Wembley – Accreditation in a large scale stadium

Who are they?

Wembley Stadium is the largest stadium and the national stadium in the UK. With a capacity of 90,000 it regularly hosts the England international football home games along with a variety of other football matches including the FA Cup Final, the League Cup Final, the Football League trophies. As well as hosting other events like the Rugby League’s Challenge Cup final and various music concerts.

The requirements

As a high profile venue hosting a variety of events throughout the year, Wembley Stadium required a flexible accreditation system that would manage different operational requirements for each event and in addition reduce the administration workload and time to deliver the Accreditation process.

Wembley Stadium required a product that could be configured to the needs of each department which enabled them to adjust features or functionality within the system through general guidance and no direct intervention from the system provider.

Our Approach

Accredit engaged with Wembley Stadium to understand their operational requirements end-to-end. This included their registration requirements, the data they wanted to capture and how this would be obtained from various stakeholders, identifying accreditation zones within the stadium and how this would be represented on the physical badge for game or event day management.

Once their requirements were understood, we provided Wembley Stadium with the Accredit Platform and the relevant tools to meet all their operational needs and ensure smooth delivery of the accreditation process in their required way.

To ensure self-sufficiency, training sessions were delivered for each department on the Accredit platform. The tailored sessions demonstrated how the system would work for each department, with adjustments being made to ensure the best possible outcome once deployed. The sessions were tailored to different user levels and departments, allowing for training on only the areas necessary to their group. Backing up the sessions dedicated user guides were provided, with clear screenshots and instructions.

The Benefits

• Reduced the time required to deliver the Accreditation process

• Each department within Wembley became responsible for their own team and their accreditation rather than a central accreditation department

• Increased system flexibility to adapt to different stakeholders and users where required

• Ability for the users to update, change set-ups and configurations within the system

• Able to run multiple events such as football or concerts with different requirements

• Ability to expand the Accredit platform for new and developing processes

The Results

Wembley has transitioned away from a central accreditation team running the entire process to having representatives of each department and key stakeholders responsible for their areas.

Having pre-defined user groups with different levels of access to the system allows for the data to come from multiple sources whilst not affecting the overall accreditation process. For instance the users of the system can now migrate existing staff and contractors across from one event to the next dramatically reducing the data entry workload for each match.

The flexibility of the Accredit system puts control of the accreditation system in the hands of Wembley Stadium. With the ability to create and update events, make registration forms, manage badge templates and the printing of the badges they can run the entire process in-house, although the Accredit team is always on hand to assist if needed.

The Accredit platform was successfully deployed for the FA Community Shield and the Accredit team were in attendance to support, up to 1,500 registrations were made and accreditations printed for the event staff. Accreditation badges were visible on the event day providing clear identification and management of access in secure areas.