, 7 September 2013, accessed
19 September 2013, bit.ly/17ll8E8
3 O Extra, Protestos no Rio: PM mentiu ao dizer que rapaz
foi preso com coquetel molotov, 24 July 2013, accessed
19 September 2013, glo.bo/146Wthz
59
Security and safety
Security and safety
Sport security training:
preparing the best
for the worst
As the number of major international sporting events grows, and new
host countries and cities come to the fore, implementing training for
full-time, contractor and volunteer staff becomes ever more important.
Stacey Hall reviews the challenges and recommended procedures
for safety and security training at major sporting events
Robert Cianflone/PA Images
T
he success of major sporting events
(MSEs) requires the coordination and
collaboration of many agencies and
individuals, including professionals,
volunteers, public agencies and outsourced
contractors. The 2013 Boston Marathon bombing
reinforced the belief that sports are a potential
target of terrorism and minimised any complacency
regarding safety and security on the part of the
sports event managers.
This tragic incident also highlighted the importance
of response and recovery procedures. Event organisers,
security forces and emergency management
professionals might not be able to prevent all risks;
however, they can and must prepare and plan in order to
effectively respond and recover from potential incidents
during sporting events. Stakeholders involved in the
event-planning and response processes are crucial for
the overall safety and security system, so management
must invest in their ‘human capital’. This includes the
provision of necessary resources to recruit and train
event staff and security forces to understand their roles
and responsibilities in response to all-hazard incidents.
The sport event multi-agency command group is
primarily responsible for the overarching safety and
security planning for a major sport event. It is typically
composed of representatives from key response
agencies, for example police, fire/hazardous materials,
emergency medical services, emergency management
and public health, and it is often augmented by
government agency representatives, depending on the
significance of the event. The command group oversees
Bangladesh’s special task force officers perform checks on the SherE-Bangla stadium in Dhaka. Qualified personnel are essential to the
effective deployment of a security strategy at major sporting events
60
61
Security and safety
risk management, emergency response, evacuation and
continuity planning, training and exercising efforts, as
well as command centre operations that monitor the live
event. Prior to the sporting event, the command group
conducts multi-agency team training focused on eventspecific details and relative threat intelligence to enhance
collaboration and response capabilities.
Event organisers require the assistance of event
staff to perform certain roles, from the protection of the
physical structure to customer service positions (for
example ushers and stewards, ticket takers, gate/parking
attendants and concessions/maintenance). Event briefings
and debriefings with supervisors are important to ensure
that security staff and event staff are prepared. Depending
on the size of the event and/or budget limitations, event
operations may also need the assistance of volunteers.
Regardless of the staff composition, the training and
education of the event workforce is imperative to providing
a safe and secure environment for athletes, spectators,
officials, sponsors and community stakeholders.
Security and safety
A security guard at the London 2012 Olympic
Park. Outsourcing security personnel brings
with it several major advantages
staff who have adequate experience to fulfil
roles as they are required.
4. Resourcefulness: the outsourced company may
have access to infrastructure and processes that
can assist the sport venue’s command group in
emergency response and evacuation situations.
5. Consistent: the company may have developed
standard operating procedures for its staff
and response efforts that ensure a consistent
workforce with the same capabilities and training.
6. International capability: the company may have
an international pool of workers and be able
to provide multilingual personnel for global
sporting events.
The disadvantages include:
1. Personnel behaviour: the sports organisation
may have to deal with complaints about the
behaviour of outsourced personnel that are not
directly under their control.
2. Knowledge: the sports organisation must ensure
that personnel receive adequate training to
perform their duties.
3. Experience: a high turnover of staff may result in
recruitment of personnel with limited experience
of live events and venue specifics.
4. Responsibility: outsourced staff not employed
directly by the organisation may not share the
same values or act in an inappropriate manner.
5. Control: the sports organisation does not manage
staff on a day-to-day basis.
Event management must have sufficient staff with the
appropriate skills. They do not want to be understaffed
(which may present a legal concern) or overstaffed (which
may be a financial concern to the event organiser).
Several factors are considered when determining
the number of staff required for an event, including the
size of the event (anticipated attendance); the number
of events (multi-discipline or one-time event, for
example the Olympics or the Super Bowl); the level of
knowledge and expertise required for each specific role;
scheduling of shifts for personnel; staff composition
(full-time, temporary and volunteer); relevant threat
intelligence; and staff allocations (male and female
personnel or specific assignments associated with
cultural sensitivities).
MSEs such as the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic
Games require the recruitment and training of thousands
of staff members. The 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany
required 52,000 security staff, including 30,000 federal
police officers, 15,000 private security officers, and 7,000
armed forces personnel. For the Vancouver 2010 Winter
Olympics, the projected security personnel was 12,350,
including 5,350 from police departments, 1,500 law
enforcement volunteers, 3,000 contract security personnel
and 2,500 civilian volunteers. The 2014 Commonwealth
Games, to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, will attract 6,500
athletes and officials from 71 different nations and the
combined volunteer and paid workforce is expected to be
more than 21,000.
Industry standards for security and event personnel
vary from country to country. In the United States, the
National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) industry
standards for fire prevention and safety also apply to
crowd-management principles, which state that there
should be one trained crowd-management professional
for every 250 spectators in any facility with a capacity of
more than 250 people. In the UK, the Guide to Safety at
62
Sports Grounds (‘The Green Guide’) sets out the criteria
for stadium safety as well as the qualification of venue
safety officers and stewards to manage the crowds.
The outsourcing option
Once management determines staff roles and numbers for
an event, its next consideration is staff recruitment and
subsequent training techniques. They can choose to utilise
outsourcing services through an independent contractor or
use in-house safety and security personnel. Many sports
organisations outsource due to the difficulty in recruiting
(and training) part-time/temporary staff and volunteers, or
because of low unemployment rates and minimum-wage
requirements. There has been a significant increase in
the market for outsourcing security personnel at sporting
events since the 1990s due to the growth of the sports
industry. There are several advantages and disadvantages
to outsourcing security services. The advantages include:
1. Cost effectiveness: the outsourced company
is responsible for providing trained staff and
compensation for their time; therefore, the
sports organisation does not need to invest
time and money in recruiting, training and
managing the security team.
2. Specialised staff: specific agencies provide expert
event personnel, resulting in specialised staff with
sufficient training in certain roles and functions.
3. Efficiency: the outsourced company can provide
Ben Curtis/PA Images
Needs assessment and recruitment
The volunteer dynamic
Many sports programmes need the help of volunteers in
order to ensure the success of an event. People volunteer
because they want to give back to their community, share
their skills and experiences, develop new skills and be
part of a team and/or network with others. Volunteers
are an essential addition to event staff for major sporting
events, typically representing more than 50 per cent of
all event personnel. Approximately 61,000 volunteers
were registered for Sydney’s 2000 Olympic Games, and
more than 70,000 volunteers were
recruited for the 2012 Olympics in
London. Volunteers do not receive
financial compensation for their
time and are motivated by other
factors, for example, uniforms and
official event merchandise, travel
and accommodation, social events
and activities as well as incentives such as promotional
gifts and experiences. It is sometimes difficult to recruit
volunteers when they are asked to commit to long-term
positions or when the roles are routine or mundane.
Management should align volunteer roles with personal
skills in order to prevent turnover and save training
resources that would be needed for new personnel.
Using volunteers offers some benefits to event
management, including cost effectiveness, access to a
broad range of expertise and experience, connection to the
community in order to gain support for the forthcoming
event and increased public awareness and programme
visibility. Unfortunately, volunteers also represent a
significant security challenge for event management.
People of all ages and all types of skill apply for volunteer
positions and without a sufficient employee-screening
process, management runs the risk of hiring someone
who has a covert goal of doing harm to the event or
participants. The volunteer position may allow access to
the facility and restricted areas, as well as event-specific
intelligence that adversaries could use. A background
check should be conducted, and volunteers registered
well in advance of the event. Most importantly, event
management must ensure that volunteers who lack
sufficient training and knowledge do not compromise
the security system. Volunteers may lack knowledge
of the facility layout and be unfamiliar with emergency
procedures and communication protocol, and poorly
trained volunteers could also expose the facility to risk
through inadequate checking of spectator bags entering
the venue or by serving alcohol to underage patrons.
Training and exercising
“One must learn by doing the thing, for though you
think you know it, you have no certainty until you try.”
Sophocles, fifth century BC.
For an event security plan to achieve its objectives,
qualified and trained event staff are essential. The chart
below outlines event staff capabilities and highlights
common security considerations. These key capabilities
and considerations determine the type of training and
education needed at each level. The ultimate goal is to
train staff to confront and handle multiple threats facing
sporting events. Once staff members are trained in their
specific roles, it is highly recommended that the command
group (in conjunction with event management) exercises
its emergency response plans extensively. Exercises are
a practical, efficient and proven method for management
and security personnel to test and validate their plans and
procedures. Specifically, exercises help to clarify roles
and responsibilities, improve interagency coordination
The ultimate goal is to train staff to
confront and handle multiple threats
and communication, reveal resource gaps and identify
opportunities for improvement.
There are several exercises available to event
managers: discussion-based exercises, such as seminars,
workshops and table-top exercises (TTX), that familiarise
personnel with current plans and policies; and operationsbased exercises, such as drills and full-scale exercises
(FSE), are used to validate plans and policies, clarify
roles and identify resource gaps in security operations.
63
Security and safety
Security and safety
Event staff capabilities and security considerations
Parking attendant staff
Gate security staff
CAPABILITIES
■■
■■
■■
■■
■■
■■
■■
Pre-event sweeps
Vehicle screening
Good lighting and visibility
Effective communication system
Policy enforcement
Credential control measures
VIP arrival points
SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
■■
■■
■■
■■
■■
Abandoned vehicles
Counterfeit parking credentials
Illegal parking
Unattended fires/grills
Altercations and arguments
Concessions/maintenance staff
■■
■■
■■
■■
■■
■■
■■
Venue knowledge
Accountability (money, property and actions)
Key and access control
Uniforms and staff credentials
Inspection programme
Preventative maintenance
Waste removal
Effective communication
■■
■■
■■
■■
CAPABILITIES
■■
CAPABILITIES
■■
■■
■■
■■
■■
Locked or obstructed exits
Abandoned bags and packages
Loss of materials, uniforms, keys
Elicitation of facility information
and inquiry
Vandalism and property damage
■■
■■
CAPABILITIES
■■
■■
Protect physical (facility) and human assets
Ensure that venue policies and procedures are enforced
Coordinate communication and response activities
with command centre
■■
■■
■■
Unauthorised access by
people or vehicles
Abandoned bags and packages
Crowd-control issues
Ticket staff
CAPABILITIES
■■
■■
■■
■■
■■
Guests attempting entry
with prohibited items
Unusual items such as wires,
switches, circuitboards, pipes,
tubes, tape, tools, nails, washers,
screws, liquids and powders
Aggressive responses to
search requests
Unattended/abandoned bags
Security-force staff (police officers and/or guards)
■■
CAPABILITIES
64
■■
Usher staff
Venue knowledge
Positioning and presence before, during and after the event
■■ Visibility and interaction with the crowd:
– Minor incident (for example foul language)
1 Polite introduction to guest
2 Explain why the behaviour is inappropriate
3 Ask guest to stop the behaviour and comply
with venue policy
4 Record the individual’s location
– Significant incident (for example threats)
1 Contact supervisor to issue official warning
2 Identify and interview witnesses
3 Warning may be recorded at command post
– Major incident (for example fighting or a medical emergency)
1 Contact law enforcement/emergency medical services
2 Assist responding agency if necessary (for example
restrain/remove individual or identify/interview witnesses)
3 Complete incident report
Prevent unauthorised entrance to the venue
Stopping entry of prohibited items (for example food, beverages,
alcohol, backpacks, signs, beach balls, balloons, videocameras,
noisemakers, coolboxes, explosives and fireworks)
Observe and report items of concern, for example:
1 Wires, switches and circuitboards
2 Pipes, tubes, tape and tools
3 Nails, washers and screws
4 Liquids and powders
5 Aggressive responses to search requests
6 Unattended/abandoned bags
For most guests, gate operations set the tone
■■
■■
■■
■■
■■
■■
Abusive language (slurs or threats)
Taunting, arguing, altercations
Thrown objects or objects
entering the stands
Blocked aisles and stairways
Signs of alcohol impairment
Guests who are sleeping
and/or vomiting
Offensive signs, banners, clothing
Isolated pockets of opposing fans
■■
■■
■■
Lost tickets, duplicate tickets and special ticket requirements
Prepared, with backup scanners
Ensure that queues are moving
■■
■■
■■
■■
■■
Guests offering cash for access
Counterfeit tickets
Counterfeit credentials
Recycling of tickets
Touts and scams
Field staff (playing area)
CAPABILITIES
■■
■■
■■
■■
■■
Prevent unauthorised entrance to playing areas
Event procedures
Positioning and presence at playing areas
Coordinate response procedures for all hazards, for example
weather (lightning, tornado) and encroachment (crowd-surfing)
Coordinate communication and response
■■
■■
■■
■■
Drug and alcohol impairment
Crowd problems – organisation
and leadership
Counterfeit credentials
Exhibitionists and demonstrators
65
Security and safety
It is recommended that event organisers take a
‘building-block’ approach when establishing their exercise
programme, beginning with less complex exercises and
gradually progressing to a more complex type of exercise
that requires the deployment of resources and personnel.
