IP Products

Premier upgrade for Burnley

by Mark Rowe

A case study of an upgrade at Turf Moor, the Premier League home of Burnley Football Club.

Promotion to the Premiership in summer 2014 triggered a multi-million pound facilities and IT upgrade which released funds for the upgrade of ageing matrix-based CCTV. The old system was proving hard to maintain and did not offer the reliability and ease-of-use needed to identify individuals accurately in cases of such security incidents as pyrotechnics, people throwing objects onto the pitch and suspected ticketing fraud at the turnstiles.

Doug Metcalfe, Stadium & Operations Manager of Burnley FC, said: “The safety and security of our supporters and away fans is paramount. We needed a system which was not only highly reliable but provided total coverage of all 40 turnstiles and the whole stadium including concourses and the bowl itself. We needed to be able to positively identify individuals early, so that our ground safety team could act decisively to defuse incidents before they escalate and place other fans in danger. It is also very important that we can locate key video footage on the system rapidly and export it in the right format for the police to take away and use to build a case for cautioning or convicting offenders.”

An installer of Mirasys products, Lancashire-based Thorne Access & Security designed and installed a new in-ground safety system for Burnley which focused on two areas – at the entry turnstiles and inside the stadium. A total of 64 new IP cameras were deployed: 43 for all turnstiles, 10 inside the stadium itself and others covering the concourses and behind stand areas. Meanwhile 14 legacy analogue cameras were retained covering some concourses and the area just outside the ground.

Mirasys Enterprise VMS and recorders are in use in the club’s control room. Mirasys describe their VMS is an open platform with the capacity to monitor up to 6400 cameras and 100 recorders in one system. At Burnley FC it takes feeds from all 78 cameras from three manufacturers. Most of the cameras offer pan, tilt and zoom (PTZ) and HD quality resolution. Operators can monitor multiple locations at once, zoom in when suspicious activities arise and playback quickly to check incidents. Lancashire Police’s assigned Bronze Commander, his Tactical Support Officer, and Burnley FC’s ground safety officer, all based in the club’s control room on match days, can act on incidents by exporting data in a few clicks or recording to DVD if the police need further evidence.

The network recorder enables two operators on match days to monitor away fans coming off coaches just outside the ground. Also monitored is potential ticketing fraud. New e-ticketing connects a ticket with a person, whose photo is displayed on-screen so that security staff can see the official owner of a ticket. The new system throws up an alert if the ticket-holder is a child or a concession; virtually eliminating ticket fraud, the club reports. A total of 3TB of video data is collected by the system each match day.

Mirasys Enterprise VMS enables operators to spot unusual behaviour such as a person looking down to light a firework or smoke bomb thereby identifying the actual person lighting the fuse. So even if, as is often the case, the pyrotechnic is kicked along the stand before it begins to flare up shrouding the area in coloured smoke, it is still possible to clearly identify who did the offence of setting it off. The same is true of people throwing objects onto the pitch, towards players or linesmen. A coin thrower at a recent match at Burnley FC was caught on camera and arrested before he left the ground.

Inside the ground, since the new system went live, Burnley FC’s ground safety staff, working with Lancashire Police, have been able to identify a number of people guilty of public order offences or putting other fans or players at risk. Two convictions have been handed down after offences which were recorded by the Enterprise system in the first four months of deployment.

Cliff Edens, Ground Safety Officer at Burnley, said: “The new Mirasys system has proved of sufficient quality and reliability to identify individuals in the crowd, pinpoint their location and help us act with confidence to warn or remove offenders depending on the severity of the incident. Evidence of disorder can be quickly exported and given to the police to support further action against identified individuals. There is no doubt that Turf Moor is a safer place now that we are able to access these HD quality images so rapidly.”

Iain Cameron, Managing Director of Mirasys UK, said: “Burnley Football Club is a great example of how intelligent VMS can support the needs of operations, safety and the Police to ensure the ground is well managed and people enjoy football in a safe environment and the Police can get information to support convictions quickly and easily.”

About the club

Burnley, dating from 1882, has a capacity of 21,500 and enjoys average gates of over 19,000, with up to 4000 of these being allocated to away supporters on match days.

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