 Welcome to the sports playbook where we discuss solutions to issues that impact sports. I'm your host, Angela Hazelett. Today's guest is Mark Sartori, the director of special programs for RMC events. We are here to discuss security staffing at sporting events, security and customer service positions. Welcome, Mark. Thank you, Angela. It's a pleasure to be on the show. We're glad to have you. I know that RMC's events main responsibility is to support event operations by providing staff who perform customer service and security at sporting events. In the past, some of the events that your organization has helped with include events like college football and basketball games, NASCAR races, the State Fair of Virginia and Firefly Music Festival. So how does your staffing approach change depending on the venue and the type of events? Well, I would say that every single one of our clients has a different want, a different need for their event based upon what is occurring and what their guests are expecting. So we typically sit down with those clients and we try to figure out what those wants, what those needs are. And then we also analyze what resources they have available and those resources can go from the layout of the actual venue to the equipment on site to what activities they expect to occur and what equipment they have available. So that affects how we set up our operation for that staffing. Give me some examples. The layout of the venue, the equipment on site, what kind of influence or strategies do you suggest to these event organizers? Well, first thing we do is we look at where the guests are coming from. Are they coming from home or are they coming from a pre-event location and how are they getting there? So I look at the transportation methods that exist, whether or not people are coming off of a train, off of a bus, if they're driving their personal car there, if they're arriving on one major road or a group of different roads from different directions. Once they arrive on site, we're looking at where are they parking or if they're walking up as a pedestrian. Then we look at how they're coming into the venue from that parking location or from that arrival location. And again, it really depends on the size of the event. If it's a large-scale event where we're doing a search at the gate, at that point we have to analyze the footprint of that gate or the set of gates that are available. How much space do we have to conduct that search? If that search creates a line, what space exists to stage that line or queue that line? And what the best approach is. The layout of the gate also might determine whether or not we have to have other scenarios in place, such as ways to move people from one gate to another. Things like that. And of course, the search is just one aspect of the entry. How people are coming in, is it a ticketed event or is it open to the general public? What are the concepts to consider there? And it's interesting because I'm seeming you're considering the throughput, meaning the timing of when guests are going to arrive on site and how quickly you can get them through security. And there's a lot of security procedures that may delay or enhance the process a bit. Can you share some of your insight and expertise in getting people through security and into a venue? Sure. One thing I'll start with is the prohibited items list. A lot of times we consider what is allowed in, what's not allowed in, that's often dictated to us by the client or the venue. We want to make sure that the guests are aware of what those items are. So we talk with the client about getting that advertised, whether it's on the website when they're purchasing the tickets or signage in the parking lot or signage on the way to the gates. We make sure that the prohibited items are often listed at the gate. So this way it can be referenced, not just for our staff to know, but also for guests. A lot of venues, it's pretty much across the country at this point, have implemented a clear bag policy. That clear bag policy is in place to ease the search, to make the search go quicker. That's one reason for the clear bag policy. Another obvious reason for a clear bag policy is if that bag gets left somewhere, it's easy for anyone in the venue to be able to see what's inside of it and quickly ascertain whether or not that bag is a risk or not. But it definitely speeds up the search. It gives us the ability to look from the outside and see what's in the bag without having to constantly have guests remove things to make it easier for us to see the contents. The other things that we utilize is different search levels depending on the type of an event. The larger the event, the more invasive of a search level that exists usually. And when we get to the scenario where we're doing metal detection, if we're using a handheld wand, there is definitely an amount of time that that that takes it takes a little longer than the amount of time it takes to have someone go through a walkthrough metal detector. So when we're talking throughput, we can probably hand wand about, you know, two to 300 people per hour per person with a wand, right? And with a walkthrough metal detector that rises from, you know, two to 300 to three to 500 people per hour on a walkthrough metal detector, simply because that metal detector is searching the entire body as you walk through it. It's just a lot quicker process and more reliable. You mentioned the larger event, the more invasive the screening process. So what would the large event, what do you consider a large event where the security procedures are more invasive? I would say any event where you have thousands of people attending. You know, I mean, if you think about a concert, right, that might have anywhere from, you know, two to 10,000 people attending it, you could think of a athletic event such as a football game or a basketball game where you could have anywhere from a small high school game at 3,000 people in attendance up to a 55,000, 60,000 person college football game, but also, you know, understanding that the space that exists for those guests also comes into the considerations there. If you have 3,000 people in a confined area, your security decisions are based off of that and, you know, there are inherent safety concerns that exist just from an event occurring without considering the person that has evil intentions involved in an event. So, you