Fan zone

I mean, solely judging on how many people were there and enjoying it, I’d say you’re way off here. It’s also a 400 capacity and was probably only maxed out for the peak 20 minutes so I don’t know why you’re mentioning that.

What’s pointless is a Head Coach that can’t see a team desperate for changes to be made, to avoid the inevitable equaliser. Not somewhere that just served about 600 drinks and kept queues right down.

 

I think everyone would love that. But we’re not the only ones trying to make outdoors work because there’s no indoor facility outside of some corporate spaces.

I think anything that comes our way in the next 2-3 years will still have a heavy focus on outdoors because it’s the easiest way to utilise space and get the most people included. Setting up to cater for a 400 capacity and around 700 in total, isn’t cheap or easy. The old indoors place was set to 150 as a limit and was a fairly big space when you took storage and toilets in to account - and that left us with virtually nothing for a bar setup.

Even going down the container style route I think you need upwards of £100k to get it to supporter expectation based on how popular it would be.

 

ESL concourse would be great. Issue you’ve got there is figuring out how you let people in/out without them entering the stand, checking matchday tickets, and allowing those who want to come in without using the ‘FanZone’ do so.

I think there’s fire and safety aspects to that too as you’d be essentially losing exits and entrances and changing the flow of people traffic. Looks an easy one as an outsider but figuring that out would be a big job and would likely put an extra strain on security at a time where we haven’t got that completely nailed yet in the current climate.

For container bars you still need to figure out where they go. Licensing/Council need to approve any permanent structure on the ground of Oakwell that serves alcohol, and local residents could also veto it too. Then you’ve got your electrics, your heating, your cellar, and how many you’d need to cater for 400 people.

It can be done. But it needs to be a priority amongst all the other things that need doing at the football club, and there needs to be budget to do it. Unlikely given the white flag waved yesterday and the impending relegation.

 

Wristbands could be one solution but you’d still need to figure out the flow of the people traffic given there’s so many different ways to enter the ESL, and how do you operate turnstiles in to an area that suddenly starts hosting 400 people who might be sat in other areas of the ground? It’s not impossible, but I’m guessing it would throw out all current fire and safety regs amongst other challenges.

On financing I think you need to be realistic about how much money these places take. It’s a busy pub that opens for three hours, around 23 times a year, and out of those times three hours is sometimes cut short due to midweek games and lunchtime kick offs. If you laid down £100k it would need to be a five year plan to return you back to net zero on investment, in my opinion.

 

A lot of stadiums have a marquee structure but in 90% of those cases it’s put up once and left up. So is a permanent structure and will have gone through the licensing process. To do that temporarily for each home game would render you as loss making every time you open, once you consider staffing costs, etc.

Remember that we’re volunteers on our half of the FanZone so you’ve got no staffing costs for what we serve from our part. That would be another dent in the profits if the five of us took £10 an hour from 9am, 10am, 11am as the different times we arrived, plus the work that goes in to it during the week as well.

The club paid for the jumbrellas that are fixed in to the ground, they paid for electrics to be out there, they have the stage used for the entertainment, and then arrange all the entertainment, security, special guests, etc. So they are heavily involved and have invested. They also use the grounds staff to set it up each game and the barriers used are all from the club. They’ll be other things they’ve paid for that I’m not aware of, plus their support promoting it as well.

BFCST (or essentially supporters that visited Redfearn’s Bar when it was inside) helped contribute towards the van conversion, all the tables and seating that are normally used, the giant pop up gazebos you might have seen before, and then other bits and bobs to help everything run as it should. Acorn Brewery loan us cask ale equipment and BrewDog paid for the whole kit out of the van to be able to dispense beer.

Our FanZone is no different to dozens of others I’ve seen. You’ll never cater for everyone, or have a solution that suits everyone, but if you can be offering something for the numbers that came yesterday then it’s world’s apart from anything from 1995 to 2015.