Security screening at the London 2012 Olympics
Welcome Centre. Practice exercises are a vital
component in preparing staff for a sports event
Jae C. Hong/PA Images
The TTX is one of the most commonly used and costeffective exercises for major sports events. This exercise
format consists of informal, facilitated discussions of
simulated emergencies among key personnel. Basic
TTXs involve a constant, unchanging simulation, while
advanced TTXs present the group with inserts (messages)
that progress the initial scenario. The TTX involves many
people and organisations that can contribute to the
planned discussion items – typically those entities with
a planning, policy or response role. A TTX usually lasts
one to four hours and is a tool for management to assess
current plans and identify gaps in security operations
without incurring costs associated with deploying assets.
The FSE is a more complex, fully involved, multiagency/multi-jurisdictional exercise format involving a
‘boots on the ground’ simulation. Real-world deployment
of assets occurs in support of the exercise scenario,
allowing participants to evaluate coordinated responses
under crisis conditions. An FSE may be designed to
last two to four hours or as long as one or more days.
Regardless of the chosen exercise format, emphasis
is placed on functions and not the emergency itself.
Event management’s emergency response focus may
relate to efforts such as:
1. risk communication protocol – notifying internal
staff and dealing with the media via a public
relations representative/public information
officer post-incident;
2. mutual-aid agreements – ensuring that resources
and logistics with supporting agencies, private
and public, are secured and efficiently distributed
to the incident scene in a timely fashion;
3. coordination with other organisations to
provide mass care;
4. mass evacuation and traffic-control
coordination; and
5. conversion of the sport facility to a shelter
facility in a time of crisis, for example
inclement weather relief.
Security and safety
considerations. The TTX allowed multiagency decision
makers to discuss the variables and options available
for numerous emergency scenarios and to ensure a
coordinated crisis response. It also allowed agencies
to test individual standard operating procedures and
memorandums of understanding between each other.
As a follow-up to the TTXs, a multinational sponsored
full-scale exercise (Hercules’ Shield) was conducted
to test command and control,
communication, coordination,
and information and intelligence
sharing. Scenarios simulated an
actual event and all elements of
the crisis response were activated,
including the dispatch of first
responders to the incident site
and medical facilities implementing mass casualty
contingencies. Expertise in handling a hazardous
material incident, an explosive device, and a WMD
were tested and evaluated. After each exercise,
participants provided input for an after action report
which highlighted tactics that worked and procedures
It is imperative to educate the event
workforce to identify potential threats
TTX and FSE were used during preparations for the
2004 Olympic Games in Greece, specifically focusing on
preparedness and response capabilities. Two table-top
exercises (Olympic Guardian I and II) were conducted
to address crisis response planning, antiterrorism,
counterterrorism, and consequence management
66
that needed to be corrected before the beginning of
the 2004 Games. Lessons learnt from these exercises
included the need to: 1) have a reliable, compatible
communication system; 2) improve the dissemination
of intelligence; 3) conduct a risk assessment, and
4) provide additional training to further develop
relationships among responding entities.
In conclusion, event management will rely heavily
on the multi-agency command group for planning and
response efforts. This critical executive team must train
as a group prior to an event and conduct exercises to
test their plans and capabilities. The determination
and selection of the event workforce, and subsequent
training is also important. Investing in these resources
upfront will have a dramatic impact on response and
recovery procedures in the event of an incident. Recent
sport tragedies remind event organisers and security
management that there is no room for complacency. It
is imperative to educate the event workforce to identify
potential threats and deal with emergencies effectively
to minimise damage and loss of life. Training and
exercise is not a one-time event; it must be conducted
on a continuous basis in order to address the changing
elements of the sports sector, including the evolving
threats, new plans and procedures, new equipment
and training new personnel.
Dr Stacey Hall is the Associate Director of the National
Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security (NCS4)
and an Associate Professor of Sport Management at
The University of Southern Mississippi (USM)
References
1
Training Manual, International Association of Venue Managers,
Academy for Venue Safety and Security, 2006
2
Hall, S., Cooper, W.E., Marciani, L., and McGee, J.A. Security
Management for Sports and Special Events – An Interagency
Approach, Human Kinetics, Champaign, Illinois, 2012
3
Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program, US
Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC, 2007
4
McGee, J.A. International Special Events, FBI Law
Enforcement Bulletin, 2006
5
Stevens, A. Sports Security and Safety: Evolving Strategies for a
Changing World, Sport Business Group, London, 2007
67
Integrity
Integrity
Effective sanctioning of
match-fixing: the need
for a two-track approach
Dr Ben Van Rompuy argues that focusing on the criminal prosecution of
match-fixing offences can be inefficient and may even be counter-productive
in deterring potential offenders, and that sports organising bodies should pay
more attention to using the full range of their own powers and sanctions
E
the forefront1, have called on governments to establish
sports fraud as a specific criminal offense and to
prioritise the criminal investigation and prosecution
of those involved in match-fixing cases.
The problem of match-fixing evidently reaches
beyond the realm of sport. The investigation and
prosecution of criminal organisations and individuals
outside the sports world are wholly a matter for public
authorities. This should not mean, however, that sports
Alamy
ven when sports governing bodies profess
a zero-tolerance policy to match-fixing,
they usually are still quick to point out that
fighting crime is primarily the task of law
enforcement and prosecuting agencies. After all, so
the argument goes, sports governing bodies do not
have the investigative powers or legal capacities to
tackle the problem by themselves. Accordingly, various
stakeholders, with the ‘European football family’ at
68
69
governing bodies should refrain from taking (parallel)
disciplinary action against those falling under their
jurisdiction. Instead of passing the hot potato around,
law enforcement agencies and sports governing bodies
must use their respective powers and resources in the
most effective and efficient way possible.
Criminal prosecution is not a quick fix
From a practical and empirical standpoint, there is nothing
to suggest that criminal sanctions against match-fixing
play a significant role in deterring misconduct. Empirical
deterrence research persistently finds that the perceived
likelihood of detection and enforcement – not the severity
of the sanctions imposed – makes the most difference to
compliance behaviour2. Unfortunately, the track record of
criminal sanctioning of match-fixing is underwhelming.
Europol’s match-fixing revelations earlier this year, for
example, were reminiscent of the press conference held
by UEFA and the German police in Bochum in 2009.
Europol officials stated at the conference that this was
the biggest match-fixing scandal ever to hit Europe, but
“only the tip of the iceberg”, and involved hundreds of
suspected matches including World Cup and European
Championship qualifiers. Europol did not add that of
the more than 200 suspects identified in the Bochum
investigation only around a dozen have been convicted.
The standard technical defence is that match-fixing is
extremely difficult to prove: there usually is no irrefutable
evidence of deliberate underperformance and no traceable
money trail. The use of specific investigation techniques
(such as interception of communications, searches and
access to bank accounts) is therefore crucial, but they
are only permitted under strict conditions. While there
Integrity
they are confident that effective action against corruption
will be the result. It is recognised in the jurisprudence of
the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that the use
of anonymous witness statements may be admissible,
but only in exceptional circumstances and under strict
conditions. The needs of the criminal proceeding must
be carefully balanced against the rights of defence of the
accused, which typically include the right to challenge
and question the witness. Procedural safeguards could
consist of the cross-examination of anonymous witnesses
over the phone and an in-depth check of the identity of
the witnesses by the court. In this scenario, however,
their testimony cannot furnish decisive evidence.
To the already low chance of detection and speedy
investigation, one can add the low chance of prosecution
and sentencing. Even in countries with a mandatory
system of prosecution, public prosecutors – who have the
burden of proving the guilt of the accused under a high
standard of proof (beyond reasonable doubt) – inevitably
must direct their limited resources to the most important
cases that have a realistic prospect of conviction. The
degree of harm is an important consideration. While
the seriousness and public interest of prosecuting matchfixing might be self-evident in the eyes of the sports world,
it may not be immediately apparent to a public prosecutor.
The introduction of specific criminal law provisions
on sports fraud, as advocated by various stakeholders,
would have little immediate bearing on the low levels of
prosecution. If the commitment to criminalisation simply
means putting sports fraud on the statute books, it is
merely an exercise of gesture politics intended more to
capture headlines than to deter misconduct.
The aim here is not to undermine the efforts to ensure
effective investigation and criminal
prosecution of the manipulation of
sports results. It is indispensable that
applicable criminal law provisions
(on bribery, fraud, extortion and
so on) and a range of appropriate
sanctions are available. Initiatives
like the proposed Council of Europe
convention on match-fixing are
therefore important – even more so
because they aim to facilitate cross-border cooperation3.
Rather, the argument is that criminal prosecution, because
it is uncertain, can only be one component of a broader
set of enforcement mechanisms and deterrents. The
possibility of criminal prosecution should not be a reason
for sports governing bodies to shirk their responsibilities.
While not every match-fixing case has
a criminal component, it will always
have a disciplinary component
are no unified standards, generally such techniques must
be court-ordered and would already require sufficient
evidence of criminal association.
Consequently, most of the successful criminal
investigations into match-fixing have been either
accidental by-products of inquiries into non-sports related
criminal activities (for example narcotics, prostitution
or money laundering) or spillovers from investigations
that were initiated in other jurisdictions. Nearly all other
successful criminal investigations have been triggered by
whistleblowers and/or have relied on witnesses to provide
corroborated evidence. The obvious problem here is
that criminals can be powerful and ruthless in enforcing
a code of silence through intimidation and retaliation.
Individuals involved in a match-fixing scheme or those
external to it will only assume the risk of cooperation if
70
Disciplinary sanctions
Faced with the enormous threat of match-fixing, most
international sports governing bodies are currently
focusing on training, education and other means of
prevention. There is, however, an equally strong need to
support prevention by vigilantly pursuing disciplinary
action against participants in the activity.
Of course, sports governing bodies are powerless
against criminal gangs and individuals outside the sports
EPA/Alamy
Integrity
The February 2013 press conference at The Hague, in
which Europol claimed to have uncovered 380 suspicious
football matches, including World Cup qualifiers
world. One should not forget that while not every matchfixing case has a criminal component, it will always have
a disciplinary component. The manipulation of sports
events can only occur with the involvement of a person
covered by the rules and regulations of the sports
governing body – for example a player, coach, agent
or official. There are at least five good reasons why
disciplinary proceedings ought to be the starting point
of most, if not all, investigations into match-fixing.
First, the intelligence that is needed to prepare and
progress disciplinary proceedings is low in comparison
with criminal proceedings. Simple rumours and various
other pieces of information can trigger a disciplinary
investigation. Let’s take the example of suspicious betting
patterns. The detection of irregular betting activity can
directly trigger an investigation and may even provide
compelling evidence to satisfy the requisite standard
of proof (that is, preponderance of evidence or balance of
probability). In the case of the Macedonia football club
FK Pobeda at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, for
instance, the panel primarily relied on the report of a
betting expert in order to conclude that the games had
been fixed4. A decision on any criminal charges, on
the other hand, would require much more significant
intelligence work since there can be many explanations
for suspect betting activity. At most, this intelligence
can be used as circumstantial evidence.
Second, the frequently used argument that sports
governing bodies lack the investigative powers to find
conclusive evidence of match-fixing is flawed. Several
international sports governing bodies (International
Tennis Federation, International Cricket Council,
International Ski Federation) have recently adopted anticorruption rules that give them potent tools for evidence
gathering5. Apart from interrogating participants, their
respective integrity units are entitled to request “all
information relating to the alleged offence”, which may
include telephone records, bank statements, text messages
received and sent, internet service records, and records
stored on computer hard drives and other devices. To take
part in the events organised by these sports bodies, the
participants are required to waive any rights or defences
provided by data protection laws or other laws to withhold
the information requested. One may question whether the
use of such extensive powers is legitimate. At least as
long as these regulations remain unchallenged, however,
participants who refuse to comply cannot compete.
Third, disciplinary proceedings enable quicker action
and might even enable disruptive action to pro-actively
eliminate opportunities to corrupt a sports competition.
71
Integrity
Integrity
that could arise from parallel disciplinary and criminal
investigations and proceedings pale in comparison to the
advantages. In addition to sending out a strong signal
for deterrence purposes, a two-track approach may
create invaluable synergies – which would generally be
particularly beneficial to the criminal investigations.
With regard to participants, disciplinary action by the
sports governing bodies will often be the most effective –
and even the only possible first course of action to take.
Building up the evidential trail for criminal prosecution,
on the other hand, can be very time consuming and,
therefore, can only be retrospective.
Fourth, investigators operating under the auspices
of worldwide sports governing bodies can more easily
operate internationally, whether in conjunction with
national federations or otherwise. For their disciplinary
purposes, the investigators are not restrained by
cross-jurisdictional issues.
