In the UK, sports grounds are designed so that spectators can leave the stands in about 8 minutes. A metre of level exit passes up to 82 people a minute, and a metre of stairs passes 66. That gets you out of your seat and onto a clear route. Reaching the train or the car park is a separate queue, and after a sold-out match it often takes 30 to 60 minutes.
Where the numbers come from
Most stadium exit numbers in the UK trace back to the Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds, known as the Green Guide. It is published by the Sports Grounds Safety Authority and used well beyond the UK.
The Green Guide works with a "rate of passage": how many people can pass through one metre of width in one minute. Its egress guidance gives two maximums:
| Surface | People per metre of width per minute |
|---|---|
| Level route (concourse, gate) | 82 |
| Stepped route (stairs, gangways) | 66 |
Stairs are slower because people watch their feet and keep more space in front of them. The guide also points out that designing below the maximum gives a more comfortable flow.
The time side of the sum is the egress time. Worked examples from the SGSA use 8 minutes for normal exit: the time from a seat to the start of a free-flowing route out of the ground. Local authorities set shorter times for emergency evacuation when the fire risk is higher.
The sum, for a few crowd sizes
Multiply the two numbers and you get the exit width a stand needs. At 82 people a minute for 8 minutes, one metre of level exit clears 656 people.
| Crowd in the stand | Level exit width needed (8 min) | Stair width needed (8 min) |
|---|---|---|
| 5,000 | 7.6 m | 9.5 m |
| 20,000 | 30.5 m | 37.9 m |
| 60,000 | 91.5 m | 113.6 m |
These are design figures, not a promise. Real crowds stop to take photos, wait for friends and queue at the toilets on the way out. Exits also close for safety reasons, and stewards hold people back when the area outside is full.
Why it still takes an hour
The 8 minutes ends at the edge of the stands. After that, the crowd has to fit into the streets, the stations and the car parks, and those are far narrower than the gates.
A sold-out stadium of 60,000 people emptying in under half an hour sends more people toward the nearest station than its platforms can hold. Stations near big grounds handle this with queue barriers outside and staff letting people through in batches. The wait you remember after a big match is mostly that queue, not the gates.
Car parks have the same problem in a different shape. Every car tries to leave through one or two exits onto a road with its own traffic, so the first cars are out in minutes and the last ones wait far longer.
Planning the walk out with friends
If you came with a group, the busiest place to meet is right outside the gate you left from. Everyone else is standing there too, and phones in a full crowd can be slow. A few things help:
- Pick a meeting point a few minutes' walk from the stadium, away from the main route to the station. A side street or a café works better than the main square.
- Decide before kick-off whether you will leave early, at the final whistle, or after the rush. Staying in your seat for 15 to 20 minutes, if the ground allows it, often gets you home at about the same time, with less pushing.
- If one of you uses a different stand, agree which exit each person will use and which side of the stadium they will come out on.
OnTime can hold that meeting point for a group. One person creates a Radar that ends an hour or two after the match, adds the meeting point as a stop, and the others join. Each person can then see who has made it out and how far they still are from the spot. We cannot make the station queue shorter, but the group does not have to stand in the crowd at the gate trying to call each other.