Expert Explains the Hidden Crowd Engineering Behind Event Venues | WSJ Pro Perfected 

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I don't think people comprehend how incredibly dangerous crowds can be when not carefully controlled and influenced by well planned processes and design. The Halloween crush in Korea killed 159 people in just minutes, and there was no stopping it from happening until it was far too late. This is such an important and underappreciated type of design and psychology, glad to see content focusing on it.

We needed this guy at the Travis Scott concert. That’s a lot on his shoulders to make sure the flow goes to plan.

One of the highlight of living in London is how terrific the crowd management is here. Wonderful work, thank you for your service!

I work in the events industry and let me tell you A LOT of thought and work goes into tiny aspects of crowd management. Even the specific size and shape of the pit barrier. Where I used to work we had people on towers at music shows just monitoring how the crowd was moving and behaving from above to try and spot potential issues before they developed. Of course there have been some recent high profile disasters, but these underpin how important this subject is. Crowds have a mind of their own and can make people behave very differently.

I thought this was Vox. I love this type of video.

There's an art to any task you can do, no matter how small or big it is. Edit for those of you commenting, this is a common expression "There's an art to XYZ." You must not have heard it before, but it's a legit saying in English.

I absolutely love when places are designed well for flow of traffic and control. a decent amount of people have no spatial awareness and its a pet peeve of mine. Im also not a fan of those more aggressive people and having clear and organized queues can make it a breeze. Love the pen idea, literally herding animals lol. This guy is a Human herder! Can we get this guy into grocery stores? because they need a lot of work.

Japan comiket has some of the best crowd controls I’ve seen and experienced. Multiple ways of transportation to get to the venue, ultra organized line to get in, and multiple ways to get out when the event is over. Plus the majority of Japanese are very disciplined when it comes to lining up. I saw people help strangers to keep their belongings together when the others have to go use a restroom.

One crucial issue overlooked in this but is vitally important is how do you safely and efficiently evacuate large numbers of people safely and quickly in the event of en emergency. That is also the job of engineers.

Mind-blowing how every detail counts! 😮

The occasional story comes out about over crowding and people being crushed. Imagine how many times it would happen if we didn’t have people like him. Well done 🙏🏻

Anyone else here after just witnessing the madness at the Copa final in Miami tonight??

Intriguing to get a glimpse into how much strategic planning goes into handling crowd movement at major venues. The careful choreography to keep people safe, satisfied, and revenue flowing, is truly commendable.

That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing a tiny glimpse of your profession, and thank you for keeping us safe.

Having this video posted a few days before the Copa America final game disaster in Miami is something else

The crowd for the start of the event can trickle in and it's relatively easy going, but when the event is over, that's when the real issues are present.

Fascinating stuff! I never knew I wanted to know about queues, but as it turns out I did. Thank you for broadening my knowledge WSJ.

Love this!! So interesting. I never think about all the planning that goes into pulling of a successful event. More event planning and coordination content please !!

Crowd control is so important in events to keep everyone safe and everything flowing smoothly. When I worked at my local 10k I got to see it in action at the finish/expo. Crowd crushes scare me with how easily they can happen with no way to stop it, so I respect and appreciate the crowd control engineers very much!

The holy mosque in Makkah is also a perfect example of crowd control engineering. Amazing video.

Conmebol, the Charlotte stadium, and miami stadium needed to watch this before the copa America started.

This is very insightful. These are the kinds of planning that are done behind the scenes that we barely get to know but are very integral to having a wonderful experience!!

I love this and am so grateful for people like Brett. I think event planning is the most important and valuable aspect of an event. Disorder and lack of planning destroys every Event. I’m glad there is becoming a respected science of crowd control

Great content. We'd recently attended The Killers concert at newly opened Co-op Live venue in Manchester (UK), the construction of which was led by Arup. The capacity is 25K but we were amazed how easy and quick it had been to get in and out. Noted how many of features he mentioned were in play.

the waiting in pens thing blows my mind. You're telling me you're having a huge sports crowd wait for a traffic light for a few cars to pass? Where I live, the few streets around the stadium are closed off temporarily. So it's not the whole city obviously, but it gives just enough room for people to disperse in different directions

I went to the volleyball at Earls Court in 2012. On arrival, the morning session was leaving and the mass of people in the front of the venue was incredible. As we had a young child with us, we deliberately left before the end of the afternoon session to avoid the rush - no crowds but got home to find out that the game we were watching had turned around and into a classic after we left 😢.

as a small event organizer i never thought about it, all we think is how people movemnet in event venue and not the outside of venue...thanks for the insight

Amazing. The work you never appreciate or notice if it's well done but so important.