Fifth, there is no empirical support for the contention
that the stigma of criminal sanctions influences
compliance behavior. As stressed before, participants’
perception of the probability of detection and sanctioning
is the most powerful deterrent. Moreover, the Court
of Arbitration for Sport has accepted lifetime bans for
athletes as an appropriate sanction for match-fixing,
even for first-time offenders. Depending on how long the
athlete expects to be performing and the particular sport,
the penalty of a lifetime ban could be more severe than a
prison sentence of a limited duration.
72
Effective and rapid sanctions
When sports governing bodies invoke the rhetoric of
zero-tolerance for match-fixing, they generally presuppose
legislative action and a more active pursuit of criminal
investigation and prosecution. The
concern rehearsed in this article is
that an over-enthusiastic reliance on
criminal prosecution is unproductive
and might even be counterproductive. Empirical research on
compliance in other areas of law
and regulation shows that people’s
perception of the likelihood of detection and sanctioning
is the most powerful influence on behaviour.
Since criminal prosecution is a formidable task
and match-fixing will always involve individuals working
within the reputation and influence of the sport, only an
integrated two-track approach of parallel disciplinary
and criminal proceedings can improve on the low levels
of prosecution. Sports governing bodies should not pass
the hot potato around because criminal organisations are
also involved. Unless their internal regulations and codes
of conducts are of a merely symbolic nature, the sports
governing bodies must do all that is within their powers
– which can be much more extensive than some would
suggest – to punish those who violate them.
The difficulties in parallel investigations
pale in comparison to the advantages
A two-track approach
In 2010, Rick Parry successfully called
for the creation of the Sports Betting
Intelligence Unit, after his investigation
into suspicious gambling in UK sport
result. They serve different purposes, the charges brought
under the respective procedures are significantly different,
for the most part they will target different persons, and
they require, as discussed above, different evidence. The
issue of double jeopardy would only arise if there could
be a case to be made that a sanction, albeit disciplinary
in form, reveals a punitive intent and thus must be
qualified as a criminal penalty.
To determine the boundaries between a criminal and
disciplinary sanctions, the ECHR case law developed three
criteria: the legal classification of the offence in national
law; the nature of the offence; and the degree of severity
of the sanction. However, what matters primarily is the
second criterion. The fact that a lifetime ban has severe
consequences for the athlete concerned does not render
the sanction criminal7.
Furthermore, nothing would prevent the criminal
court from duly taking into account the seriousness of
a previous disciplinary sanction when determining the
appropriate criminal sanction. By and large, the difficulties
Gary M. Prior/Getty Images
In light of the above, it is clear that disciplinary measures
have a fundamental role to play in an effective strategy
to combat match-fixing. The fact that a match-fixing
case could potentially also involve a criminal offence
should not compromise the willingness of sports
governing bodies to prepare and to progress disciplinary
proceedings against all suspected breaches of their
regulations or codes of conduct.
When an initial suspicion about the manipulation of
sports events is raised, the precise nature or gravity of
the case may still be unclear. Sports governing bodies
will generally be best placed to swiftly gather more
comprehensive information so it can be determined
whether the case might merit a criminal investigation.
Yet even when there are sufficient indications of potential
criminal activity, the sport governing body should not take
a back seat. Instead, a two-track approach of disciplinary
and criminal proceedings must be envisaged.
It is common practice for sports governing bodies
to stay disciplinary investigations and proceedings once
criminal investigations are contemplated or have begun.
Often it is argued, also by law enforcement agencies,
that concurrent proceedings may present a substantial
risk of prejudice or “obstructing justice”6. However,
there is no general rule that criminal proceedings must
take precedence over disciplinary proceedings or that
disciplinary investigations or proceedings have to await
the outcome of a criminal investigations or proceedings. In
all but the most exceptional cases, nothing would legally
obstruct the sovereignty of a sport governing body to
sanction participants for breach of applicable regulations.
Furthermore, concurrent disciplinary and criminal
proceedings and sanctions are unlikely to constitute a
breach of the fundamental legal principle of ne bis in
idem (that is, a person cannot be prosecuted or punished
multiple times for the same offence). Criminal and
disciplinary procedures are different in character and
making framework is that only more serious cases
would potentially be appropriate for criminal sanction:
disciplinary action by the sports governing body would
frequently be the most effective or efficient approach8.
When it is suspected or evident that criminal conduct
has taken place, either by the participant(s) or outside
fraudsters, it becomes necessary to share relevant
information with law-enforcement agencies.
Various scenarios are possible. The sports governing
body may seek to engage the police or other public
authorities because there is a need for collaboration. More
importantly, the evidence gathered in the context of the
disciplinary investigation may trigger the initiation of a
second, criminal enforcement track. Subject to certain
restrictions, evidence secured under disciplinary powers
can be passed on to law enforcement agencies for the
purpose of a criminal investigation. The information flow
would typically be one-way. It is possible, however, that
certain information secured under criminal powers can be
disclosed for the purpose of the disciplinary proceeding –
notably when law enforcement agencies find that there is
insufficient evidence to justify a criminal prosecution.
To facilitate the exchange of intelligence and
evidence, it is useful that sports governing bodies and
relevant public authorities enter into information-sharing
agreements. Such agreements or protocols are not
intended to create legally enforceable obligations, but to
foster a collaborative working relationship and formulate
clear lines of communication.
The establishment of a pan-sports integrity unit
that coordinates the gathering, analysis and exchange of
intelligence related to match-fixing is even more suitable
to support an effective sanctioning strategy. An interesting
example is the Sports Betting Intelligence Unit (SBIU),
which was created within the UK Gambling Commission
in 2010. The SBIU acts as the gateway for information
on potentially corrupt betting activity related to British
sporting events. Once a piece of information is received
by the SBIU, from whatever source, it will inform, develop
and coordinate the appropriate course of action through
to when the case is closed. A detailed investigative
decision-making framework documents how the SBIU
will determine whether to refer the case to a sports
governing body or betting operator, to proceed to criminal
prosecution, to issue a caution or to take no further
action. The underlying presumption of this decision-
Dr Ben Van Rompuy is senior researcher at the TMC
Asser Instituut/Asser International Sports Law Centre
References
1
European Football United for the Integrity of the Game,
Professional Football Strategy Council, 2013
2
Parker, C. Criminal Sanctions and Compliance: The Gap between
Rhetoric and Reality in Criminalising Cartels: Critical Studies
of an International Regulatory Movement, Beaton-Wells, C
and Ezrachi, A (eds), Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2011, p250
3
Feasibility study on criminal law on promotion of the integrity
of sport against manipulation of results, notably match-fixing,
Council of Europe, European Committee on Crime Problems
(CDPC), 2012
4
Aleksandar Zabrcanec, Nikolce Zdraveski v/UEFA,
CAS 2009/A/1920 FK Pobeda, 2009
5
Betting and other anti-corruption violations rules, International
Ski Federation, 2013; Uniform Tennis Anti-corruption Programme,
Tennis Integrity Unit, 2013; Anti-corruption Code for participants,
International Cricket Council, 2012
6
Lorgat, H. Sport needs ethical leadership in an area of fixing, ICSS
Journal 1.2, 2013, p51
7
Guinchard A. Human Rights in Financial Services: the Boundaries
between Discipline and Criminal, vol 15, no 2; European Journal of
Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, 2007, p192
8
The Gambling Commission’s betting integrity decision making
framework, Gambling Commission, 2010
73
Integrity
Integrity
Doping, competitive
advantage and the
integrity of sport
Dr John Danaher examines the ethical justifications for doping bans in
sport, arguing that we need a clearer understanding of the ‘integrity’ issues
that commonly accompany discussions of anti-doping policy
E
lite professional sports have a drug problem.
That much is obvious, and nowhere has it been
more obvious than in the world of professional
cycling. In 2012, though suspicions had been rife
for a long time, and though many had known the truth for
years1, the wool was finally lifted from the eyes of the
true believers: the hero at the centre of the modern sport,
Lance Armstrong, was exposed as a drugs cheat, and his
seven Tour de France titles were taken away.
However, any hopes that this would draw a line under
the scandals that have plagued this sport and others, have
proved ill-founded. In June 2013, Armstrong’s long-time
rival, Jan Ullrich, confessed to doping2, while sprinters
Tyson Gay of the US and Asafa Powell and Sherone
Simpson of Jamaica tested positive for banned drugs
before the athletics World Championships in August 2013.
Can doping bans be justified?
What is happening in cycling is merely a microcosm of
a much broader phenomenon, one which has probably
afflicted elite sporting contests since their origins in
ancient history. In such contests, there are winners and
losers. In order to succeed one needs to find a competitive
advantage, be that in a new training regime, a novel piece
of equipment, or an altered diet. It is no surprise to find
that athletes are drawn to prohibited drugs as a means
of securing a competitive advantage. And although we all
feel cheated when we hear that people like Armstrong or
Ullrich have used banned substances like EPO, there are
serious ethical questions to be asked about the propriety
of doping bans. Can doping bans be justified? Should the
use of performance-enhancing drugs such as EPO actually
be permitted rather than restricted? In this article, I
suggest that it is very difficult to justify a restrictive policy
without a heightened appreciation for, and sharpened
definition of, the notion of sporting integrity.
74
The difficulty of justifying restrictive policies is readily
apparent if we review the arguments typically offered in
their favour. Though the literature on this subject is vast,
the arguments proffered by proponents of bans tend to
fall into three categories:
1. harm arguments;
2. fairness arguments; and
3. integrity arguments.
Let us consider each in turn.
Harm arguments offer perhaps the most attractive
grounds for an ethically justified ban. The pattern
underlying all such arguments is familiar: the use of
a particular performance enhancer (call it ‘Drug X’) is
harmful to the individual athlete who uses it; sporting
authorities are ethically justified in preventing harm to
athletes; therefore, sporting authorities can justifiably ban
the use of Drug X. The notion of ‘harm’ is a little bit fuzzy
here, of course, but we can take it to include a variety of
physical and psychological harms.
There are several problems with the harm arguments,
two of which we can address here. First, and perhaps most
damning, is the fact that not all banned performanceenhancing drugs are harmful. Take EPO as an example.
There are risks associated with this drug, and there have
been reports of athletes dying from blood thickening and
so forth, but as Lance Armstrong himself would seem to
prove, it can be used safely, over long periods of time.
Indeed, one might argue that doping bans make matters
less safe for athletes in this regard. The pressures to
take such drugs are inherent in sporting contests, so if
athletes are going to take them anyway, better that they
do so in the open, with full medical guidance and support,
than in a clandestine and secretive manner. The second
problem with harm arguments is that within the sporting
context, harm is rarely, if ever, a sufficient reason for
75
Integrity
George Burns/DPA/PA Images
Integrity
Lance Armstrong admits his performance-enhancing drug use
to Oprah Winfrey in January 2013. His confession has not
drawn a line under the scandals that have plagued cycling
banning something. After all, many sports are themselves
intrinsically or indirectly harmful, often very seriously so.
Performance-enhancing drugs are nothing special in this
regard. If they are to be justifiably banned, it will have to
be for something over and above their harmful nature.
Consider next fairness arguments. Again, these
arguments, and the associated metaphors, are familiar:
in order to ensure that sporting contests are fair, sporting
training facilities), that some athletes should be allowed
to use performance-enhancing drugs in order to correct
for the existing imbalances.
That leaves us with the possibility of an integritybased argument. The concept of integrity is a fuzzy one,
but there are two plausible ways to spell it out. The first
is to define it in relation to the rules of the particular
sporting contest – that is, integrity is achieved if the
rules are respected. The second is
to define it in relation to some set
of traits or virtues that we expect
athletes to exemplify. The first of
these definitions offers little support
for a doping ban. Given that Drug X
is banned by the rules of a sport,
we can agree that its use is ethically
impermissible. This is why I, for
one, reacted negatively when I first
learnt of Lance Armstrong’s use of EPO. But that says
nothing about whether the ban is ethically justified in the
first place. The second definition is more promising, but
we have to ask: what are the virtues and traits we seek
to cultivate among elite athletes? People often appeal
to notions like the spirit or ethos of sport to guide their
answers to this question, but these notions are pretty
vague in themselves. If the spirit of sport requires hard
work and perseverance, then perhaps performanceenhancing drugs contravene that spirit (though the
hard work and ingenuity of Armstrong’s doping operation
gives some pause for thought here). But if the spirit of
Elite athletes are trapped in something
like the ‘prisoners’ dilemma’ when it
comes to performance-enhancing drugs
authorities must guarantee that there is a ‘level playing
field’ between the competitors; the use of Drug X bestows
an unfair advantage to some competitors; therefore the
use of Drug X can be justifiably banned.
This is a bad argument. The problem is that
considerations of fairness are strictly neutral on the
question of doping bans. One can achieve a level playing
field by levelling-up (that is, permitting their use) or by
levelling-down (that is, restricting or banning their use)
– which is to be preferred is dependent of other factors.
Indeed, one could make the argument that there are so
many other unfair advantages in sport (genetics, access to
76
sport is embodied by the notion of pushing the boundaries
of human performance, of overcoming the natural
limitations of the human body, then maybe the use of
performance-enhancing drugs is to be permitted. Julian
Savulescu, of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics,
has repeatedly made this argument against doping bans3.
