Since the publication of Lord Justice Taylor's report on the Hillsborough disaster, all sports grounds with a capacity of 10,000 or more require a Safety Certificate issued by the local authority under either the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975 or the Fire Safety and safety of Places of Sport Act 1987. One of the requirements for complying with the requirements for the certificate is that spectators entering all sections of the ground, including VIP and lounge areas, should be accurately counted at their time of entry, and their number controlled in order to ensure that overcrowding does not occur. This applies even if entry to the event is by ticket or electronic entry card only.

The official DCMS ‘Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds’ (Green Guide) states that a tally should be kept of the number of spectators admitted to each section of spectator accommodation. It goes on to explain how the system should operate in greater detail. To summarise the requirements, a counting system should be able to count spectators entering at each turnstile, calculate the overall sum of spectators entering each section of the ground and make the information quickly available to the management so that appropriate action can be taken when the number of spectators is close to reaching the capacity of the section. This allows management to assess the situation and take appropriate actions both to relieve congestion at turnstiles and to prevent the capacity of a section being exceeded. The counting system should also include a computerised monitoring system, where feasible, to give management instant access to figures being counted at each turnstile or entry point, and for rates of admission to be accurately assessed. These requirements may apply to grounds that stage any of the following sports:

Read About a Solution For This Type of Application