Author: Edited by Chris Kemp and Patrick Smith
ISBN No: 97819 040 3163
Review date: 16/12/2025
No of pages: 272
Publisher: Entertainment Technology Press
Year of publication: 11/09/2012
Brief:
We devoted a page of our March 2009 print issue to a couple of Entertainment Technology Press books on event security. Here’s another. From the April 2011 print issue of Professional Security magazine.
The need and indeed duty to learn from experience is well shown in this practical book on event management. Prof Chris Kemp and Patrick Smith have put together case studies in crowd management, security and business continuity – to quote the title – mainly a Danish football club, Tivoli Gardens in the centre of Copenhagen, and music festivals, one Swiss, one Serb, and the Scottish T in the Park. If you ask, why read about places on the Continent, that Kemp’s Buckinghamshire University-based centre for crowd management and security is called in speaks of how British event security is valued abroad. And risks at a pop concert or stadium are the same in any language. This book is outstanding in style and content, with colour besides black and white photos – including the vivid one on the cover of Danish soccer fans with flares inside a ground. As a brief chapter on the 1989 Hillsbrough disaster shows, bad planning or design at an event can kill. The soccer case study – of the Brondby club – suggests that better stewarding, by making fans feel safer, can lead to them buying more food and drink at the match. That’s ‘secondary spend’, good for business. The case studies include plentiful use of questionnaires of the consumers – what do they want of a campsite or venue? How old are they and why are they there? How early do they arrive and leave? How do they rate things? All this data can aid risk assessment. This book repays attention – even little details may count, such as, what’s best to put on the back of employees’ jackets? If ‘security’, will that get spat at? If ‘steward’, will paying customers feel able to walk up and ask directions? This book that matches theory with practice can help any security manager working at or planning for a ‘crowded event’, whether a shop’s grand opening, or the Olympics.
