Comfortable events

Spectators demand increased comfort for their cash as the price of attending events increase

When most people think of stadiums, the first things which spring to mind are usually capacity and atmosphere. Few people turn to the debate between blow-moulded and injection-moulded seats. However for Ron Bilodeau, marketing manager at Hussey Seating, this is one of the most important factors.

Comfortable seating is essential for enjoying sport
as a spectator

“The European model is an injection-moulded tip-up seat. In the States they are normally blow-moulded with cast-iron standards. The perception is that this is a more robust chair.”

For Bilodeau, a robust chair is central to the whole sports experience. “In a sporting venue you are part of the excitement,” he says. “You are there to cheer and get up and down. For this you need to be comfortable.”

Decades ago, the word “comfort” was not in stadium designers’ vocabularies. In years past, stadia such as England’s Wembley Stadium or Brazil’s Estádio do Maracanã could fit more than 100,000 people, but a large proportion of whom would be standing up, and few of these would be comfortable. The emphasis was on cramming as many people as possible into the venue, both to gain maximum ticket revenue, and to add to the atmosphere. In the last few years however, this has changed.

A good example is the new, redeveloped Wembley Stadium, due to be completed in 2007. The new stadium will boast seven times more toilets than the original venue, and every spectator will enjoy more legroom than the Queen did in the previous building’s royal box. Behind the scenes the venue will have a total of 98 kitchens, the largest of which being one-third the size of the pitch itself. In short, the stadium has been designed with comfort in mind.

“The old Wembley was remembered for the fantastic events that it hosted and the incredible atmosphere it had,” a spokesperson for the venue told Host City. “However, by the time it was knocked down in 2002, the stadium's facilities were extremely poor, and most visitors to the old stadium will recall dark, narrow concourses, long queues at half time for the loos and ill-equipped food and refreshment kiosks. Worse still, once in their seats, fans didn't have too much legroom and may even have found themselves sitting behind a view-obstructing pillar.

“The new Wembley will have the state-of-the-art facilities to match the awesome atmosphere and line-up of events that Wembley was made famous for. We want all fans who visit the Stadium to have an awesome Wembley experience. Whether the fans are sitting in the general admission seats or in our hospitality areas the emphasis is on ensuring comfort for our guests.

The new Wembley Stadium will be one of the most comfortable stadiums in the world

“We aim to be the greatest stadium in the world and a key element of this is to ensure our guests have great facilities and levels of comfort that exceed expectations,” said the spokesperson.

Rod Sheard, an architect for Australian stadium design-gurus HOK Sport, agrees that comfort is essential. “The comfort of spectators has got to be considered as part of the event experience. This means from when they get their tickets, to the journey to the venue and the whole process of arriving and moving about the building. If we are treated badly we don't enjoy the event even if our team wins – so spectator comfort is fundamental to venue economics and makes good business sense to get right.”

As a result, ensuring that spectators have a pleasant experience is a first priority for HOK. “There is no aspect of the spectators’ experience of the day that we don't try and design in a stadium,” says Sheard. “Technology is helping, and the application of techniques from other industries have been cross-pollinating stadiums for some years now.

“A simple thing like sloping the roof of Telstra Stadium, in Sydney, down towards the pitch so the sound was kept in the bowl made a great difference to the atmosphere in that huge stadium – a technique we have used at the new Arsenal stadium.

“The correct numbers of toilets and their placement and good distribution and variety of food and beverage outlets is also important to event experience,” says Sheard. “We have learnt a lot about how far people are prepared to walk to these facilities what they expect when they get there.

The roof of Telstra Stadium, in Australia, slopes down to
keep the noise in, creating a more enjoyable experience

“Spectator comfort operates at a number of different levels. Ergonomically, seats are getting bigger with a 'growing' population size. Sightlines are now calculated on computer to make sure everyone gets a good view and the acoustics of a stadium have much improved so that people can actually hear announcements and the music actually sounds like music. Something that is more nebulous is the sound of the crowd. We try and capture and direct this with the shape of the bowl and roof back into the crowd, which definitely adds to the overall enjoyment of the events,” says Sheard.

