IQ MAGAZINE: SPECIAL REPORT: SPOTLIGHT ON ARENA SECURITY

With terrorists now deliberately targeting venues and events, Richard Smirke talks to Europe's top security experts to hear how the industry is dealing with the threat.

Music arenas have long been prepared for the possibility of a terrorist attack, but it was the tragic events of 22 May – when UK-born Salman Abedi detonated a homemade bomb outside the 21,000-capacity Manchester Arena following an Ariana Grande concert, killing 22 people, many of them children, and injuring over 200 more – that confirmed the worst fears about the stark realities now facing venue owners and operators.

“It happened in Manchester, but we all consider ourselves equally at risk,” says Neil Walker, general manager of the SSE Arena, Belfast. “Security and the health and safety of everyone who comes to our building has always been the number-one priority in everything we do, from making sure a production is rolled in safely, to making sure the public are well looked after when they’re here,” he adds, “but it’s been elevated to an even higher focus now.”

“What happened in Manchester brought it brutally home to everyone in the industry that this can happen anywhere,” agrees Reg Walker, director of Iridium Consultancy, which works with a number of UK venues and festivals on security matters. He says that the attack reinforced the need for a “seamless security operation and security in depth” both inside and outside concert arenas, extending to transport hubs servicing venues. “We can’t be complacent over this,” he warns. “The problem with a Manchester-style atrocity is that you see adequate resourcing in the immediate aftermath, but then what happens is the bean-counters kick in and start applying pressure to curtail costs. That is something that must be resisted by venue operators at this time.”

Upping the anti
Thankfully, the general consensus throughout the industry is in favour of enhanced safety provisions, with the majority of European arenas already at a heightened level of security following 2015’s Bataclan and Paris terror attacks. “For 18 months now, everyone who wants to enter the arena is checked twice: first time outside the arena with a preliminary security screening, and a second time at each entrance of the building with a full body search,” explains Julien Collette, general manager of AccorHotels Arena in Paris.

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