In brief, the three traditional arguments for doping
bans do not make a strong case in their favour. Is there
any other argument that can do the trick?
The doping dilemma and harm to athletes
In a recent article, Eric Chwang presented a novel
argument for doping bans4. It is a twist on the traditional
harm and fairness arguments. The twist comes from his
appeal to game theory. As he sees it, elite athletes are
trapped in something like the ‘prisoners’ dilemma’ when
it comes to the use of performance-enhancing drugs: they
realise they would be better off if they did not use them,
but the strategic dynamics of the sporting contest mean
they cannot help but use them. Therefore, it is appropriate
for sporting authorities to step in and ban their use.
Let us consider the logic of this argument in a little
more detail. Assume that there is one athlete (A), and
that she has a choice between taking or refraining from
taking Drug X (call these options ‘dope’ and ‘stay clean’).
Suppose further that Drug X does indeed bestow a
competitive advantage, and that it is not officially banned
or called into question by the rules of the particular sport.
Would we expect the athlete to dope or stay clean? Human
nature being what it is, and the rewards of sporting success
being what they are, it is safe to assume that the athlete
will choose to dope (or, better, that at least one athlete
confronted with such a choice will choose to dope).
But this is to look at the decision purely from the
perspective of one athlete. What if there are two athletes
(A and B), both of whom face the same choice, and both
of whom know that their competitor faces the same
choice? Will they choose to dope or stay clean? Here
is where the competitive dynamics of sport kick-in. If
I am athlete A, I would reason in the following manner.
If I stay clean, and B stays clean, then neither of us
gains a competitive advantage: what will separate our
performances is a combination of natural ability, hard
work and luck. If I stay clean, and B does not, then I may
have to look for another line of business. Neither of those
possibilities is wonderful, but the second is particularly
bad. On the other hand, if I dope, and B stays clean,
I gain a significant competitive advantage, and all the
riches that entails, over B. And if we both choose to dope,
then the situation remains as is: neither of us gains a
competitive advantage over the other. The second of those
possibilities is not particularly wonderful, but the first of
them looks pretty good.
Something interesting emerges from this analysis. It
seems that, no matter what my competitor chooses to do
– dope or stay clean – I am better off if I choose to dope.
I will either maintain the status quo or gain a competitive
advantage. Contrariwise, if I stay clean, I’ll either maintain
the status quo or lose big time. In the language of game
theory, we say that the choice of doping dominates that of
staying clean. The problem is that my competitor can go
through the exact same reasoning process and reach the
exact same conclusion. Consequently, I should expect
her to start doping, and I should follow suit just to stay in
the game. Arguably, this is the very logic that took over
in professional cycling in the mid-to-late 1990s.
The situation just described is plausible, but how can
it be used to justify a doping ban? This is where Chwang’s
argument comes into play. He sees drug doping as a risky
and potentially harmful business. Even with sophisticated
medical teams, there are dangers associated with the use
of performance-enhancing drugs. The only reason these
risks are worth running is because of the competitive
advantage the drugs bestow.
But as we have just seen, the competitive dynamics
of sport are such that an advantage is unlikely to
materialise. If it is worth it at all, then the advantage
will be eroded by the logic of game theory that indicates
other athletes will also dope. Therefore, all things
considered, athletes would prefer not to dope.
But they cannot afford not to. The logic of the game
prevents them from that. This is illustrated on page 88
– the numbers in the box simply represent the athletes’
preferences for the different outcomes (‘1’ being the most
preferred and ‘4’ being the least preferred). As you can
see, the best outcome for both would be the upper left
quadrant, where neither of them dopes, but the strictly
dominant nature of the doping strategy means they end
up in the lower right.
77
Integrity
Integrity
The outcomes for two athletes considering whether to dope in competition with each other
Two questions that could be used to determine whether doping should be banned
Is there a competitive
advantage?
1
4
= athlete’s most preferred outcome
YES
NO
YES
Doping
ban not
justified
Doping
ban
justified
NO
Doping
ban not
justified
Doping
ban not
justified
Athlete B
= athlete’s least preferred outcome
STAY CLEAN
STAY CLEAN
2, 2
DOPE
1, 4
Is the
doping
harmful?
Athlete A
DOPE
This, according to Chwang, is where sports authorities
can rightfully step in. By changing the incentive structures
of the game (for example, imposing heavy fines or costs
for using certain drugs, and introducing a rigorous testing
programme) they can make the doping strategy less
palatable, and give the athletes their preferred outcome.
Chwang’s argument is appealing for a number of
reasons. It is sensitive to the competitive nature of
sporting contests, cognisant of the pressures that
are brought to bear on elite athletes,
and – most importantly – it is based
on a very simple ethical principle: it
is ethically justified – all else being
equal – for sporting authorities to
give athletes (as a collective) what
they want. And in this instance, they
want to stay clean.
4, 1
3, 3
unpalatable risk of harm and (ii) the drug does not deliver
a clear competitive advantage (because everyone else is
taking it too). When those conditions are not met, the ban
is not ethically justified. This is illustrated on the next page.
The difficulty with this is that, intuitively, it is the safe drug,
that delivers a major competitive advantage, that seems to
be the most objectionable. Consider, again, EPO in cycling,
which has been used safely, up to a certain point, and has,
historically, delivered clear competitive advantages.
By changing incentive structures, sports
bodies can make doping less palatable
The importance of sporting integrity
But even Chwang’s argument has its problems, as he
himself recognises. There is a danger that the argument
is under-inclusive – that is, fails to justify banning certain
drugs that we think ought to be banned; and, conversely,
that it is over-inclusive – that is, would justify banning
things like intensive training regimes that we think
ought not to be banned.
On the first of these complaints, one needs to bear
in mind that Chwang’s argument only justifies bans when
two conditions are met: (i) taking the drug involves some
78
Chwang acknowledges the problem here and responds
by saying that the competitive dynamics of sports will lead
to an arms race mentality between athletes. The result
being that they will tend towards unsafe doses or unsafe
drug-use practices, in the long term. So even in these
cases, a ban will be justified. One might respond to this
by calling for a partial ban (up to the safe level of use),
rather than a total ban, but Chwang suggests that a
partial ban would be difficult to enforce.
On the charge of over-inclusiveness, the concern is
that Chwang’s argument bans anything that has a risk of
harm and fails to deliver a competitive advantage. To an
extent, this is okay. There are, for instance, risky moves
in contact sports that should probably be banned. But
it may also go too far. Intensive training programmes
carry a risk of harm, and oftentimes they fail to deliver a
clear competitive advantage when everyone is following
them. Nevertheless, they would seem to be the kinds of
things we would like to encourage, not to ban. Chwang
has two responses here. The first is that the needs of the
spectators should be borne in mind when considering
the justifiability of bans. Spectators would lose interest
if athletes didn’t train to improve performance and gain
competitive advantage over their peers. The second is
that, unlike doping, athletes may actually enjoy intensive
training, even if no clear competitive advantage arises
from it. Since one of the conditions of Chwang’s argument
was that the athletes themselves are opposed to doping,
this would allow hard training to escape censure.
I’m not entirely convinced by these responses.
Spectators’ interests might easily favour doping on the
grounds that pushing the boundaries of performance
is something they would like to see; and there may
be many athletes who do not enjoy intensive training
regimes unless they deliver some competitive advantage.
More important than this, however, is that whether the
spectators’ interests dominate those of the athletes, or
whether athletes’ desires should be respected, turns on
what we think is distinctively valuable about sporting
endeavour in the first place. One reason why training
seems legitimate is that it encourages and develops
the virtues we expect of elite athletes: commitment,
dedication, hard work and so forth. And one reason why
doping so often seems illegitimate is that it is thought
to sidestep or shortcut the development of those virtues
(though one is certainly entitled to doubt this: there have
been many committed and hardworking dopers).
This brings us back to the notion of sporting integrity.
Though it may just be a soundbite, and though its use by
sports bodies can often be infuriatingly vague, it is difficult
to think about the ethics of sport without it. Sporting
contests provide idealised, specially insulated, forums in
which certain attributes, skills, virtues and qualities can
be celebrated and rewarded. Unless we have a clear sense
of what those attributes, skills, virtues and qualities are,
we will always struggle to justify doping bans.
Dr John Danaher lectures in law at Keele University. His
primary research focus is on science, ethics and the law
References
1
Walsh, D. Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong,
Simon and Schuster, London, 2012
2
BBC, created 22 June 2013, accessed 20 September 2013,
www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/23013133
3
Savulescu, J., Foddy, B. and Clayton M. Why we should allow
performance enhancing drugs in sport, British Journal of Sports
Medicine, British Medical Journal, 2004, vol 38, no 6, pp666-670
4
Chwang, E. Why athletic doping should be banned, Journal of
Applied Philosophy, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, vol 29, no 1, pp33-49
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Eyes in the sky:
increasing options
for unmanned
aerial surveillance
photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Dr Ann Rogers reviews the range of unmanned aerial systems that
are beginning to take a role in surveillance and monitoring at major
sporting events, and assesses the current limitations on their use
F
rom fighting terrorism to delivering tacos,
unmanned aerial systems (UAS, which include
both the vehicles and their ground stations) are
an emerging technology with as yet underused
potential in civilian monitoring roles such as at sporting
events. Thus far primarily utilised by militaries, law
enforcement, search-and-rescue and border agencies,
UAS are now being considered for commercial and
civil operations involving intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance (ISR).
Currently, however, civil air regulations in Europe
and North America prohibit the operation of commercial
UAS in most situations where people congregate,
making rules and red tape the major obstacles to their
routine deployment at sporting events.
“The problem is that, right now, UAS can only
operate in uncontrolled airspace or in reserved/secluded
airspace normally away from populated areas – not the
best situation if you want to monitor a sporting event in
the centre of a large city,” notes Francis Laplante, who
At the London Olympics, piloted aircraft were used for
surveillance – but unmanned technology may be the future
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Heather Ainsworth/PA Images
The medium-altitude, long-endurance IAI Heron. This
model of system was used at the 2010 Commonwealth
Games in Delhi and is capable of flying for 48 hours
has worked on the Canadian military’s UAS programme
and written a thesis on their use in domestic airspace.
Safety is the main concern. A small, privately operated
hobbyist hexacopter filming the ‘Great Bull Run’ event at
a motor racetrack in Petersburg, Virginia, lost power and
fell into the viewing stands in August 2013. While this
mishap resulted only in minor injuries for a handful of
spectators, it demonstrated the number-one risk involved
in flying drones over crowds – they can injure those they
are meant to protect.
However, with improvements in airworthiness and
privacy concerns being resolved, the regulatory situation
is changing. In the US, which has a very restrictive air
environment post 9/11, the Federal Aviation Authority
(FAA) intends to introduce new rules that will allow the
operation of UAS for commercial purposes in civilian
airspace by 2015, with rules for small UAS (sUAS), up
to 55 lbs (25 kg) rolling out by the end of 2013.
The unmanned advantage
In military and disaster-response situations, the main
reason for using UAS rather than manned aircraft is
simply pilot safety – operated remotely, they can perform
‘dull, dirty and dangerous’ tasks, flying over forest fires
or into war zones, without endangering crews. In nonhostile environments, such as sporting events, this is
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less relevant, so the decision to use an unmanned system
will be based on a different set of considerations.
The most common UAS task is aerial surveillance and
data collection. Outfitted with increasingly sophisticated
sensor arrays, including electro-optics/infrared (EO/IR)
and radar, as well as high-resolution streaming video, they
offer state-of-the-art monitoring and recording capabilities.
With a range of sizes and payloads, UAS can be used for
a variety of missions, including wide-area surveillance,
situational awareness, crowd control, providing intelligence
to ground personnel, and evidence collection for postevent forensic examination.
Endurance is another advantage. Manned aircraft and
their crews need down time, whereas UAS crews on the
ground can be easily rotated while the machine stays aloft,
for hours or even days if necessary. The largest UAS, the
high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) RQ-4 Global Hawk,
has stayed aloft for 33 hours at up to 60,000 ft. At the
other end of the scale, among the sUAS, AeroVironment’s
RQ-20 Puma is a solar-powered man-portable system
that has lasted over nine hours in trials and has already
received a much-coveted FAA ‘restricted category’
certification for commercial missions in the Arctic.
With endurance comes the ability to offer persistent
coverage, whether hovering over a specific location or
patrolling a wide area. “Think of a UAS as simply a
Nir Elias/Reuters
A US Customs and Border Protection Predator is serviced
by mechanics at Fort Drum, New York. The system flies
above 10,000 ft, making it useful for international sporting
events, where threats to safety could be large scale
CCTV that has tremendous reach, flexibility and
persistence above and beyond what manned systems
(helicopters for instance) or ground surveillance
systems can deliver,” suggests Laplante.
Selecting the right system
“Endurance, height restrictions, airspace coordination,
range and, most importantly, safety are some of the
many concerns in choosing one system over another,”
according to Jeff Petro, an expert in aerial operations
whose experience includes involvement in coordinating
security and broadcasting at four Olympics games.
