[GreenThing]

CineWorld has announced that they are opening up early July. How will this affect football? Football has larger crowds but located in an outdoor space. Maybe rope off the concourse under the stands so you go through the turnstiles and straight into the stands? If a cinema is able to open soon, we might be able to see live football earlier than expected.

CineWorld has announced that they are opening up early July. How will this affect football? Football has larger crowds but located in an outdoor space. Maybe rope off the concourse under the stands so you go through the turnstiles and straight into the stands? If a cinema is able to open soon, we might be able to see live football earlier than expected.

Cineworld (and other cinema complexes) can show the same film over and over again through the day to small, socially-distanced, audiences for virtually the same cost as showing it once to a single large audience. It's only the occasional blockbusters (latest James Bond, Star Wars, Marvel etc) that actually fill screens but by showing them multiple times on multiple screens they can distribute the audience across time and space (just a more extreme version of how these places already operate).

The trouble with football and other events like music gigs and theatre productions is that they are one-off events (or one/two times a day max in the case of something like a pantomime) and thus there is no (or much less) scope to spread the audience out across multiple showings. So although football is played outdoors I don't think it helps much. The best I can imagine in the absence of vaccines etc. would be something like having alternate rows empty and then only alternate seats used on the rows that are used. That would bring the attendance down to about 25% of maximum. Currently, I think we'd also be looking at compulsory wearing of face masks and no waiting within the concourse area. Whether that is economically viable (supplemented by live streaming) is the big question. I suppose that if attendance at Home Park became restricted in this way then there would be potential to put prices up for those that do go (supply and demand) but that would be a ratehr slippery slope to go down.

there is a story today i saw , that the national league have been told that they will be aloud limited crowds from September,when they restart, confirmation on Friday ,where there are stadiums with standing i can not see a problem, also lower leagues step 5 and 6 ie western league parkway, and step 6 saltash , helston, callington etc look likely to start in September, with social distancing in clubhouses etc, things look like they are improving

With careful organisation, I think it would be possible to open Home Park to specatators whilst maintaining social distancing. It would probably need more stewards though, adding to costs. Argyle are lucky to have a relatively large and modern stadium by League One standards. The ground could take 5,000 and appear very empty if everyone was spread out. I think the main challenge would be getting people in/out of the ground and also managing queues for toilets etc.

[GreenThing]

The toilets will be an issue, but will be a bigger issue once the pubs open.

The toilets will be an issue, but will be a bigger issue once the pubs open.

And toilets the issues with the game going on as you have to squeeze past people in an aisle

I can also suggest staggered entrance times I.e. if you miss your allocated slot then tough this would and the same with leaving of course not be useful for all those who leave early every match

But tbh beyond the ground there are issues with busses car sharing and the like that the club cannot be expected to control but will all be part of the decision process

[Ottawa Green]

One of the suggestions over here is setting up drive in locations where you could sit in your car and watch a game on a big screen. Argyles parking lot would be good location, set up a number of screens and charge to park.

The toilets will be an issue, but will be a bigger issue once the pubs open.

And toilets the issues with the game going on as you have to squeeze past people in an aisle

I can also suggest staggered entrance times I.e. if you miss your allocated slot then tough this would and the same with leaving of course not be useful for all those who leave early every match

But tbh beyond the ground there are issues with busses car sharing and the like that the club cannot be expected to control but will all be part of the decision process

Staggered entrance times for fans coming from the pub??

One of the suggestions over here is setting up drive in locations where you could sit in your car and watch a game on a big screen. Argyles parking lot would be good location, set up a number of screens and charge to park.

I wouldn't have thought it big enough unless you mean the Park n Ride car park which the club doesn't belong to the club.

[Ottawa Green]

One of the suggestions over here is setting up drive in locations where you could sit in your car and watch a game on a big screen. Argyles parking lot would be good location, set up a number of screens and charge to park.

I wouldn't have thought it big enough unless you mean the Park n Ride car park which the club doesn't belong to the club.

Yes that's what i meant, sorry not up to the local names, it was always the place to park the car when we went to see Argyle play over 50 years ago and yes we did have a car back then.

There was a piece on the Plymouth Live website a couple of days ago about how they will be using the P&R as a drive-in cinema through July. Some of the comments were pretty funny. The sound for the film will be broadcast to your car radio on a special FM frequency and someone noted that as well as the radio drawing power from the car battery it would be necessary to have the windscreen wipers going in order to be able to see the pictures and the air conditioning on to stop everything misting up. They suggested that it would be fun getting out of the car park when after 3 hours of sitting with the engine off listening to the radio with the wipers going and the aircon on everyone tries to start their cars only to find their batteries were flat. The alternative was to leave the car engine running and sit in a cloud of pollution...

With careful organisation, I think it would be possible to open Home Park to specatators whilst maintaining social distancing. It would probably need more stewards though, adding to costs. Argyle are lucky to have a relatively large and modern stadium by League One standards. The ground could take 5,000 and appear very empty if everyone was spread out. I think the main challenge would be getting people in/out of the ground and also managing queues for toilets etc.

If there are only 5000 unlikely to be queues for toilets.

Having been to the Cineworld in the Barcode I’d imagine this is probably the safest place for social distancing in Plymouth.

When I went in there was no one else there as customers and only 3 staff total.