know, when we do the search at a football game, you know, it's partly to make sure that we're in a safe environment just because of the things that occur at a football game. What are the number one things that you look for that your staff looks for when screening individuals entering a venue? Well, obviously, we know what the metal detectors are searching for. They're searching for, you know, anything made out of metal that could be doing harm, right, but other things that might be prohibited are outside food or drink. Most people don't know that outside food or drink are not allowed not because, you know, the client wants to restrict what you bring to an event. It's more that they have a contract with a concessionaire that has the right to sell a product in that venue. So, you know, this isn't necessarily a safety-based search. A lot of times that's based on making sure that they honor the agreements they have in place. You know, also, you know, outside food or drink that we look for is, you know, trying to prevent someone from bringing alcohol in that, you know, might be trying to sneak it in disguised as something else, right? You know, there's also prohibited items that exist such as projectiles or things that could affect the outcome of the competition that's occurring. So, for example, if someone goes to a football game and, you know, in the in the parking lot earlier, you know, a family was thrown around a football and they bring that to the gate and they want to bring it in. Now, there's a reason why that's not allowed in and simply because if that football ends up on the field, it's going to negatively impact the outcome of that game, right? So, you know, we look for a whole host of items and we don't make that decision what's prohibited and what's not prohibited. That's driven by our client. Now, we have meetings with our clients to discuss their policies and they ask our input. They ask for what we see at other venues. And, you know, we've gone through lists of items to determine whether or not they want something allowed or something not allowed. So, you're performing a customer service role because you're answering a lot of questions that patrons have where to go, what to do, how to do things, and in a friendly tone because you're sort of representing that organization of clients, but you're providing a security function. Talk to me about the tension between customer service and security and making a venue safe and enjoyable for everyone. That's a great point you bring up. One of the things that we do train our staff on when they first on board with us and then each year when we do our recertification for our training, we talk about the continuum, the range from customer service to security, that you never really want to be at any one extreme end of that. Even when you're performing a security function, your customer service approach to that function can affect the outcome. So, we stand behind our motto that it's RMC events is success built upon good people first. We search out people that want to serve the community, that want to be in that customer service role that can perform the security function and we can train people to do the security function. So, one thing we talk about is that whenever you tell someone that they're not allowed to do something, whether it's something's not allowed to come into the venue or whether or not they're not allowed to access an area, you have to be tactful in the way you word it. And a lot of times we'll word it with a, I'm sorry, however, this is not something that we can do. We like to try and find alternate options if possible. But the goal is to enforce the policy in as polite of a manner as possible. Now, with that said, anytime you tell someone they can't do something, they're not going to be happy about it. And again, the best you could do is try and smooth it over, but still enforce the policy. Let's talk about an incident that happened at the Dover International Speedway in Delaware. And this is not one of your events, but you do support NASCAR at the Richmond Raceway. But at the event in Delaware, a drunk fan climbed the fence, resisted arrest. He was actually detained by the event staffing firm at the track. So walk me through what you were mentioning. There's sort of this continuum of customer service to security function. Do your staff, are your staff authorized to detain people in that way until police come on scene? Or how do you advise your staff in that situation? We advise our staff that going hands on with the guest is not the plan. Right? The goal is to identify the scenario and bring it to the attention of law enforcement. So I can tell you that I've run into scenarios before where a guest is doing something inappropriate and our staff member is trying to talk that guest into not doing the inappropriate thing or trying to discourage it in some manner. And we recognize that that guest is not going to comply. Right? And at that point, we bring it to the attention of the authorities. And when I say the authorities, law enforcement or potentially the client, you know, in a scenario where, where someone has done something that it warrants them having to leave the venue, we're definitely going to make sure that law enforcement and the client are involved in that decision to make that happen. Simply because, you know, it's not our call. It's, it's our job to identify and try to enforce the policies. But it's really their venue, their event. And we don't want to step on their authority. Now in the situation where the person was climbing the, the fence, you know, our definitely goal would be to try and stop him. Right? Or her for that matter. Right? But again, we're going to only do what we can until the law enforcement officer is able to get over there and can handle it with a more escalated tactics. They have better different training and authority to handle those situations than, than your staff. Tell me a little bit about the functions of some of the positions in which your staff serve and about the training that goes into preparing staff to work these events. Sure. So our staff working in the Commonwealth of Virginia, they perform under the regulation of the department of criminal justice services. Each one of our employees that perform a security function are unarmed security officers. In order to get that license, you have to take an 18 hour class, an 18 hour class that we teach in house. We