Wembley bans bags in security clampdown
Stadium is still a prime target, FA is advised Venue’s £15m annual running costs set to rise
Wembley Stadium will mount its biggest security operation when England play the United States in a friendly on Nov 15, with a total ban on supporters taking in bags – evidence, the Football Association has told The Daily Telegraph, of spiralling future costs of running the venue.
Martin Glenn, the FA chief executive, said that the FA had been advised that Wembley remained a “prime security target” and that the cost of running the stadium, after American billionaire and NFL franchise owner Shahid Khan pulled out of a proposed £600million purchase, would only rise. The FA has a financial plan in place until 2024 – when current broadcast deals expire – but Glenn favoured selling Wembley to Khan and divesting the FA of the anticipated £15million annual maintenance costs.
In an interview to discuss the future funding of the game’s grassroots, which were to be boosted by the sale of Wembley, Glenn said that the stadium would continue to be a cost for the FA. He said it also faced competition in London as a music concert and events venue from the new Tottenham Hotspur stadium, built partly to host NFL matches, the London Stadium, the O2 Arena and Twickenham.
Glenn said: “The annual rate of capital expenditure [on Wembley] at this stage annually is about £15million. Everything is big and as a percentage of what the stadium costs, if you talk to real estate experts, that is probably on the low side. That’s without step-change events and I think, looking into the future, we will have to spend a lot of money. Wembley was designed in the 1990s, built in the 2000s and it kind of looks like it.
“People’s expectations of hospitality rise, and people’s expectations of connectivity rise. That’s one of the reasons the Spurs stadium is taking so long – everything is connected with the fibre optics. It will be brilliant when it is finished. When you go to watch Spurs play, you will be able to follow match details on your phone, and we haven’t got that level. So, that will be stuff we need to do, too.
“Security, too. We know from security forces that Wembley is a prime target. The next match, when America play here, for the first time we are doing a bag-drop where you can’t take bags in. You will get to airport-style security at some point. Just think of the Manchester [Arena] bombing.
“It [the future spending] is all predicated on the fact that Wembley is fabulous and it would be a shame if you limped along [without improving the stadium]. But if you have someone with deeper pockets [who] as a trade-off says, ‘I can make the stadium look fabulous and you can keep using it, without spending £15million a year on it’, that would be good.
“It all made sense from a business perspective but I think the rationale has been whatever we make from Wembley we ring-fence, and make that available for community facilities. I think that was the right thing. There was the suspicion the FA don’t know how to spend it, it’ll get frittered away and there was taxpayers’ money involved as well.”
Glenn, who took over at the FA in 2015, said that he had no plans to walk away from the organisation.
“I don’t give it a thought. Previous chief execs have been fired or asked to go and that’s normally the pattern of things. I come to work trying to do what I am doing. I feel really good. [I enjoy it] most of the time – anyone who says they are enjoying their job all the time are probably not doing it right.
“The difficulty is trying to make change in an environment where everyone has a point of view, they can all do the job better than you.”