The Villa Park experience: crowd consultations at an English Premiership football stadium, season 2007-8.

Objectives: The Football Licensing Authority has expressed concern that crowd injury rates in British football stadiums may be increasing. This study aims to provide modern data regarding crowd consultation patterns from an English Premiership football stadium.

Design: Retrospective case mix analysis.

Setting: 21 matches played by Aston Villa FC at Villa Park (season 2007-8; capacity 42 640 spectators).

Patients: 78 patients produced a median consultation rate of four per match (incidence of 1.0 per 10 000 spectators).

Results: New conditions on match day formed 67% of contacts, including minor trauma (41%) and new general medical conditions (27%). The remaining 33% of presentations were unrelated to new injury or illness in spectators on match day, including exacerbations of pre-existing illness (17%), opportunistic presentations of existing stable problems (10%) and stadium staff injuries (6%). There were no critical illnesses or major incidents. Seven injuries were attributed to stadium infrastructure. Alcohol was deemed to be the causative factor in just two cases.

Conclusion: Crowd consultation rates at a large modern sports stadium are low. Many spectators use medical services for conditions unrelated to new injury or illness on match day. More data are needed from British football stadiums to be able to plan event cover safely and efficiently.