have our own training school that's certified by the department of criminal justice. And we, we do that in house because we recognize that yes, our staff do need to get the security training. But there's so much more to what we do that when they go to an outside class, they're not going to get, they're not going to be taught how to park cars in the lot, in a grass field. All right. That's something that we do quite often. So we want to make sure that all of our staff have that training as well. So we've actually, we've adapted our class to cover all the security measures and all the non security measures that we feel are important to a part of the RMC culture. But we've also adapted it to include some practical experience where they're at an event and they have an instructor there with them. Not just the supervisor that's, that's maybe running the gate or instructor, I mean the supervisor that might be running an usher section. But we also have our instructors from the class there monitoring what we're doing and providing feedback, you know, corrective actions to make sure that before that staff member is working the post on their own, they have the experience to back it up. And it's, I'm gone. You have people working in the parking lots. You have people doing metal detection ushers. What other capacity or functions does your staff provide? Sure. So we, we do a ticket scanning. We do, we call it ABC enforcement, basically wristbanding people, IDing and wristbanding people to show that they're of legal age. Right. Alcohol purchase and consume alcohol. That's correct. We do hospitality validation where someone will show their, you know, ticket for hospitality and we wristband them there. We do, like we said ushering. We do access control posts. We do some more security based posts such as a stage security. And I believe we have a picture that I could bring up that shows our staff working in the stage location. And if you look behind the barricade, we have staff that are positioned there. Their role is to, it's two fault. It's one to prevent people from getting to the stage that you know, are obviously not supposed to get there, but it's also to assist with a pressure release. If that crowd is pushing up against that barricade, and there's guests that are struggling in that situation that no longer feel comfortable in that area, our staff are there to assist them with getting out of that pressure area to protect them. So that's why we, you know, we make sure that the staff that are in that area are actually capable of lifting a person to assist them with moving them out of that area. The picture you showed earlier of the core protection, that's something that we practice at the end of every basketball game at most of our venues, where we prepare for this scenario when guests do decide that they are going to rush to court. It's something that we know that if we do it every game, it's going to become muscle memory, just like shooting a basketball, right? You practice shooting a foul shot a hundred times, it's going to get better. You do it a thousand times, it's going to get even better. So we do the same thing with our core protection. And you saw in that first one with the yellow jacket said you can see clearly court rush did not occur, but we still maintain the bubble protecting the asset that's on the side there, the sideline with the coaches, scores table and the players. On the one where it's clearly a court rush has occurred, you could see that bubble on the left-hand side of the picture that clearly identifies a space for the participants in the event to be safe and to help them get off the court while the crowd is there. Let's look at some of the other images that you have and walk us through what that looks like. We have the lines outside of the stadium, for example. So this is a scenario where we are queuing lines perpendicular to the gates. And the reason for that is to control the flow. We're able to pause guests as they're walking up. It's this way the walk-through metal detectors don't get too crowded. So we don't have two people walking through the metal detector at the same time. And we can control that flow. It also takes advantage of the space to put more people in a defined area, as opposed to if they're just going in a straight line straight out from the gates. That line would reach the edge of the parking lot sooner. So we obviously go perpendicular back and forth with packing lines. Now, you can see that there are different types of equipment that we used to do that, including staff. We have staff that are stationed along the queue to control the flow. And then we have tension barriers in areas where you're just trying to guide guests. But the bike racks are there in a scenario where if that guest were to move outside of that area, it becomes a little more risky. In this particular scenario, there's a parking lot right outside the gate. So that bike rack is there to prevent guests from accidentally stepping into the parking lot and potentially coming into contact with a vehicle. Great. And then we have some pictures of the bag check. Yeah. So in this scenario, you can see that we have the walkthrough metal detector set up and staff searching bags at the walkthrough metal detectors. And then staff monitoring the walkthrough metal detectors from a little bit further back. If you go from this picture to the, let's see, it's the one with... Tickets and wristbands? Yeah, tickets and wristbands right here. You can see the next layer. So we don't have the ticket scanners right on top of the walkthrough metal detectors. We typically have about 10 to 20 feet. So this way staff can go through the walkthrough metal detector, pull in front of a ticket scanner, get the ticket scanners to scan them. And then if you see behind the ticket scanners here, we have another 20 feet further back a group of staff that are wristbanding. And again, it's all part of the process. That wristband could be for the type of seat that they have. It could be for ABC, whatever it is, we're trying to put different layers at the game, right? And then once you're inside, you have the post-entry circulation where you're guiding people to their seats, answering their questions about where things are located. And to be honest, these posts right here are really important simply because guests walk into a venue and they don't know where they're going. Unless they're seasoned