West Ham will play their first season at the Olympic Stadium next season, with 60,000 Claret and Blue faithful cheering on the Hammers.
Amongst the 60,000, at least an entire terrace will ignore the brand new seats behind them, and stand for the entire match.
Even though all-seater stadiums are required in the Premier League and Championship, stewards decide against fighting a lost cause and allow fans to stand.
As West Ham co-owner David Gold pointed out in a 2014 interview, standing in an all-seater stadium is actually unsafe standing.
It is interesting that for many years we have had unsafe standing, we do have that, I don’t think there is a ground in the country that are all-seater stadium that don’t have their fans in some area of the ground standing. I think now it’s time to look at safe standing. I think the technologies have changed, and I think we should experiment. There’s absolutely no reason at all, in my mind, why we can’t adopt some areas of safe standing in the future.
With the Olympic Stadium expanding to a capacity of 60,000, there ought to be room enough to test out a safe-standing area.
Despite concerns over another Hillsborough Disaster, where overcrowding at the Liverpool v Nottingham Forest FA Cup Semifinal in 1989 resulted in 96 deaths, the railed terraces seen in the Bundesliga, highlighted in this Copa90 video, prevents overcrowding and guards against pushing and falling.
Standing in today’s all-seater stadiums is a safety concern as a fan could fall over the seats into the next row. With safe-standing technology, bars between each row of fans prevent pushing that made Hillsborough so deadly.
Gold supported Celtic in their efforts to introduce rail terrace standing to their ground in Scotland, which passed the Glasgow City Council in June, 2015.
Scotland is not bound by England’s 1989 Football Spectators Act, requiring clubs to switch to all-seater stadiums. Glasgow City Council still rejected the attempts from Celtic twice before relenting their stance, and passed the proposal.
At the time, Gold tweeted:
Congratulations Celtic for being the first club to introduce a safe standing area. I am confident that this is just the beginning. Purpose built safe standings areas are considerably safer than the illegal and anti-social standing we have at present.
Safe-standing areas are not only safer, they are more cost effective. For 3,000 rail seats at Hannover 96 in Germany, 5,700 standing fans can fit safely. It can lead to a cheaper ticket for football fans when prices are at all-time highs, plus clubs can still make a profit.
Safe-standing areas to accommodate standing fans also can save clubs money from repairs.
In February, Manchester United fans damaged 300 seats at Derby County in their FA Cup Fourth Round victory. Manchester United were tasked with compensating Derby for the damage.
Given the improved safety of rail terrace standing, a switch to safe-standing areas could greatly improve the environment of the Premier League. The likelihood of safe standing being approved by Parliament remains low.
However, with a brand new stadium and more for Hammers fans to stand and sing about than ever before, I believe that Gold and company should lead the Premier League into safe standing.
