"Let’s get ready for the tournament": EURO stadium preparations gather pace

With just six months remaining until the UEFA EURO 2020 final tournament, the second stadium operator workshop took place at the House of European Football in Nyon on 10 and 11 December.

In addition to the attendees from the first workshop – stadium representatives and LOS (local organising structure) officials from the 12 host cities – the 12 recently appointed venue managers and 12 venue technical managers took part in the latest gathering.

“The stadiums are the centrepieces of the whole EURO experience,” said UEFA Events SA director of operations Sharon Burkhalter-Lau in the workshop introduction, further highlighting the importance of the 12 stadiums that will host matches.

“For some time, we have been working on assumptions. Now we can be a lot more concrete in our planning, because today we know 20 of the 24 qualified teams, and we also know two thirds of the group match fixtures,” she added, before finishing her presentation with a motivational statement: “Let’s get ready for the tournament – let’s work on our event readiness, so that we are ready to go full speed for the first match!”

Andreas Schär, chief of venue operations, explained the project lifecycle, which will soon enter the ‘last kilometre’ phase with the fifth and final working visits starting in January. The goal of the visits is to close all open points, as well as to talk about the delivery of the event. As of May, people will start working on-site.

The second workshop also provided the opportunity for various EURO 2020 projects to give an update on their activities.