UEFA Champions League Final 2024 – London

Thousands of fans turned up to London for the 2024 UEFA Champions League Final. Ensuring a smooth experience for fans and minimal disruption to the city with this huge influx of people required organisation and collaboration. 

Along the way there were four major challenges:

• large scale international movements across constrained time periods. The UCLF is always the busiest night of European aviation, and this year (2024), there were approximately 100 charter movements and 100-200 private jets. We also had to take into consideration how ports would be impacted by the UK-EU border processes and high demand on top of an already busy summer schedule.
• the highest level of service expectations for any event in the world. We needed to integrate safety & security and event transport with mobility whilst achieving service expectations. There was also a significant outer security perimeter design overlay required for UEFA events which maintain VIP parking and access.
• dealing with unknown teams and unknown demand. Different team demographics present different and varying risks, but we were also facing unknown levels of unticketed demand and this comes with associated risks. So we needed to achieve stakeholder buy-in and good-will to mobilise plans without guaranteed demand.
• not just one game of football. We needed to achieve consensus, licences and approvals from a number of conflicting stakeholders for numerous activation sites and international travel hubs across the city and country, without unduly affecting background demand.

How we helped

We negotiated the lifting of night flight restrictions and laid on 38 night-flights at London’s busiest airports, coordinated the UK’s aviation industry to deliver flights across 16 different airports, including airside, terminal and surface access operations. We even managed to work with operators to lay on night rail services back to airports to boost public transport mode share. Our international focus was not just on airports: we also helped manage 10-12k spectators managed travel through the Port of Dover across the weekend, including designing and implementing a holding operation for Dover-bound coaches at Manston Airfield.

We planned and implemented a successful coach strategy from the airports and the Port of Dover. In particular, we identified alternative sites for coach parking at the stadium and across the city, segregated by team. Having secured these sites, we managed all spectator vehicle access through a booking system, liaising with clubs, tour operators and TM companies.

We dealt with uncertainty about the scale of demand, which varied according to which team would qualify and how unticketed supporters would behave, by building a detailed demand forecasting model for a range of scenarios. This model fed a communal risk matrix, which we used to communicate to all stakeholders. Our relationship building, demand forecasting, risk assessment and contingency planning were key to the successful operation. 

Within the city itself, we helped to secure 2x Fan Meeting Points and 6x Festival Sites across the city with suitable transport links, including seamless, segregated and direct public transport options for spectators to travel from their designated Fan Meeting Points to Wembley. On the day, 90,000 spectators visited the two Fan Meeting Points, which included many unticketed fans: both Fan Meeting Points were full during the match itself. We also implemented a fan march at the stadium alongside police and Safety & Security colleagues.

Davide Pu, UEFA MOBI lead:

Mobility in general was very smooth. Working with the Steer team was a joy and something I wish we could repeat every year!

Watch the project video and see our work in action

In this video Edward Robinson talks through the key challenges and solutions in our work for the final and activations surrounding it.