The proposal

So what's the aim?

By taking a safe standing roadshow unit demonstrating 'rail seats' around the country, to support the FSF safe standing campaign calling for clubs currently with all-seater grounds to be permitted, subject to appropriate new regulations, to create - if they wish - designated areas for safe standing in their stadia.

We suggest that clubs might want to convert, say, 10% of their ground capacity into a standing section for home fans (e.g. lower tier behind the goal, shown red in the example layout) and perhaps 5% for away fans (e.g. lower tier, opposite corner), thus leaving 85% of the stadium capacity as standard seating.

Such safe standing areas could be created in a number of ways (German clubs, for instance, use a number of different configurations, enabling quick switching of designated standing areas into seated sections for games played under UEFA or FIFA all-seater regulations).

Example Stadium Layout

Red = Safe standing areas

Rail seats

We favour the use of what we call ‘rail seats’, as used, for instance, at state-of-the-art stadia in Hoffenheim (German Bundesliga, stadium opened 2009), Klagenfurt (UEFA Euro 2008 venue, opened 2007), Wolfsburg (German Bundesliga champions 2009, opened 2002), Hannover (2006 World Cup), Werder Bremen (German Bundesliga, stadium remodelled in 2010/11) and the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Stuttgart (German Bundesliga), where remodelling in 2011 now provides standing space for 10,000 fans using this form of rail seat. An example of such seats / standing spaces (in the 'away' end at Hoffenheim) is shown below and via the links in this paragraph to photos of each ground mentioned.