For signature international sporting events, especially
those that occur over days or even weeks over large areas
or at multiple venues, larger single systems operated by
national militaries and border agencies are increasingly
used. Systems that operate at above 10,000 ft, such as the
General Atomics Predator/Reaper and the IAI Heron are
possibilities if potential threats are national in scale. These
are medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) capable,
flying between 10,000 and 30,000 ft for between 24-48
hours, depending on payload. To provide safety separation,
these systems usually fly above 13,500 ft because manned
aircraft require supplemental oxygen above that height.
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The Elbit Systems Hermes 450. This model of
unmanned aerial vehicle has been used to
monitor VIP arrivals at major sporting events
CBP Photo/Alamy
The Goodyear blimp above the Dodger Stadium in
Los Angeles. Airships carrying cameras may become
part of crowd surveillance strategies at sporting events
During the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi,
the Indian Air Force and the National Technical Research
Organisation countered a perceived paraglider threat
posed by terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba by
deploying its IAI Heron and IAI Searcher systems.
These performed ISR over the 60,000-seat Jawaharlal
Nehru Stadium and surrounding residential areas.
Ahead of its 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics,
Brazil has been trialling smaller Elbit Systems Hermes
450 UAS for surveillance tasks along its border with
Bolivia, monitoring cross-border crime. The Hermes
450s were also tasked with providing
event security when Brazil hosted the
Confederations Cup in June 2013.
The UAS performed routine security
tasks around the stadium, including
monitoring the arrival of the teams
and the presidential helicopter to
the opening match. The Brazilian Air
Force released footage captured by its drones, including
the opening goal scored against Japan by Neymar (the
footage can be seen at bit.ly/1bmKaqK).
While the UK Civil Aviation Authority turned down
proposals to use drones at the 2012 London Olympics,
leaving organisers to use manned aircraft with the same
ISR capabilities, such systems are making appearances
in countries where flight regulations are more permissive.
Even in the crowded skies of Europe, the use of MALE/
HALE systems is possible: “Italy used its Predator A
fleet at the G8 summit at L’Aquila in 2009,” according
to Michael Fishpool, who has authored a report on UAS.
“Italy is actually unique among European nations as
having in place a sizeable air corridor located above
civilian air traffic where it can use UAVs [unmanned aerial
vehicles] like the Predator in its own airspace.”
But is the choice to use MALE/HALE systems akin
to using a sledgehammer to crack a nut? Victor Taibi, a
system integrations planning, operations support, and UAS
cyber-security consultant with AutonautiX LLC based in
Tempe, Arizona, says there are advantages to using
“a single high-altitude sensor, capable of watching the
Smaller systems can offer a faster,
cheaper and more flexible response
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Lisa Blumenfeld/Getty Images
entire venue, gathering historical data that can be tracked
for improved response to an incident. Such a capability
would have an official connotation for providing nationstate security for an international event.”
Reaching new realms of aerial coverage
Alongside the large MALE/HALE UAS, smaller systems
are arriving on the commercial market that can offer a
faster, cheaper and more flexible response. These systems
can operate in built-up areas, providing aerial coverage in
places where it would be impossible to place a helicopter.
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Technology
...and, weighing less than two kg, the device
can be carried by the operator in a backpack
Aeryon Labs Inc
Vertical take-off means the Aeryon Scout can
be launched in very confined surroundings...
Technology
Their mobility means they can focus on areas not covered
by fixed cameras, and they can track events and even
suspects if the need arises, making them invaluable to
security personnel working on the ground who require
continual situational awareness.
Zone coverage
David Gerhardt, who teaches UAS fundamentals for the US
Air Force, suggested that sporting events require systems
that meet “the concept of zone coverage with the ability
to transition quickly to a man coverage via a network of
sensors. Sure the cost and feasibility make this out of the
question for most events, but we’re getting closer every
day to making this a reality.”
areas. A second or third would be needed but that means
you are ‘expecting’ trouble and will probably have ground
forces at the ready anyway. But with multiple UAVs you’d
have great intel on the overall situation,” he explains.
Moving beyond ISR, additional capabilities include
using UAS to advertise a police presence for deterrence
and/or evidence collection. Some British police drones
have been equipped with loud speakers, allowing
operators to communicate verbally with people on the
ground. Non-lethal force capabilities, such as sound
blasts, high-intensity strobes, searchlights, as well as
rubber bullets and tasers are under development.
There are of course some downsides to sUAS.
Their sensor suites may not be as good as other options,
weather can disrupt their operation
and maintaining communications
links can be an issue as the radio
frequency spectrum is often crowded
around sporting events. And they
may invite objects to be thrown at
them. However, systems like the
Scout, which were originally designed
for military use rather than for the hobbyist market, are
robust enough to overcome many of these concerns.
We are likely to see sUAS deployed in ISR roles during
the winter Olympics in Sochi. The Russian Interior Ministry
has been trialling two Zala systems: the catapult-launched
Zala 421-16 is a fixed-wing system with a range of 5201,040 km and endurance of four or eight hours, depending
on the engine. It can reportedly provide 1,000 km of aerial
mapping in a single flight. The Zala 421-08 is smaller
still, a micro-UAV with a 0.8 m wingspan and a weight
of less than two kg that can provide colour video, IR and
still camera capabilities.
UAS can improve situational awareness across a wide
range of sporting events, from ball games to running and
cycle races. The systems are highly flexible and bespoke
solutions are possible, but it is important to first establish
the specific requirements.
As more systems are licensed,
performance will continue to improve
Promising microsystems include the back-packable
Aeryon Scout, which weighs under two kg, has an easy-tolearn interface, and, with vertical take-off and landing, can
be launched in less than a minute in very confined areas.
These microsystems relay information directly to the
ground controller for immediate tasking and response.
Smaller mobile systems can fill in the gaps between
high-altitude ISR and security personnel watching events
on the ground. “With the hundreds of CCTV fixed cameras
in places like London, a UAV would provide wide area
coverage and the fixed cameras would examine the
details,” Petro said, and in addition, where CCTV coverage
is compromised, “the UAV could be dispatched to view
unseen areas in detail”.
“Who do you cover if you only have one UAV?” asks
Petro. “Once a potential problem area is noticed, you can
bet that the UAV won’t be released to check out other
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“Persistent surveillance has been a buzzword in the
industry for the past few years,” says Petro, “but it is best
for forensic use after the event as opposed to real-time
monitoring. This leads to the question of what and how
much do you wish to monitor? Just a small section, a
wide range or only when a situation occurs? Is it better
to have a fixed-wing UAV that is continuously moving or
is hovering required?”
MALE/HALE systems provide persistent coverage
of crowds, whether moving towards or away from
sporting events, gathered in stadiums or congregating
in one place. They are safer, offer better image stability,
are more resistant to adverse weather conditions, and
minimise the risk to spectators on the ground. As
Taibi says, using large single sensor systems means
fewer lower altitude UASs are needed, as these can
be launched only when needed – weather permitting.
“Yet if there are weather issues the high-altitude sensor
is still performing surveillance,” he says.
But the MALE/HALE systems have their limitations.
Predator operator Shayne Zroback flew many missions
in Iraq and Afghanistan, including ones to perform overwatch on markets and voting centres. While MALE systems
are good for monitoring ebb, flow and stasis of groups
of people, “it has been extremely hard to use a camera
from a large UAV to watch over people, unless you have
specific intelligence on what to look for. I would suggest
using aerostats or mast-mounted cameras to give you a
closer view since they are at 1,000 ft or so as opposed
to thousands of feet. Without intelligence, you’re really
looking for a needle in a haystack.”
Part of the problem is the viewing capabilities of
unmanned systems, as Petro describes: “In a manned
aircraft the pilot is always scanning the surroundings
and can update the sensor operator in real time to
look elsewhere as it happens.
“When observing via a remote platform, the field of
view is limited to [what] is observed through the lens.
This is especially true at higher altitudes as the ‘soda
straw’ effect of zooming in excludes the surroundings.
Even at wide angles, additional intelligence is generally
needed to help direct the camera to trouble zones.”
Another issue is that these systems demand more
of everything – airspace, ground space, crew, and above
all, time to set up, deploy, task and relay information to
where it needs to go (MALE/HALE systems usually send
information back to a remote location such as an airbase,
where it can be forwarded if necessary).
Lighter-than-air systems
This overview has concentrated on current technology,
including smaller multi-rotor systems. However, many
industry experts consulted for this piece suggested
that lighter than air (LTA) systems, including balloons,
hybrid aerial vehicles (HAV) and aerostats are very
good fits for surveillance at sporting events. “Located
centrally to a given event, the result is a system that
has persistence, is cost effective and limits the risk to
other manned aircraft,” Laplante said.
LTAs run the gamut from the very large to the very
small. The 60 ft (18 m) Galaxy ‘Spirit of Dallas Class’
airship can carry an EO/IR sensor on a par with Predator
or Reaper, and can stay aloft for eight hours. In 2008, a
Galaxy airship, performing in a ‘Goodyear Blimp’ type role,
shot HD footage of a National Hot Rod Association event
at the Firebird International Raceway in Phoenix, Arizona
for ESPN (the footage can be seen at bit.ly/1aESWO5); in a
second, similar proof-of-concept run in Houston, Texas the
system performed well in wind and rain. FAA regulations
are currently the major impediment to trials and use, and
the Civil Aviation Authority would not grant permission for
trials during the London Olympics.
Another promising emerging technology is small HAVs
using swarm programming, which could enable “coverage
without compromise”, according to Philip Solaris of
X-craft, which is working on prototypes of such systems.
Autonomous flight sequencing allows breakaway units for
specific seek-and-follow tasks. But the biggest advantage
here is crowd safety. “These are stable platforms, slow
enough to have minimal kinetic energy and being heliumfilled have an extremely slow, and therefore safe, descent
rate in the event of failure,” he says.
Bad weather is an issue for LTAs, but Solaris says
that rotor systems wobble too, whereas HAVs can be
“surprisingly stable, particularly in turbulence, and can
be up-powered to deal with strong winds”. He also notes
that “rain is even less of a worry than for many electricpowered multi-rotor craft”.
Mast-mounted systems and tethered balloons
equipped with UAS-type sensors are also possibilities.
Cutting the red tape
The UAS industry as a whole is keen to move into
commercial and civilian markets, and is lobbying hard to
have current regulatory regimes rewritten to accommodate
unmanned technologies. The fact that Israeli systems are
being used at signature sporting events in Brazil and India
is indicative of where innovation and experimentation
are taking place. Heavy regulation, export controls, the
public’s privacy concerns, commercial rivalries (for
example, US TV networks have stymied UAS trials for fear
of losing their monopoly on exclusive footage) have left
North American and European markets lagging behind.
But as more systems are licensed, performance will
continue to improve and prices fall.
Public opinion needs to be factored in as well. People
watching a ball game may not readily accept the idea of a
Predator loitering over their heads. However, attitudes here
are also changing, and in fact, there is a high tolerance for
use of UAS in civilian applications. A public opinion poll
commissioned by the Aerospace Industries Associations in
June showed that 54 per cent of (mainly US) respondents
supported increased non-military use; and the number
rose to 74 per cent support if key concerns about privacy
and safety could be addressed.
Dr Ann Rogers is the co-author of Unmanned: Drone
Warfare and Global Security (London, Pluto, 2014)
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Technology
Does technology affect
the integrity of sport?
Emma Dorey examines how technology is changing sporting performance,
preparation and safety, and asks whether rapid technological advance can
threaten the integrity and fairness of sporting events. She also addresses
how governing bodies and regulators should respond to innovations
PhotoAlto/Alamy, LindaMarieB/iStockphoto
S
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ince the decision to run on turf instead of earth,
technology has been an integral part of sport.
Technological innovations can improve safety or
alter performance which, in turn, makes sport
more enjoyable to take part in and watch.
Take development of the javelin. Back in the 1950s,
more aerodynamic, hollow metal javelins replaced solid
spears, enabling athletes to throw them distances that
were record setting but dangerous to spectators as well as
other competitors. In 1986, the International Association
of Athletics Federations (IAAF) redesigned the javelin,
moving its centre of mass forward four centimeters,
reducing its performance but making it safer. (The best
throw in 1986 was 85.74 m, while the record for the old
javelin, set in 1984, was 104.80 m.)
The essence of sport is to be the best – vault
the highest, ski the fastest, throw the farthest – so
technological innovations are used widely to both improve
athletic performance and alter the properties of sports
equipment. Attitudes to technology, however, differ
widely among sports, with some embracing science and
technology while others largely dismiss it.
Each sport has its own set of ‘internal goods’, its
culture, traditions, core values, even behaviour that
exists off the field – all the things that make the sport
what it is, explains David James, Principal Research
Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University’s Centre for Sports
Engineering Research (CSER). Regulators come up with
rules to reflect and protect the internal goods. Some
sports, like cricket, are very traditional – the cricket bat
has always been made of willow, points out James. At the
opposite end of the spectrum lies the triathlon, which is
packed with technology and celebrates science. “Their
very different sets of core internal goods results in very
different approaches to accepting technology,” he says.