One time I was at Disney and I marveled at the psychology of the lines. You think you are almost to the ride but nope, it turns. But you feel you are making progress. Jump to the fireworks time, I thought I was smarter than their line system and tried to fight against the traffic. It was stupid and I should have realized they knew the best way to clear out.

More videos like this please. I found it fascinating. Thank you.

Great video i learned a lot from it Thanks, WSJ for this informative content. I will definitely share this with my friends

wow! been planning event for a while and when you thought you knew everything, come this guy. thank you brother!

LOL this just popped up into my suggested right after the COPA AMERICA final in Miami 2024. The organizers should have all prepared on this

Very interesting

I'm amazed to see how 'profit' and 'money' are highly prioritized in crowd engineering. Not surprised, just amazed.

My respects to you sir, and others like you!

You can tell how well thought out an event is by how well their queue lines are. Loved his explanations and the visuals.

I remember reading a reddit comment about how outrageous it was that top-tier event managers get paid what they do. Like buddy, you have zero clue what goes into a real event.

That was incredibly intriguing 6 minutes!! Absolutely love the science and the thought behind it!

This is about to blow up.

These guys are really important.

Kudos to crowd managers. They have to see the venue and surrounding area and try to predict what people will do. What a fantastic video!

i am so amazed how well the people organizing a huge participations of an event. i myself have been an event organiser, but never thought this idea on my mind before

great timing considering what happened at the copa final tonight!

I find this stuff so interesting, one thing we did in dc is when our ballpark opened we redesigned the metro station nearest the park to have the ticket barriers at the top of the escalator to prevent a crush at the bottom.

Security at Hard Rock café did not watch this video. Argentina vs Colombia its a mess

I never even thought about this! Super fascinating

Fascinating!

This makes me understand and appreciate the art of crowd control.

I was in the queue at this year Wimbledon and it was my first major event. I was very impressed about the organization. 20.000 people out there and there were not one hassle, no overwhelming. As it was just a couple of hundreds. Lines in the food courts were flowing. I was bit nervous when departing thou. They made us waited at the traffic lights, I thought it would be some squeezing or something but it was so smooth too. Everybody put a distance. The crowd was very civil. It is important too.

MORE OF EXACTLY THAT PLEASE!! ❤ crowd engineering is interesting.

Seen a dangerous situation in Edinburgh with an overcrowded platform, a fight broke out and people were almost falling onto the track trying to get out of the way. There were about 15 transport cops in the ticket office but none on the platform and none on the trains. Crowds can be dangerous anywhere but especially on a train station platform. 😬

This was really interesting! I know crowd management is tough but this was really insightful

There was an even in Germany (Duisburg i believe; techno festival.) in which the crowd was channeled through a narrow tunnel with those incoming and those leaving overlapping. This lead to people pushing each other and several deaths. Shows how important this kind of work is, and getting this detail right.

I love how I was able to see this in Taylor’s Concert both in SG and Japan. ❤

Crowd management is absolutely critical for any large event. It’s fascinating seeing a professional break down the designs and explain the rationale behind their choices.

Thank you, people like Brett!

This is really relevant after whatever happened in PA today.

Watching this video made me realize how much almost every big festival I ever went to here in Brazil completely disregarded any of the good practices in line management

Brett needs to work with the Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix organizers. I have been to the race there for the last 3 years in row and the crowd control gets worse every year. A normal 15 minute walk from the track to the Metro station takes almost 2 hours after the Grand Prix, the organizers doesn't even have any sort of crowd control, everyone is just free to do whatever it takes to get in and out of the race track, its actually scary.

Intro animation is lowkey amazing

was yesterday in the euros final in berlin and the management was incredible

This showing up in my feed as I still wait for the Copa América finals due to crowd control issues accessing the stadium

Such underrated artform. Major respect to people in the field of event logistics planning!

Was at 50,000 Finsbury Park last weekend, crowd management on leaving was really good.

