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now, I’ll be honest, in our faces all the time, just pushing us on what we’re doing on single-use plastics, on straws etc. We no longer have plastic straws inside the venue. Budweiser can produce aluminum bottles rather than plastic. There’s difficulty to that, because of licensing hard aluminum bottles for football matches, but we’re looking into decanting it in certain areas. Nothing of our waste goes to landfill,


which for a stadium of this size is huge. We have targets to help increase our recycled waste and our general waste is turned into power to hear 48,000 local homes. FAST is very active. The world demands


it now. It’s part of the customer service to show that you understand the environment and the impact you’re having on it. With 90,000 people coming here, you’ve got a lot of waste so it’s important that we handle it responsibly. We’re in a very good place, we’re by no means there yet, but we’re pushing in the right direction.


Q: As a stadium operator, can you ever even say, ‘we’re there yet’? A: No, you really can’t. You see the likes of Tottenham’s new stadium, it’s absolutely state of the art, amazing. We’re 12 years old now, so you’re constantly looking at what needs to change. We, for instance, changed the lights to


LED, for environmental reasons, but also because you cannot just turn sodium lights


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off and on again, meaning you couldn’t use them in any kind of pre-event entertainment, whereas a LED light just flicks back on. It’s simple things too: what types of bins


are you using, which are the stewarding companies you’re using, what are their training methods, what’s going inside the boxes, what about the TVs in there, because obviously TVs have moved to 4K and 5K, who knows where you’re going to be at. The network system, we’re 4G, it’s great, but Barcelona are now 5G, why are we not 5G? You’re constantly looking at that upgrade side of it. We’re going to invest another couple of


million pounds to upgrade the whole sound system. The thing with Wembley is, we are owned by the Football Association, who are a non-profit organisation. All of their profit is reinvested directly back into grassroots football, so they’re always looking at, ‘how do I put a 3G football pitch into a small town that needs it?’ So if I’m going to them to say I want a new


sound system, I’ve got to justify why it makes sense for this venue.


Q: Aren’t promoters bringing in their own PA? A: They bring in the main PA, and what they do now is something called a ring delay: they hang speakers from the roof, pointing down into the upper levels, because a delay tower can only hit so much. So rather than relying on the front of stage and delays blasting up


there, why don’t we install such a ring delay system permanently. If we install it permanently, we’re in a posi-


tion where a promoter can come in and just plug into it. The cost per event was some- thing like £40,000 to put that ring delay in. If we invest in it, we benefit from it long-term, but we also help our client, who wants to come in and use a system they like and trust.


Q: What’s the timeline for the implementation of the new sound system? A: It’ll go in next winter. We usually plan a lot of housekeeping work in our quiet winter period between November and February. We were going to replace the floodlights too. That’s been pushed to the next winter


period following Tottenham’s tenancy extension, but come 2020, in time for the EURO, we’ll have that in place.


Q: With the current demand for live events, it seems like there has never been a better time to be working in live entertainment, would you agree? A: It’s exactly that. Who would have ever thought that esports would get as big as it is? Why would you buy a ticket to watch somebody playing a game on a big screen? But it’s great entertainment, people love the atmosphere. You’re now seeing bespoke arenas being built for this, it’s not against any imagination that it’ll soon be in stadiums.


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