News
UEFA Champions League
Security Consultancy/August 20, 2025
For the third year in succession, Sceptre were contracted to assist in delivering the UEFA Champions League programme on behalf of valued sponsors.
Although the Champions League final itself is the jewel in the crown of this iconic international tournament, the actual ‘final’ consists of a weeklong programme of events in the host country. This week sees many international footballing stars, UEFA and sponsor executives start to arrive in the country and engage in numerous social and commercial events to promote the brand and the game at all levels, from grassroots to the Champions League’s global superstars.
One of the events scheduled for the week is an international youth 5-a-side competition. In essence, 10 teams from North and South America, Asia and Europe meet to play out their own international final. Each country has a Boys and Girls team who are the national winners of a yearlong competition in their own country. The major sponsors then fly the winners to the Champions League host country to compete for the international boys and girls 5 a side international title.
With all teams being national champions, the standard is exceptionally high and the competition intense as these young people compete to be the best.
Safeguarding and Security
Events such as these often see the role of security and safeguarding overlap. The highest risk of these types of events is frequently a young person going missing. To give a broad overview, the competition final takes place at the UEFA festival in the host country. This open-air event attracts tens of thousands of visitors and features a range of attractions to promote the competition, sponsors, and build excitement around the Champions League final.
Within the festival and its thousands of visitors, the 5v5 finals take place.
The youth competition has approximately 100, 14-16-year-olds in a foreign country surrounded by people who don’t speak their language, often many thousands of miles from home and very likely their first experience of travel outside their native country. Add to this scenario the extreme jetlag and the multitude of competition and safety instructions they are required to comprehend, and it is entirely understandable that the experience can be a little bewildering and the risk of being separated from the group is serious.
The sponsors entrust the safety of the young athletes to the event organiser, who in turn contracts the Security and Safeguarding elements. A joined-up strategy by these two elements is essential to reduce risk to the players to as low as reasonably possible (ALARP).
Cooperative Strategy
As with almost all generic security functions, risk mitigation is achieved through numerous layers.
Firstly, prevention. Sceptre delivers generic safety briefings to all teams and managers on arrival in the country. This outlines the basic rules: do not leave the hotel unless in a group and always with the team manager, travel on the assigned coaches for each team. These are the emergency phone numbers for event staff, etc.
Secondly, contingencies, a safety briefing is circulated by Sceptre to each team manager each evening regarding the events of the following day. This will describe the venue we are using, any issues unique to that venue, the emergency procedures and an image and description of the emergency rendezvous point if teams become separated. The team managers then brief their respective teams.
Thirdly, for the main festival (which poses the highest risk of individuals becoming separated from the group due to the sheer number of visitors to the site), Sceptre engage in early communication with the venue and the emergency services protecting the overall event.
Emergency Procedures
Here, it is essential to understand the other agencies’ procedures in the event of an emergency or missing child. Many questions need answers, including:
- What are your emergency procedures in the event of disaster/emergency / attack, etc?
- How do we communicate directly to inform you of a missing child? (This saves valuable time and ensures additional resources are brought online as rapidly as possible to find a missing person)
- What can we expect from you in terms of a response?
- What resources do you have available to assist?
- Do you have the capacity to circulate images of missing people to all security and venue staff, including the perimeter?
- How do we maintain communication during the search and keep each other updated?
In addition, effective communication with our event organisers is essential, particularly when advising additional security guards for our own footprint. This has a big impact on the budget, but a reasoned business case for additional resources in response to elevated risk is often successful. Finally, a comprehensive venue safety briefing is circulated by Sceptre to the team managers the night before giving the usual venue information but also the additional measures that must be adhered to reduce overall risk.
One additional element here was that Sceptre asked each manager to photograph each of their players in their football kit prior to leaving the hotel. This ensured that in the event a child went missing, we could approach the manager for an up-to-date image of their player that could be circulated to the venue and emergency services personnel in the event of an emergency.
Getting all of this right means that the players can do what they came to do, play some of the best youth football in the world against some of the best competition in the world in an arena surrounded by thousands of spectators and with the chance to win that international trophy… whilst remaining safe!
Read more recent news
Contact Sceptre Protection
Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you would like more information or discuss any aspect of our work
Sceptre Protection Ltd
C/O Athenia House
10-14 Andover Road,
Winchester,
Hampshire,
United Kingdom
SO23 7BS
10-14 Andover Road,
Winchester,
Hampshire,
United Kingdom
SO23 7BS