I went to an Arena concert in Berlin, one day before the show they did a numbering for all standing tickets, where you'd queue up and get a numbered wristband, so on the day of the show they also made little "pens" with barriers around the arena, sorted from 0-100 etc. That was really cool actually, bc you didn't have to arrive super early, still had time to check out merch stands and other activities, the area right in front/towards the streets didn't get too overcrowded and and the entry process was also super smooth and organized 👌🏼

they did this at the taylor swift reputation stadium tour i went to in 2018. it was great i actually felt very safe at the end of the concert, especially given that there were 70,000 people there! excellently planned.

i do event planning drawings in nigeria and this has been so helpful and educative.

i went to wembley stadium for a sold out concert and i thought the way they handled the crowd was extreamly distressing. when you first get out of the venue you don't know why you can't just go in any direction, you get funneled somewhere but you're not sure exactly where (i think many people in the audience haven't been to the area before), you also can't move forward and people keep coming out of the venue pushing from behind. i saw so many people pass out in the crowd. i only went there once, so maybe things are usually different but i still remember how unsafe i felt.

Meanwhile here in India, 120 people died in a relious event due to bad crowd management

Saw this after the copa america disaster and embarrassment in america, what a coincidence

F1 needs to hire this guy!

Ticketed events could assign arrival times up to the event start time. They could even charge a premium to choose your arrival time. Miss your arrival and you automatically get added to a post event start arrival.

Very interesting video! This could very easily have been double or triple the length to go more in-depth! :)

was there 2012, it was really a relatively comfortable walk

This is one of the most British video I've seen. They love those queues! Super interesting

I didn’t know I needed to know this. 😅

This is useful knowledge. Thank you.

Had to look up what was meant with tailgating & American football! In the UK it means to drive too closely behind another car.

My husband is a retired police captain, so I appreciate this man’s logic, physics, and psychology all rolled into one job. Pragmatism at its best. ❤

My main takeaway from this video is the bottom up beer tap. Still mind boggling!

Just watch Loveparade disaster 2010 to understand why this mans job is so important!

0:51 Shout-out this guy's hand writing skills!

Loving the WSJ priorities: 1 - Make more money 2 - Prevent catastrophic crowd crushing with loss of life

Thank you for sharing.

Entrance to Hyde Park events is usually well managed. Marble Arch Station has often been closed early on the nights of busy events, but we’ve been caught in a few pedestrian ‘squashes’ when leaving via the south east exits. Safe transiting of the crowds across the roads near these exits often seems to have been neglected.

I can now recognize some of the systems used in the latest ACDC concerts, but in Dresden (Germany) it was just a shitshow... 70k people were released into one area far from public transport and walked as a giant crowd through the city. This effectively stopped any traffic perpendicular to the crowd and slowed down taxis, ambulances or charter-busses taking people away from the original exit.

Wowwwww meaning the Eras Tour i attended at SG was organized following the notes given in this video

I hate when people cut or force their way to the front of queue, but turns out you can carefully plan crowd engineering to control the flow and mitigate people's desire to cut. I feel like any large fan conventions need to prioritize this and be well equipped on this front.

good work Brett, i like the way you think

Or escalators that empty into an area of equal size where people are expected to wait, like train station platforms. People reach the end, get off, and often just stand there or stop to get their bearings. During busy times, people getting off have no where to go and a crush starts forming as more people are dumped into the area off the escalators.

This was aaaaawesome! Super cool stuff

it would be amazing if someone could analize all the drama surrounding the entrance to the final match of the conmeball american cup, as there were people harmed because of poor organization

That’s truly amazing

New learning about crowd management 👍

It would be interesting to see what would change if this changes from how to make money to what would change to give the best satisfaction to the visitors

Wembley really should pay for some improvements to wembley park station. Platform Screen doors seems like a minimum they should add in, and presumably would allow them to fit more onto platforms safely.

The picture at 0:20 was from Rock im Park, a music festival in Germany, which is the absolutely worst organized event I have ever attended. It became worse after COVID for some reason, and keeps getting worse every year. This year was a new highlight, when after Green Day finished playing and the field was emptying, the crowd was filling the street and for some reason did not move at all. It took forever to walk a relatively short distance, and once we cleared the crowd we saw that there was no obstacle or anything that would have been a reason for the crowd to move this slowly. It was absolutely fascinating how this happened. My only explanation is that people wanted to move in both directions simultaneously, causing everyone to bump into others approaching them, slowing everything to a crawl.

I’d love to see more hybrid queue flows and bottom-up taps in use. Very used to the smaller groups that make up the whole disorganised queue at a bar: makes for good ‘tutting’ when someone just jumps in.