One of the aspects most central to spectators’ comfort is the seats. Michael Burnett is managing director of Ferco Seating, who are currently installing seats in English football club Arsenal’s new venue – which they believe will be the world’s largest stadium to have fully upholstered chairs.

He says: “There have been studies to show the effects of uncomfortable and unsatisfactory seats. The seat causes you to fidget and to squirm and be uncomfortable, and this has a debilitating effect over time. If you’re at an event where you seldom stand up, such as at the centre court at Wimbledon tennis tournament, then you’re going to be seriously uncomfortable. I’ve been to theatres in London where seats are so uncomfortable that that’s all people talk about. But despite this, seats are almost always overlooked, even though they represent just a quarter to half of one per cent of the cost of the stadium.”

The secret to a good seat, says Michael, is in the shape. “Because sports seats tend to be quite upright, most of the load is on your bottom. So, you need to contour the seat so it approximates to the shape of your backside, and you need to make it as big as your backside. The nearer you get towards a wide, contoured, soft seat, the more comfortable it is.

“Also, one of the things that causes discomfort in seating is wrongly-shaped seats which reduce the blood flow to the legs. In the last 10 years people have started designing seats with a ‘waterfall’ edge, which tails away towards the front, to improve circulation in the backs of the legs.”

While Arsenal may be the first major football stadium to have all-upholstered seats, this is nothing next to the levels of spectator luxury available in some stadiums in the USA.

“What the US facilities have tried to do is create differentiated experiences in the sports menu,” says Bilodeau. “It’s not just about making sure you have two good teams on the field – it’s about pampering the spectator and making sure they have a good experience. So you get different qualities of seating with different ticket prices.”

Many new American stadiums are now split into “general” seating – typically at the top of the venue – and “club seating” in the middle. Bilodeau continues: “Club seating is situated in the preferred sightline, with easy access to private clubs and venues within the facility. You have a special entrance to the facility, and special parking.”

Even this seems cheap in comparison to a project Hussey worked on in partnership with printer manufacturer Epson.

“We were involved with a project to develop interactive seating, so at each seat location you had a touch screen monitor, where you could pick camera angles, replays, check the stats of players, you could be involved in games with other spectators, you could order items and have them delivered in your seats and ordered directly to your home,” says Bilodeau. “We were also working on heated seats, and seats with sound, to allow you to hear what’s going on in the pitch. Seats can even be designed to vibrate so when you have a big tackle in rugby say, your seat will vibrate so you feel like you are part of the action.”

Sheard agrees that technology could be the way forward. He says: “Information technology will have a greater impact in the future; we have to be able to provide the spectators who have gone to the trouble of attending the live event with all the information – and in the future more information – than they would get if they had stayed home and watched it on television. It has got to be delivered personally to the spectators so they have choice over what information they would like to receive.”

However, there’s more to comfort than simply seats and information technology. In recent years, stadium designers have had to take into account people with disabilities. Bruce Ramsay, who works for Garaventa, a Canadian company who have installed disability access equipment in stadiums around the world for more than a decade says: “There are a lot of things to consider – but the trick is to look at everything from the user’s point of view. For example, if you’re trying to get to a seat, you are not necessarily by yourself. Maybe you’re an adult and you’ve got five children with you. You can’t take five children with you in a wheelchair lift, so you need to find a way of getting round the problem.

“However, designing buildings for people with mobility difficulties is more than just accessibility. Everything from door handles and parking spaces to telephones, light switches and washroom facilities are considered,” says Ramsay.

Whatever happens in the future, it seems that the trend towards more comfortable stadiums will continue. “Teams are realising that it’s better to have their customers happy with the experience than complaining about it,” says Bilodeau. “Stadiums used to maximise the seats in the early nineties. You could say it’s a gradual change in the marketplace. Patrons are paying more money and are expecting more for their money.”