Imagine this scenario- a high-voltage match between Melbourne City FC and Sydney FC in your very city, and visitors are excited to watch it live in the stadium, geared up to buy tickets to it as soon as they go up for sale. But the ticket counter soon shows the ‘Sold Out’ sign, making people leave in misery.
Considering this, the obvious solution is stadium seating and capacity optimization. This article will guide you on innovating your stadium seating in Australia to enhance crowd capacity and experience.
- Addition of tiers
The most straightforward way is to add tiers above the existing ones, so seats automatically increase. The addition of tiers also ensures that the sightline of spectators who get seated in the newly-added seats does not get hindered since they will be at a gradually increasing height level.
The design involves-
- Being inclusive of all major field events
- Creating the best possible viewing experience and viewing compared to the best international facilities
Once finalisation of the seating capacity is done, the geometric specifications of the seating bowl are determined as follows-
- Based on the average human optical ability to identify important sporting objects, the maximum viewing distance should be approximately 190 metres.
- Each person’s line of sight to the nearest point of interest is determined by the visual acuity criterion “C” value. This is the distance between eye level and the head of the person in front of you.
- The internationally acceptable value of ‘C’ stands at 60 mm for a large stadium.
- The tiers thus added are required to be at an angle not exceeding 34˚ for safety purposes and to eliminate chances of vertigo.
The advantages of such a modification are-
- There is full-blown growth in spectator potential, which consequently increases incoming revenue
- Additional seats will permit heightened audience participation
- This layout may be used to improve and expand the seating potential of the present stadium
- Mind the vertical positioning
It can be said that the extent to which seats in the stadium are placed on an incline needs to be appropriately calculated for specific reasons. To begin with, the ability of the audience to view the entire field of play is one of them. Also, if the stadium seats are positioned too steep, the spectators may not be able to enjoy the actual sight of the sport being played. Researcher Pickard found that inclination angles above 34 degrees are considered unpleasant and generally induce vertigo.
- Comfort and safety
Stadium seating in Australia follows fundamental concerns of the safety and comfort of the spectators. A seat fixed to the floor with a sturdy backrest of an approximate height of 30 cm never fails to provide comfort to the viewer. So it should be no different when adding seats to the stadium, either.
Also, while expanding the seating capacity, safety factors such as the holding capacity, entry and exit capacity and the emergency evaluation capacity must be weighed in.
After the pandemic outbreak, decision analytics are being used to generate optimal seating solutions.
Sports fanatics shall remain undeterred in the face of every hindrance and keep visiting stadiums to witness their favourite athletes battle it out in the arena. Hence, optimising seating capacity and design stand to be of prime importance for stadium authorities to keep the show going on!