Match days and sports fixtures

Martyn’s Law does not catch a sports ground just because sport is played there. For most open-air grounds the deciding question is whether you control who gets in. A free-to-enter recreation ground is out of scope; a ground with turnstiles, tickets or membership can be in; and the big stadiums are in whatever happens. Here is how to tell which you are — and what a match day would actually ask of you.

Does Martyn’s Law apply to a sports ground?

Not automatically. Two things decide it: whether you control general access to the ground, and how many people can be there at the same time. Sport is a qualifying use under the Act, but the Act deliberately leaves out open land that anyone can walk onto. So a village cricket pitch, a public recreation ground or a non-league ground with an open gate is not a qualifying premises — even on a busy afternoon — unless you put something in place to check who comes in.

What keeps a ground out of scope — and what pulls it in?

The test is access, not attendance. The Act excludes a park, a recreation ground, a sports ground that is not a designated ground, or other open-air land used for recreation, as long as there are no measures checking that the public who come in have paid, hold a ticket or pass, or are members or guests. Leave the gate open and take no money on the door, and the ground stays out — the number of people does not change that.

Put a gate on it and you change the answer. Once you control general entry — turnstiles, match tickets, season cards, members-and-guests only — the ground is no longer excluded, and it becomes a qualifying premises if it is reasonable to expect 200 or more people on site at once, from time to time. That is the Standard Tier from 200 to 799, and the Enhanced Tier at 800 or more.

One useful let-out: controlling entry for a one-off event does not, by itself, drag the whole ground into scope. If you normally run an open ground but ticket a single big fixture, the measures you put on that one day are set aside when you work out whether the premises are caught the rest of the time. The ground is judged on how it runs day to day.

What about the big stadiums?

If your ground is a designated sports ground — one that needs a safety certificate under the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975 — it is in scope, and almost always in the Enhanced Tier. These are the larger grounds the government has designated: in practice those with room for more than 10,000 spectators, or more than 5,000 at Premier League and EFL football grounds. The open-land let-out above does not apply to them. If you hold a safety certificate, treat yourself as in scope and start from the Enhanced Tier duties.

What if it’s a one-off big fixture at a ground that is normally open?

Then look at it as an event, not as premises. Even where the ground itself is out of scope, a single fixture can be a qualifying event in its own right: the test is that you expect 800 or more people at once, the event is open to the public, and you check entry — paid, ticketed, or members and guests. A charity match, a cup tie or a testimonial that draws a big ticketed crowd onto an otherwise-open ground is caught as an event, and the duties sit with whoever controls the ground for that day.

For more on where that line falls, see what counts as a qualifying event.

Who counts towards the 200 or the 800?

Everyone on site at the busiest moment, not the season’s average. Count the spectators, but also the players and officials, the bar and catering staff, the stewards, the volunteers and any contractors — all of them, all at once, on your biggest realistic day. A ground that sits at 80 on a wet Tuesday but packs 400 in for a local derby is a 400 ground for this purpose, because the test is the peak you can reasonably expect from time to time. A genuinely freak, never-to-be-repeated crowd does not count; one you could see coming again does.

If the count is what you are unsure about, our guide on how to work out if you reach 200 walks through it.

Who is responsible — the club or the operator?

Whoever controls the ground. The responsible person is the body that has possession of the premises and makes the decisions about how it is run — usually the club or the venue operator, not the league, the governing body or a visiting team. You can hand the tasks to a stewarding or events firm, but you cannot hand over the duty: it stays with the organisation in control. If an outside promoter hires your ground and runs a fixture, the one in control for that event carries the duty for it.

Doesn’t our safety certificate already cover this?

No — but it gives you a real head start. A safety certificate and the crowd-management regime behind it are about keeping a crowd safe: getting people in and out, capacities, stewarding numbers, structures. Martyn’s Law is a separate duty that asks a different question — what you would do to protect those same people in an attack. The two sit alongside each other; one does not discharge the other.

The good news is that most of the groundwork is already there. If you run stewards, bag checks, a control point, radios and a crowd plan, you are not starting from nothing — you are looking at the same arrangements through a new lens and writing down how they would work if the threat were a deliberate attack rather than a surge or a fire.

What would you actually do on a match day?

At the Standard Tier the law asks for four procedures, in place so far as is reasonably practicable — no mandatory kit, no compulsory course, no consultant. For a ground with a crowd, they come down to this:

• Evacuation — how you get people off the ground and away, by which exits and gates, and who gives the word. On a match day that is the stewards acting on one clear instruction.
• Invacuation — where the safer place is if the danger is outside the ground, and when you would move people into a stand or building, or hold them in, rather than push them out into it.
• Lockdown — how you secure the ground to stop someone getting in or moving about: which gates and turnstiles can be shut, and who has the authority and the means to do it.
• Communication — how you reach a crowd quickly and calmly, by PA, by radio to stewards, by the screens if you have them, so a clear instruction actually lands.

The people who deliver all of that are your stewards. The job is to make sure they know the plan, know who calls it, and could carry it out on the day — not just that it is written somewhere. A procedure that nobody could put into practice quickly and properly is not enough.

What does the Enhanced Tier add?

If you are a designated ground or you regularly expect 800 or more, you are in the Enhanced Tier, and two things change. You have to think about measures as well as procedures — monitoring the ground and its approaches, controlling movement in and around it, physical security, and keeping your plans and control-room information secure. And you have to write it down: document the procedures and measures, assess how they reduce the risk, and give that document to the regulator, with a named senior person accountable for it. For most large grounds this is a matter of formalising and sharpening what the safety operation already does, not inventing it.

You have time to get this right

Martyn’s Law is not in force yet. The statutory guidance was published on 15 April 2026, and commencement is expected in April 2027 at the earliest, after an implementation period the government intends to be at least 24 months. The regulator’s notification system is not open yet either, so there is nothing to file today. The sensible move now is to settle whether you are in scope, decide who is responsible, and sketch the four procedures with the people who would run them — so that when the date comes you are tidying a plan, not starting one.

Where the definitive answer is

For definitive information about whether your premises or event is within scope and what is required, refer to the current statutory guidance issued under the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025.