Opinion | Monday, 25th June 2018
World Cup 2018: The all-seater requirement in Russia
David Rigg, Senior Lecturer in Law, discusses the future of safe standing and seating in football stadiums
Russia 2018 will be the latest World Cup to take place in all-seated stadiums. In July 1989, three months after the Hillsborough Disaster, FIFA announced that, from the qualifying competition for USA 1994, all World Cup matches must take place in all-seated stadiums.
Since then, successive World Cups have heralded a revolutionary transformation in the architecture of football grounds. In England and Wales, all Premier League and Championship grounds have had to be all-seated since the start of the 1994/1995 football season following the recommendation of Lord Justice Taylor’s report into the Hillsborough Disaster. The all-seater requirement has ushered in wholescale changes to the ethos of football. There have been numerous new stadiums built and a number of large modernisation projects of existing stadiums. The changes brought by all-seating have been subject to widespread criticism such as the commercialisation of the game, price inflation and demographic change.
In recent years, there has been a growing campaign to bring safe-standing areas to England and Wales in the form of rail-seating. Far from a return to the crumbling terraces of the 1980s, rail-seating provides each ticket holder with a designated seat which can be locked into an upright position for games where standing is allowed.
Each row of seats has a barrier (or ‘rail’) for fans to lean on which ensures that fans occupy a specific and easily identifiable place. In Scotland, where the all-seater law does not apply but where the Scottish Premier League makes all-seater stadiums a condition of membership for clubs, Celtic installed 2,600 rail seats as a trial for the start of the 2016/17 season. A number of clubs across Europe have installed similar areas.
In April 2018, West Bromwich Albion’s application to install a trial rail-seating section was rejected by the government. Following an online petition signed by more than 100,000 people, the government announced on June 5, 2018, that it is considering commissioning a review of the all-seater policy.
There is currently no suggestion that FIFA is similarly minded to review the matter and it is very unlikely that architectural plans for the Qatar World Cup 2022 will be redrawn. However, the tide may well be turning, and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that fans could be standing at World Cups in the not too distant future.