“Triathlon embraces technology because it is a
relatively new sport – we made our Olympic debut in
2000 and like to think of ourselves as a modern and
dynamic sport,” says Mark Buckingham, an International
Triathlon Union (ITU) World Cup winner in Palamos,
Spain. Buckingham says triathlon attracts a lot of people
who love gadgets and data, and it’s a sport that has
helped drive new technology into other sports. “Other
sports have a much longer history and heritage and,
although they want to see progression, they want to see
athletes compete in the same race conditions as their
predecessors. Of course, there are improvements in
nutrition, facilities and so on but in my former discipline of
steeplechase, for example, we couldn’t compare ourselves
with previous record breakers if we had technology that
helped us clear the barriers more easily for example.”
Human performance
For some sports, like sprinting and long jump, minimal
specialist equipment is needed and technology appears
to have relatively little bearing on the sport – emphasis
is almost solely on human performance. Many sports,
however, involve an athlete working together with a piece
of kit. Sporting prowess in cycling, discus, golf, kayaking,
pole-vaulting, skiing, tennis and dozens of other examples
involves a combination of the athlete’s technique and the
physical attributes of the equipment. At the extreme end of
this partnership is motor racing, which is largely about the
machine and the performance of the technology.
But even sports that use minimal equipment cannot
escape the influence of technology – it’s there, behind the
scenes, maximising the potential of training, monitoring
health and improving performance of athletes, irrespective
of the sport. Heart-rate monitors, activity monitors,
portable MRI scanners and blood testing and analysis, for
example, are used to gather data, helping athletes improve
their training and avoid injury and illness. Many athletes
sleep in altitude chambers to increase the production of
red blood cells. If injured, they can use gravity-reducing
equipment, such as running machines, to continue training
but with reduced pressure on an injury. “[Technology]
helps by better measurement and understanding of the
demands of the performance of a sport in the real world
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Technology
After 168 world records were broken by swimmers wearing
suits like the one shown here, governing body FINA banned
men’s swimsuits that extend beyond the knee and above the
navel. ‘Non-textile’ materials were also prohibited
jets are being used to enhance the aerodynamics of
wheelchair racers and improve the racing speed of
bobsleigh teams. The company is also investigating a
training simulator that enables taekwondo athletes to
develop new skills while significantly reducing the risk
of injury through repetitive impact.
Meanwhile, for downhill skiers, the international ski
federation (FIS) is collaborating with Dainese, a specialist
in protective gear for motorcyclists, to develop an airbag
system which inflates around the body. The D-air Ski
system continuously monitors data from three gyroscopes,
three accelerometers and a GPS, deploying the airbag only
when the athlete has lost control of the skis.
While technology itself may not be unfair, access to
it can be. Is it right that only some hockey players have
David Gray/Reuters
Innovative technology can significantly
improve the safety of participants
– this information helps better tailor and prepare training
methods to maximise how well an athlete develops; how
you feed them according to the demands,” says Scott
Drawer, Deputy Director of Performance Solutions at the
English Institute of Sport (EIS).
Innovative kit can also significantly improve the
safety of participants. The highly technical, swim-specific
wetsuits used in open-water swimming, for example, help
swimmers to deal with cold-water temperatures. The US
company Battle Sports Science has developed an impactsensing chin strap for American football players that uses
a sophisticated microsensor and software technology to
measure the G-force and duration of force sustained in
real time. At high impact – when head injury is more likely
– an LED light alerts coaches and referees. US firm ICEdot
has developed a crash sensor and app system for cyclists
that automatically calls for help when a crash occurs.
When the sensor, which can be mounted on any helmet,
detects an impact, it sends out an alarm that must be
disabled to prevent emergency services being contacted
with the cyclist’s GPS coordinates.
Contentious technology
Technology is also making sports more interactive and
accessible for fans, through live streaming of major events
and live timing event systems available on the internet.
And online GPS tracking enables fans to follow individual
athletes, such as cross-country skiers, during a race.
“Sport has always dealt with technology, even if it’s
just running shoes,” says Stephen Mumford, who sits
on the Executive Committee of the British Philosophy
of Sport Association. “[But] technology is progressing
at a rapid rate, maybe exponentially. This creates the
possibility that technology gets ahead of the philosophical
debate of what sport is about.” Indeed, there have
been some highly contentious examples of technology
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change how the swimmers actually swim. If swimmers
were to use flippers, however, they would use a different
set of muscles to swim effectively and so different
swimmers would be better at using the flippers. “I would
argue that the swimsuits enable swimmers to go faster but
do not intrinsically change the nature of the sporting test
– the best would still win, with or without the suits,” says
James. “I often think regulators should hold their nerve.
It is the sporting associations that pronounce the
rules and decide whether or not a technological or other
innovation should be permitted in their particular sport.
But the rules can be influenced by all sorts of factors.
For example, former champions who go on to hold
key positions in sporting bodies may not want to
allow technological innovations that would enable
athletes to set new records; or
technology companies may become
sponsors of a sport, subsequently
promoting their own technology
while rejecting that of others.
“The risk is that whoever has
the decision-making power may
take decisions that are not in
the best interests of the sport – that is, do not cohere
with the internal values of the sport,” says Jim Parry,
Visiting Professor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Physical
Education and Sport at Charles University in Prague.
“Or they may have vested interests – for example, the
French and Swiss traditionalists, who tried to get the rules
changed so as to ban [former world champion Scottish
racing cyclist] Graham Obree’s bike [in the 1990s].”
Sometimes the rules laid out by governing bodies or
regulators, such as the International Olympic Committee
(IOC) or the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), do not
always reflect the reality of what is going on in many
sports, or they can struggle to keep up with the pace of
technological innovation. “What we’ve found in sport is
that the rules tend to lag the technology – it’s reactive
not proactive – which means there’s always a period
with loopholes to be exploited,” says Mumford.
Nevertheless, the rules are the rules, however
arbitrary. If the rules say you must run the 26 miles and
385 yards in order to complete a marathon, you can’t
take the bus. If you breach the rules, you’re breaking the
central tenet of competition and totally missing the whole
purpose of doing sport, says James. So all that athletes
can do is try to gain an advantage in any way they can
– within the current rules of the sport.
Researchers at CSER, a UK Sport innovation
partner, are working to give athletes a unique advantage
over others through their research, which ranges from
shuttlecock and dart aerodynamics to the traction of
studded footwear, processing systems for trampolining
and distance control in golf putting.
BAE Systems, the UK’s leading defence, aerospace
and security company, is also applying technology used
in the military to help athletes improve performance. For
example, wind tunnels and computational fluid dynamics
normally used to test the world’s most advanced fighter
advances. One is Speedo’s LZR Racer bodysuit, worn by
more than 90 per cent of the gold medal swimmers at the
Beijing Olympics in 2008. The suit, the fabric of which is
coated with water-repellent nanoparticles and incorporates
polyurethane panels, traps air and compresses the body to
increase buoyancy of the swimmer and reduce drag. After
168 world records were broken by competitive swimmers
wearing such suits, FINA, the sport’s international
governing body, banned ‘non-textile’ suits in 2010 for
being a technical aid that gave an unfair advantage.
Another example is the carbon-fibre blades of bilateral
amputee and former competitive runner Oscar Pistorius.
In the 400 m at the 2012 Olympics, Pistorius became the
first paraplegic runner to compete against able-bodied
runners, despite the blades having a lower mass than
bone and muscle, and enabling a more efficient running
gait – an ongoing controversy.
Fair means or foul?
Are such innovations fair game or do they provide an
unjust advantage? Sport is fundamentally unfair, points out
James. People are physically different: they vary in weight,
height, muscle-fibre composition, metabolism and so
on – athletes have wildly different starting points. So they
must stack everything in their favour by using everything
at their disposal, including the latest science, technology
and engineering, to gain an advantage over competitors.
“There is nothing morally or intrinsically wrong with
any of this,” argues James. That is, as long as it doesn’t
change the fundamental nature of the sport. “If the new
technology provides advantages over other competitors
then it’s not a problem. But if it fundamentally changes
the nature of the sporting test, then it is,” he says.
While Pistorius with his blades uses totally different
muscles to run than an athlete with legs – fundamentally
changing his gait – the controversial swimsuits don’t
sticks made of carbon nanotubes to give them a more
powerful and accurate drive? Should we be upset that
the hull of only some yachts are coated in graphene
oxide to make them lighter, stronger and increase glide?
Opportunities for all
A level playing field can exist only if new technology is
available to all competitors from all nations. “We want all
athletes to have equal opportunities – the same conditions
– to manifest their [different] capabilities,” says Mumford.
“If [new technologies are] only really available to a select
number of competitors, that’s when we loose something
of the sporting ethos.”
Kit Us Out is a UK charity working to get key basic
kit to disabled athletes who don’t have a financial backer
or equipment sponsor. “We strongly feel that the lack of
access to, or funds to buy, basic kit should not be a barrier
for any athlete representing their country and we want to
try and level the playing field,” say its founders.
James points out that, although there is a step change
when technology is introduced or taken away, it’s actually
often a lot smaller than we tend to think. He and his
colleagues at CSER are quantifying this by looking at the
historical records of performance. According to James, we
are preoccupied with technology, but other elements are
often much more significant in improving performance.
For example, a key factor in the UK’s 2012 Olympic
success was the UK Sport lottery funding, which gives
athletes access to a wealth of equipment and expertise
at the EIS and allows them to concentrate on training
rather than earning money.
“Many countries don’t have [programmes like] this,
which is fundamentally unfair,” points out James. “Sport
isn’t fair so we shouldn’t get fixated on fairness.”
Emma Dorey is a freelance technology journalist
91
Technology
Technology
Priorities and limitations
when implementing
stadia Wi-Fi
Tracey Caldwell reports on the challenges facing stadia
IT directors as Wi-Fi systems open the gates to
enhanced fan interaction and enable new
approaches to safety and security
M
odern communications
technology is having a
transforming effect
on stadia in both
commercial terms, and in
approaches to safety and
security. As stadia owners
develop their plans to use
technology to communicate
and engage with fans throughout
an event, providing an immersive
experience that will keep people coming to
live matches, there is a real opportunity for
enhancing safety and security at the same time.
The requirement for a robust wireless network
underpins most of the potential developments. Many
stadia have begun by rolling out Wi-Fi in certain areas,
such as for high-value customers or the press office.
Now, faced with the vast majority of fans attending
the stadium with mobile devices and wanting internet
access, stadia owners are feeling the pressure to provide
ubiquitous access and are considering their options
for the implementation of technically effective,
financially viable solutions.
“What people do with their mobile devices is
evolving very quickly. Initially, it was social networking,
now it is about truly differentiating the experience within
the stadium from the experience at home,” says Larry
Schessel, sports and entertainment technology lead
at Cisco Systems Inc.
He adds: “For an industry that has lagged from an
innovation perspective, there has been a shift and mobile
is leading this shift in mindset.” Stadia are looking at
deals with sponsors, betting firms, and mobile operators
to underpin their technology investment.
92
a dynamic advertising or information platform. For
example, menu boards can be linked with the POS so
that merchandisers can change prices in real-time or
fans can be updated with the latest local travel and
weather information.
A fully networked stadium can more easily be adapted
for multi-use purposes; it is possible to transform an
entire venue from a sports to a concert venue, or to
support different home teams. “In the US, we have one
stadium that supports two teams and with one button
they change from the sponsorship and colours of one
team to the second team,” says Schessel.
External commercial factors are also driving
technology adoption. As part of the
UK Premier League TV
REPLAY
and corporate spaces and in some general admission
areas. “It can cater for up to about 13,000 people at the
moment and we are looking to expand that,” says Ronan
Burke, who heads up IT security at the stadium.
Aviva Stadium wanted to tap into the Wi-Fi in order
to get more intelligence on the fans that were attending
the stadium. “I knew the network was being used an awful
lot. I could see the statistics on bandwidth usage on the
day and number of users, but I didn’t know what they
were doing. Using our different systems, like the Palo
Alto firewall for instance, we’re able to see exactly what
people are doing,” says Burke.
He uses this intelligence to choose the best way to
push out information to fans. “If there are any particular
byelaws or something that might be applied on the day,
train routes and public transport, we’ll let them know
over social media,” he says.
However, at the moment, Burke does not promote
the stadium Wi-Fi to the majority of fans: “If we take
in 50,000 and if I was to promote it to everyone, we
would be overused,” he explains.
He adds: “Full stadium Wi-Fi projects are only
relatively new and they’re quite expensive to
do and to do right. Wi-Fi is really an
enabling service for other products.
We need to leverage it for other
products and services to get
people into the stadium.”
By this he means
offering something that
people can’t get on their TVs:
“Offering specific content, access
to information and stats, and I’d say
betting as well would play a part as
something that we’re looking at,” he says.
He has looked at a number of other
technologies too. Bluetooth was trialled as an
advertising model. “I think with 50,000 people
in the stadium and the fact that it’s non-directed;
it doesn’t really fit,” says Burke.
QR code application
Cisco’s
Connected
Stadium solution
comprises an
internet protocol (IP)
infrastructure for the whole
stadium environment that
could include back office, point
of sale (POS), physical security and
safety systems and also fan networks.
Fixed signage is on the IP network so that
any signage within the concourse may be
provided as an IPTV solution and become
deal, the
Premier League
has imposed
further technology
requirements on stadia,
including a requirement for
uncontested bandwidth, wired
and Wi-Fi, for the broadcasters.
