How do you manage a large crowd? It might seem quite straightforward at first, until it turns out to require ongoing extensive planning. Can you even imagine how big the organisation of a crowd can be safety-wise? Marc van de Laar, a security officer working at PSV Eindhoven, gave a lecture about crowd management to second and third year Attractions & Theme Parks Management students on the 18th of December.
Crowd management is, of course, one of the main concerns for the organisation. Risks will simply always exist at places where many people are. The total amount of seats at the Philips stadium is 35.200 and, although not all seats are occupied most of the time, the risk level could be quite high because of that. The solution for this? Constantly evaluate, anticipate and plan. It’s not easy to find out the intentions of people, but speculating about it can prevent accidents, bottlenecks and other dangers. Often a team of policemen is involved, to intervene if necessary. Besides that, the security department does not stop after planning all the competitions in the stadium. Whenever the club has a game at another stadium, they are also responsible for the safety of the supporters and football players and are present at the venue.
The field trip was very informative. It was interesting to learn more about dealing with big groups and stakeholders. We would like to thank Marc van de Laar for giving this guest lecture. It was fun to visit the Philips Stadium and gain more insight in crowd management.
For an impression of our visit to PSV, you can watch this video:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QJ55iM4bes]