In the United States, the NFL has
mandated that within two years all
NFL stadia have Wi-Fi.
Aviva Stadium, Dublin has had Wi-Fi
since April 2010, available throughout premium
The stadium is having more success trialling a QR code
app for ordering food and drink: “It’s going well, and it
seems like the feedback is better and better after each
game or concert, and we expand it a bit at a time. But
all that then relies on the Wi-Fi backbone. Yes, there’s
3G in the stadium, but once you get 50,000 people in,
that’s restricted by the same kind of contention ratios.”
The Cloud, a public-access Wi-Fi provider owned by
Sky has recently rolled out free Wi-Fi at Lord’s Cricket
Ground. Vince Russell, Managing Director at The Cloud,
is taking a phased approach to the implementation and
believes mobile and networking technologies are just
reaching a point where they are mature enough to
deliver everything that might be demanded of them.
“Everyone would just assume that because Sky has
a cloud, wouldn’t we have just rushed out and done
football stadia? But actually we have taken our own
93
Technology
Technology
measured approach to it because it’s about waiting for
the technology to be right. I think now you’ve got maybe
three or four [networking kit] providers who are starting to
have products that can work effectively in this high density
zone. Also you’re seeing an evolution in the standards by
which smartphones connect,” says Russell.
The initial phase at Lords cricket ground was to
deploy the service into the hospitality areas and into the
press centre, where journalists are sending lot of highresolution images down the line. “We worked on this with
Ruckus, one of our major suppliers of access points, to
get the right deployment to hit the right kind of density.
Over the course of the Ashes test over 19,000 devices
connected during the four days of the match and at peak
there were around 5,000 devices connected,” says Russell.
Wi-Fi strategy at Arsenal Football Club
Ireland fans check their phones before a Six
Nations Rugby Union match at Twickenham
Stadium, which is piloting mobile payments
Arsenal has considered cloud-based data storage
systems for its human resources and customer
relationship management systems, but insists on instant
physical access to access control servers. “With the
access control I want physical servers in place and I want
redundancy in place because at 2:45pm on a Saturday
we can’t afford anything to go wrong,” says Sloman.
Twickenham Rugby Stadium is piloting mobile
payments powered by MPayMe, which facilitates a
transaction by a mobile device, such as a smartphone
scanning a QR code. MpayMe also
enables access control. “One of
the things stadiums are interested
in using our technology for is the
purchase and distribution of tickets
to the event. That means you can no
longer fake a ticket and you can no
longer scout [scalp] or sell a ticket,”
says David Pipe, MPayMe’s global chief marketing officer.
The technology has location functionality, which will
recognise that the fan has entered the venue, and will send
menus for restaurants, and market merchandising to the
fan. They can then purchase food, purchase beverages or
purchase merchandise directly from their phone.
“We’re going to be trialling this soon at RFU
Twickenham Stadium in luxury boxes where attendees
Liverpool FC recently deployed a
wireless network from Xirrus at Anfield
As the Wi-Fi debate rumbles on, access control
technologies remain mission critical and top of the list of
Sloman’s priorities, however. “The key thing for us from a
technology perspective is the access control and ticketing
system. I have no desire to be famous and I’ll be famous if
there is failure of access control at 2:45pm on a Saturday;
the seamless integration of that access control and the
reliability of that access control is absolutely crucial.”
94
Eddie Keogh/Corbis
In summer 2013, Arsenal Football Club replaced much of
its Wi-Fi systems. Hywel Sloman, IT director, told the ICSS:
“It is often said we’re the most technologically advanced
stadium in the world and that’s partly because we were
built in 2006. But Wi-Fi that was built in 2006 is at end
of life; access controllers weren’t being supported. The
Wi-Fi was built on hotspot principles, which was fine in
2006, but actually we need full coverage in a number of
areas.” Wi-Fi technology priorities for Arsenal are steward
communications, press and fan facing, in that order.
Sloman queries whether it is technically possible or
desirable to deliver free Wi-Fi to all fans during a match:
“I think at the moment we’re very much watching what
the space is doing. So we know the guys at Man City, we
know the guys at Liverpool very well, we talk to both of
them. I think the challenge we’re watching is, one: is this
technologically possible? You’ve got some big technology
players in the market – Cisco, Aruba, Xirrus, Huawei etc –
and I don’t believe there’s a consensus in terms of what is
the technology that will definitely work to deliver 60,000
people Wi-Fi at 3:45pm on a Saturday.
“Secondly, it’s an awful lot of money, and is that a
wise investment for us? Is it a good use of our capital
given we’re not convinced it’s going to work, and also
how it would pay off, and thirdly how important is that
experience?” Sloman adds.
can order the food and then indicate which luxury
box they’re in and pre-pay and then the food just gets
delivered to them,” says Pipe. “If that goes well then
that stadium and a number of others will incorporate
our technology for the entire stadium.”
The drivers of mobile payment
The pilot was set to begin in September and Twickenham
Stadium was talking with O2, its sponsor, about boosting
signal strength across the stadium so that everybody
would have access to sufficient bandwidth to be able
to use the application.
MPayMe operates globally and Pipe believes there
are different drivers worldwide for mobile payments in
stadia: “The rate of adoption seems to be a bit slow
in the US, for example, because I think it’s a very noisy
crowded space, the mobile payment space. In the Asian
market there’s a huge proliferation of unbanked consumers
with a very, very high penetration of smartphones. So
because our application also facilitates stored value, we
can enter that market as well.”
Liverpool FC recently deployed a wireless network
from Xirrus at Anfield in order to provide a range of apps
and services for fans in the stadium via a new fan portal.
Anfield has completed the first phase of a Wi-Fi
deployment, covering the two-tier, 12,000-seat Centenary
Stand and the adjoining corporate facilities, which
has been available to fans since the home game
against West Ham on 7 April 2013. It plans to promote
the availability of the Wi-Fi network to fans from the
beginning of the 2013-14 season through concourse
signage. It has had up to 11,477 devices concurrently
connected to the wireless network at once.
Andy Robinson, head of digital media and technology,
says: “The technology will allow us to find out what
devices fans like to connect with the Club on, so we
can invest in digital platforms accordingly. We will also
find out more about how fans use the stadium and its
facilities so we can adapt these to better serve them.”
One of the planned enhancement areas is real-time
food and beverage ordering, which the club hopes to
introduce during the 2013-14 season.
“People are just starting to get their feet wet with
the networked capabilities of stadia,” says Cisco Systems’s
Schessel. Cisco has surveyed stadia throughout the world
and more than 50 per cent of respondents say they want
to use technology to provide fans in the stadium with
a unique perspective of the game, content that is only
available in the venue that will rival what fans get at
home. That may include replays on demand and live stats.
Cisco’s latest offering is StadiumVision Mobile, which
streams video and data to mobile phones using multicast
technology that owes more to broadcasting technology
than to traditional enterprise Wi-Fi. The first three stadia
that signed for the technology were the year-old Barclays
Center in New York, Sporting Kansas City and Real Madrid.
Soon after Manchester City and Celtic signed up too.
Gazing into the crystal ball, the potential of
technologies already under development to revolutionise
stadia in future is massive. It looks likely that locationbased technologies would contribute to safety and
security, helping stadia staff understand traffic patterns
and to allow them to communicate directly with fans in
specific areas of the stadium, while at the same time
boosting marketing efforts by identifying buying patterns
and pushing customised marketing.
Fans are likely to access the stadium and pay for
merchandise through biometric recognition of their faces
or fingerprints. They will also bring in new types of mobile
devices ranging from Wi-Fi-enabled game consoles to
Google Glasses, and stadia will need to prepare for the
opportunities that will present.
Further into the future, the ‘internet of everything’ will
connect more ‘things’ than previously dreamt possible,
with chips in balls or players, for example, providing realtime information to fans who would be able to see what is
going on inside a player’s body as he or she makes shots.
There is no doubt that technology has massive
potential to transform the stadium experience, attracting
more fans than ever before while successfully keeping
them safe and secure.
Tracey Caldwell is a business technology journalist who
writes regularly on information and communications
technology security, mobile and networking technologies
95
Legacy
Legacy
Measuring the legacy
T
he impact and legacy of the Olympic Games
have been important issues for the event’s
governing body since the modern Olympiad
began in 1896, even if the final outcomes
haven’t always lived up to their hopes and expectations.
Historian Richard Cashman provided an elegant
review of Olympic legacy history in his 1998 article
‘Olympic Legacy in an Olympic City: Monuments,
Museums and Memory’. Some extracts from his
opening paragraphs show that many of the issues and
controversies that attend the Olympics today, were
equally prominent in the early years of the movement.
In Athens, notes Cashman in the article, the
“organisers of the 1896 Games restored the ancient
Panathenian Stadium, using pure marble from Mount
Pentilicous [sic] ... The stadium marble, which glistened
brilliantly in the sun, added to the sense of occasion
when the Games began ... [Georgios] Averoff’s donation
of approximately one million drachmas enabled
Athenians to restore one of its most historic sites and
... also enabled Athens to build a shooting gallery, a
velodrome, and a pier for spectators.”1
96
At the next Olympics in Paris however, there was
less enthusiasm for large projects: “Initially it was
Coubertin’s dream to ‘reconstruct the ancient site
of Olympia at the exposition – its temples, stadia,
gymnasia, and statues’ (Findling and Pelle, page 13)
but the organisers decided to scrap these plans
preferring instead to showcase French culture and
civilisation. Because the Olympic Games had such
a low profile, there were no special athletic facilities
... The 1900 Games, which were lost in a world fair,
left no footprints on Paris, there were no monuments,
and little memorabilia.”2
But by the time of the Stockholm Games in 1912,
the Olympiad and its legacy were being taken more
seriously: “A stadium, which was specifically erected
for the Games in the royal zoological garden, was a
‘fine edifice ... with mighty arches, vaults, and towers’
and could accommodate 22,000 spectators. The
Swedish architect, Torben Grut, preferred to create
‘a new style that reflected practicality and the
Northern European tradition’ rather than imitating
Greek art (Findling and Pelle, page 42). The stadium
Nigel Marple/Reuters
Chris Aaron reviews the changing values of Olympic legacies,
and looks at developments in measuring the impacts of events
The white marble Panathenian Stadium in Athens, which was
beautifully restored at great expense for the 1896 Olympics, shows
that the question of legacy has long been a component of the Games
97
Legacy
Legacy
Participation in sports as a legacy of Olympic
Games is difficult to take count of, but it is
nonetheless susceptible to measurement metrics
Table of Olympic Legacies (Loepkey)
TYPE OF EVENT LEGACY
Sporting
(increased participation, programme development)
Economic
Tourism
Economic development
Legacy politics
Business development
Infrastructure/physical
Information and education
Cultural
Symbols, memory and historical
Urban
(city transformation and urban regeneration)
Psychological
Social
(housing and social programmes)
Environmental
Destination image
98
Cashman, of course, focused in this article on the
cultural and particularly monumental legacy of the Games
rather than the economic, but the above extracts serve to
point out that there is little new in the issues of temporary
versus permanent venues, a desire for sparkling opening
ceremonies, expressions of contemporary architecture,
and celebrations of national culture at the Olympics.
What is new is the attempt to systematise and embed
these impacts and legacies within the design of the
Games, establishing metrics and targets and reporting
processes that aim to drive to extinction the Olympic
‘bete noir’ – the ‘White Elephant’.
Impacts and legacies
There is a significant difference between impacts
and legacies, although the terms are often used
interchangeably. Impacts are what you get ‘up front’,
legacies are what is ‘left behind’ (unfortunately, too often,
in both senses of the phrase). Impacts may best be
thought of as the results that are measurable within one
year of an event; legacies are the outcomes that should
best be monitored over decades. The very term ‘legacy’
is perhaps unfortunate in that it creates a sense of static
benefit, whereas what most stakeholders in the field really
desire are self-sustaining, dynamic outcomes: the ‘seeds’
of future development rather than a one-off endowment.
Ableimages/Getty Images
Health
had an ongoing purpose in that it was constructed both
for sport and festivals of all kinds and, in winter, could
be converted into a skating rink.”3
A wider cultural legacy was also an early concern,
particularly for IOC founder Baron de Coubertin, who:
“sent a circular to IOC members in 1906 convening an
advisory conference ‘to come and study the way in which
art and literature could be included in the celebration of
the modern Olympiads’... Although culture has struggled
to compete with sport in the Olympics, the conscious
development of a cultural tradition is an important part
of the Olympic legacy.”4
Finally, Cashman observed that “there is also great
variation in terms of legacy as to whether an Olympic
stadium was built simply to serve the immediate
pragmatic purpose of staging the Games or whether it
was built to last beyond the Games so as to convey a
longer term Olympic vision ... the Antwerp Games of 1920
was hastily organised and suffered from a shortage of
money and materials. Athletes were housed in primitive
accommodation in local schools. The rebuilt Beerschot
Stadium had some impressive-looking ‘Greek decoration,
including a grandiose arch and columns,’ but it was not
made to last because the decorations were made of
plaster (Renson, page 81). They had disappeared within
a year of the Games.”5
For this reason, evaluations of the legacy from the
Olympics tend to focus on the more tangible legacies,
and this in turn can be expected to influence the legacies
that are promoted most by stakeholders in documents;
even if politicians often laud the psychological legacies
(‘the Olympic feelgood factor’) in public.
As the evaluation of Olympic impact and legacy
becomes more sophisticated and standardised through
the Olympic Games Impact Study that is described
below, so bids and plans will probably focus on projects
that are measurable.
As noted by Professor Chris Gratton (see page 20) and
Dr Shaun McCarthy (see page eight) in other papers in
this edition, the ultimate legacies of Olympic Games have
often failed to live up to expectations and promises.
There are both political and economic reasons for
this historical failing: economic situations can change
considerably over the period between a bid and the end of
Games Time; and political priorities can shift considerably
as two or three governments may be in power in any
country during the run-up to a Games. While the national
prestige issues tied up in ensuring the successful
completion of the Games tends to protect budgets for
the event itself, legacy projects often suffer as post-event
plans are scaled down.
There are other technical reasons why legacy projects
seem to disappoint: crowding out, double-counting,
obsolescene, changing fads, tastes or even technologies
can all dim the once bright torch of promised benefits.
The partial solution to this
perennial problem lies in trying to
make legacy projects both realistic
and in concordance with the general
strategic development of the state
in question. In this sense, the
legacy aspects of a bid need to be
considered not solely on their own
merits, but how they integrate with the bidding city and
country’s realities and long-term, consensual objectives.
Each Olympics bid and event tends to
focus on different categories of legacy
But, putting these terminological issues aside, what
are the various categories of impact and legacy that can
be expected from hosting a major sporting event? In her
report on the changing importance of legacy issues for
the IOC, Becca Leopkey identified a range of legacies
that are commonly mentioned in the literature (see table
of Olympic legacies above).
Each Olympics bid and event tends to focus on
different categories of legacy, although the sporting
legacy is generally a prime consideration. Tourism,
environment and urban regeneration are often impact
issues, having an immediate effect prior to and during
Games time, though if managed well they can also clearly
have longer term, legacy, effects.
What is most obvious from Leopkey’s list is that some
of these categories are easier to measure than others.
Economic and business development legacies, and even
sporting participation, may need careful accounting, but
they are susceptible to metrics. Psychological legacy,
cultural legacy and ‘memory’ legacy are harder to assess.
Evolving Olympic Games Impact Study
Jacques Rogge, the outgoing President of the International
Olympic Committee, said after the London 2012 Olympics
that they had been a blueprint for managing Olympic
legacies. UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, described
the Games as embedding legacy issues in the ‘DNA’ of the
Olympic Movement. Apart from applauding the UK
government’s determination that the London Games
would have significant long-term impacts of various kinds,
Rogge’s comments reflected the fact that London was the
first Summer Olympics to carry out a full Olympic Games
Impact Study (OGI), one of Rogge’s initiatives as president.
This is the central document for systematising the
legacy objectives of the Olympic movement. Many years
of research and discussion contributed to the creation of a
matrix of 126 socio-cultural, environmental, and economic
indicators that would enable the IOC to objectively
99
Legacy
4
ensuring that the Olympic Park can be developed
after the Games as one of the principal drivers
of regeneration in East London.
Tottenham Hotspur FC/PA Images
determine how an Olympic event affects the host city,
country, region, and their citizens. Eighty indicators
assess the context within which the Games are being
held, and 46 assess impacts of the Olympic event itself.
Four reports over a period of 12 years are intended to
provide longitudinal data throughout the bidding,
planning, construction and post-Games periods.
Host countries are responsible for commissioning
an independent research organisation to compile the
data and complete the four reports. The first Games to
complete all four was the Vancouver Winter Olympic
and Paralympic Games, the OGI being carried out by
the University of British Columbia.
The final OGI report for London 2012 will provide
the most thorough evaluation so far of what major
sporting events such as the Olympics can contribute
to long-term national objectives, both socially and
economically. But the process of creating the OGI is
itself worth reviewing, as many of the indicators that
were initially desired proved difficult to measure with
reliable data. Given that this was a problem for Vancouver
Legacy
A more specific legacy plan was then unveiled after
the conclusion of the Paralympic Games in September
2012. This included:
■■ funding for elite sport until Rio 2016;
■■ investment to turn the Olympic site into
the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park;
■■ twenty major sporting events to be held in
the UK by 2019, with more bids in progress;
■■ £1 billion investment over the next five years in the
Youth Sport Strategy, linking schools with sports
clubs and encouraging sporting habits for life;
■■ introduction of the School Games programme
in order to boost schools sport and county
sport festivals; and
■■ continued funding for International Inspiration,
the UK’s international sports development
programme, to 2014.
While there has been some criticism
of the legacy of the Games in the UK
national media, the above plan has
the merit of being measurable and
adhering to the general principles
outlined in the 2010 document. What
is noteworthy, however, is the lack of
emphasis on general cultural legacy, something that was
much more prominent in the early legacy plans that were
issued from 2005 to 2010. The election of the Coalition
Government in the UK in 2010 and the effect of the 2008
financial crisis lie behind this shift in emphasis from
cultural legacy to economic benefit.
When it comes to the organisations and authorities
that have the responsibility for delivering legacy projects,
the picture starts to become more complicated, and
more diffuse over time. The Olympic Delivery Authority
(ODA) was the prime body responsible for the Games
Time infrastructure, and has stated that legacy use and
community regeneration were “locked-in” to the planning
and designing of Olympic and Paralympic venues, pointing
to the Olympic Park Aquatics Centre and Olympic and
Paralympic sailing facilities in Weymouth as examples
showing “a clear focus on sporting, economic, social, and
environmental legacy”. In that sense, the ODA enabled the
legacy, and its work is crucial to its success, but the ODA
does not manage or deliver the legacy as such.
The London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC)
is responsible for the future development of the Olympic
Park, with housing, retail, and business schemes to be
developed alongside the sporting venues. It replaced the
Olympic Park Legacy Company, which had been set up in
2009. The LLDC is therefore the prime body responsible
for economic and urban regeneration legacies, and its
success can probably be assessed quite easily over time.
These bodies, along with central government, work
with the six London boroughs in which the Games took
London 2012 Olympic visitors had a
higher spend than normal tourists
and for London, both of which are in countries with welldeveloped systems for gathering standardised data, many
of the OGI indicators may need to be adjusted or scaled
down in future simply due to the difficulties in gathering
and normalising information.
The OGI is clearly an essential process, but it is
also one that will evolve considerably as experience in
identifying reliable indicators and gathering the relevant
data grows, and it will be some time before meaningful,
comparative research can be carried out on the data
that is being compiled.
How was Legacy embedded in
the London 2012 Olympics?
While Legacy issues get embedded at the IOC level
through the OGI, the host city and government needs
its own plans and organisations that can first define
the legacy objectives and then act to deliver them.
For London 2012, the UK’s Department for Culture,
Media and Sport (DCMS) identified four top-level
legacy priorities in its 2010 plan:
1 harnessing the United Kingdom’s passion for
sport to increase grass roots participation,
particularly by young people – and to encourage
the whole population to be more physically active;
2 exploiting to the full the opportunities for
economic growth offered by hosting the Games;
3 promoting community engagement and achieving
participation across all groups in society through
the Games; and
100
A number of bids were made for the London 2012
Olympic Stadium, including one by Tottenham Hotspur FC.
However, West Ham United’s application was ultimately
chosen by the London Legacy Development Corporation
place: Barking and Dagenham, Greenwich, Hackney,
Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest. These
boroughs published their own legacy plans in 2009,
with the objective being that these currently deprived
areas would have the same social and economic life
chances as at least the London average by 2030. This
‘convergence’ policy is clearly measurable, though it
will be harder to attribute improvements directly to the
Games, in the same way as it would be hard to attribute
a deterioration to a post-Games effect.
A further important figure is that of the Ambassador
for Legacy. As an individual who has earned enormous
respect, first as an athlete, latterly as the head of the
LOCOG, Lord Coe’s appointment as the UK’s Olympic
Legacy Ambassador provides a powerful figure to promote
both the economic aspects of the legacy and to ensure
that the sporting and social aspects are driven forward.
Evaluating London 2012
The UK’s DCMS published a meta-evaluation (a synthesis
of existing evaluations and reports) of the London 2012
impacts and legacies, which was published in July 2013.
The research was carried out by Grant Thornton UK
LLP, Ecorys, Loughborough University, Oxford
Economics and Future Inclusion, and collected data,
evidence and evaluations relating to four broad
impact areas: sport, the economy, community
engagement, and East London regeneration.
The reports key economic findings were that the
London 2012 Games will generate from £28 billion
($45 billion) to £41 billion in extra economic value by
2020, and that £10 billion of inward investment resulting
from Olympics-linked initiatives, such as the British
Business Embassy and the GREAT overseas promotion
campaign, have already been realised.
The report also found that over 800,000 overseas
visitors attended an Olympics event. Total visitor numbers
to the UK actually dropped compared with a normal year,
however, Olympic visitors had a higher spend than normal
tourists, providing a net £600 million pound benefit.
Furthermore, an estimated 62,000 to 76,000
unemployed Londoners secured temporary or permanent
employment as a result of the Games.
Many of the other findings relating to social, cultural,
volunteering, and sports participations impacts were
positive, but it is really too early to say yet whether
the positive impacts will transform into positive legacies.
For that we will need to wait another 10 years.
References
1-5 Cashman, R Olympic Legacy in an Olympic City:
Monuments, Museums and Memory, 1998
6
Plans for the Legacy from the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic
Games, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2010
7
Leopkey, B The historical evolution of Olympic Games Legacy,
International Olympic Committee, 2009
101
Last word
Twelve years in charge
ICSS
FOR SPORT SECURIT Y
Jacques Rogge handed over the baton of the IOC presidency to Thomas Bach
in September. As he stepped down he shared his views on the Games he had
overseen, the high points, and the challenges facing the Olympic Movement
T
Enrique Marcarian/Reuters
he Belgian Jacques Rogge was first elected
as president of the IOC on 16 July 2001,
succeeding the Spaniard Juan Antonio
Samaranch. During his 12-year tenure, Rogge
oversaw summer Games in Athens, Beijing and London
and winter ones in Salt Lake City, Turin and Vancouver.
He strengthened the IOC's anti-doping stance,
instigated a system of betting monitoring to detect fixing
and fraud, created the Youth Olympics, bolstered the
IOC's finances, and encouraged new hosts in developing
countries to bid for Olympics. He also developed
the Olympic Games Impact Study – a framework for
evaluating the legacy of Olympic events.
In an interview with AP, he hoped that "people, with
time, will consider that I did a good job for the IOC.
That's what you legitimately want to be remembered for.
I received an IOC in good shape from Samaranch, and I
believe I will leave an IOC in good shape to my successor.
I'm very pleased about the quality of the games that
were held under my watch, summer or winter. I would
say they were 'magnificent', 'exceptional', 'superb', 'truly
unforgettable' and 'gracious and glorious' for London."
102
Jacques Rogge has stressed the need to contain the size
of the Olympics and lower the demands on host cities
Commenting on the upcoming Games in Sochi and
Rio, Rogge observed: "We're working hard together with
both organisers and any potential shortcoming has been
addressed, so I expect both games to be good ones. I
think Sochi will be absolutely OK because the Russians
love sport, they know sport ... For Rio, I am quite sure and
quite confident they will be very good games also. We will
benefit from the experience of the [FIFA 2014] World Cup."
With regard to the cost and complexity of holding
the Olympic Games, Rogge told AP: "On one hand we
have to make sure we contain the size, on the other
hand we have to help the organising cities by lowering
the demands and the service levels."
On the measures instituted to combat doping, Rogge
stressed that "we cannot be naïve. The fight against
doping will never be won. But I am convinced it is harder
to cheat now than it was when I took over."
"We really stepped up the fight," he told AP. "I think
it is far more difficult to get doped today than it used to
be a couple of years ago."
Faced with negotiating choppy political waters, Rogge
underlined that the Olympic movement is "not a political
body, we are a sports organisation. We have values and
we are ready to defend those values. But we should not
enter the field of politics." However, values and politics
sometimes clash in sport, and in an interview with the
BBC, Rogge criticised Russian athlete Yelena Isinbayeva
for making comments supporting Russia's new anti-gay
laws. "It was disappointing. Fortunately she reacted to
that and addressed that with a second declaration. But
she should not have done that. She should not have
intervened with such words and such a debate. It was
definitely an ill-advised judgement."
Rogge added: "We are staging the games in a
sovereign, independent country and we have to respect
the sovereignty. But at the same time we are urging the
Russian government to make sure there is no
discrimination on sexual inclinations."
For Rogge, the high points of his Olympics were
"Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps. The way Bolt won the
100 m in Beijing was a revelation," he told the BBC.
"He is the face of track and field and in a way he is the
face of the Olympics. It must be a difficult thing for him to
bear. Phelps and Bolt are the two great athletes who have
achieved performances that are beyond imagination."
Vol 1 | No 3
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Jane Douglas
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Elizabeth Heuchan
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