ticket holders, they don't know where they're going. So they get to that point and they stop. And that's when that lobby starts to back up and fill. And if you can get guests to go from that location to concessions or to their seats or to the ATM, wherever they're trying to get to next, you empty that space and allow more people to be able to come in through the gate. And I've actually been at an event where the mascot was greeting people as they came in and everybody wanted to stop and take their pictures. So it's like, get a move the mascot to a different location to not back up the entry line of people trying to get in. It's very similar to putting the condiments near the concession stand. You want the condiments to be away from the concession stand so the guests get their food and move away from there. Absolutely. Mark, you've been with RMC events since 2008. You started as a part-time event staff. You got moved up to an account event manager. Now you're working, moved as a regional director. Now you're working as a director of special programs. So how's your perspective on this customer service, security continuum changed your perception of the work that you do? Oh, wow. I'll tell you this. I have a unique perspective based upon my role. I go around to events and I help wherever needed. So our account managers, while they're doing their event, my job is to serve them, figure out what's going on, what they need, where they're struggling, and I help out wherever I came. Now with that said, it's definitely a different scenario for me when I go to an event. As a guest, as opposed to as someone that's working, it's hard to get the event operations mindset out of my head, in which case I find myself not necessarily watching the concert or the sporting event that's occurring. I'm watching the staff. I'm watching the crowd. It's one of those things that, you know, I'll be sitting in a chair in front of a basketball game and everybody else's eyes are down on that basketball and my eyes are on the concourse on the other side of the arena going, yeah, that guest looks like they're pretty irate right now. I wonder what's going on, right? And again, it goes back to what I do at events. You know, I walk around and I look for issues. And you know, when there's an issue occurring, I try to assist the supervisor with, okay, what can we do to help this guest or this scenario, whatever it is? Do you have the same problem when watching sports on TV? You're still watching the crowd and what's happening in the background? At times, you know, at times, you know, fortunately for me watching sports on TV, a lot of times the camera focuses. I'm a big fan of hockey, right? Because that's all you see is the ice. But yeah, no, it's hard for me to go to a concert and still focus on the performance. You know, and when I work, you know, an event, like a lot of people say, you know, it's exciting. You get to see NASCAR, you get to see football. Yeah, I do. But you know, to be honest, I only watched the last three minutes to see what the outcome is going to be. So I know what reactions our staff needs to do. Absolutely. It's a really good point. Are people leaving the game early or are they all staying to the very end in anticipation of celebration or the opposite of celebrating, I guess? So talk to me about some of the differences, like the PGA Tour Champions event. We have Richmond Raceway and NASCAR. You have football, basketball games, music festivals. What are some of the key distinctions that changes your perspective of your operations? Well, let's start with the PGA Tour event. PGA Champions event, the one I assisted this past year, the Dominion Energy Charity Classic. It is a unique scenario because 99% of the parking is off-site. And those that are parking on-site are people that are there all week. So when people arrive at the off-site parking, they get shuttled in. And it definitely affects our gate throughput. It actually makes an easier scenario for us in that, you know, people arriving 40 to 50 people at a time and we're able to process them through the gate in small groups. Now another, a second shuttle bus might arrive, you know, 30 seconds after that one, but still we can process those 50 people and then the next group arrives. All right, a big difference is a football game where the people are on-site and they've been on-site for a few hours. Chances are they've been eating and drinking, what they're drinking, I don't know, right? But they could arrive to the gate, what we call over-beveraged, in which case there are more challenges we have to deal with, right? But they arrive at whatever pace they dictate. So if it's a football game, they could be arriving 20 minutes to 30 minutes prior to kickoff, right? Gates could be open for an hour and a half or two hours, but the mass of them are arriving 20 minutes prior to kickoff. So we have that challenge. At a PGA tour event, people could be arriving at any time of day. You know, gates open at 10 o'clock, right? At that point, you have a rush of people that show up and then you might have sparse amount of people arriving in the next half hour to hour, and then you get another rush of people arriving, but it's never a scenario where the gates are getting overwhelmed at any one time, right? And it's the same thing for a concert. You know, a concert is a little different from a football game. You have people that are arriving right before the main act is going on, or the headline, right? You have some people that are coming for the opening act, or there are some people that arrive before gates open and they're sitting in line, which also depends on the type of ticketing that they do. If it's general admission, you know, standing room, those people are going to arrive early and they're going to get in line. If it's reserved seating, people are going to arrive whenever it's convenient for them. So those things, you know, affect, you know, our staffing plan, how many people we have at each gate, you know, at a golf tournament where people arriving 50 at a time, we can get by with only, you know, three metal detectors for 10,000 people, right? When you have 10,000 people arriving all within 20 minutes, we're going to need a whole lot more metal detectors for that. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, Mark, you've given us lots of great nuggets. 30 seconds or less. What is something that you would want people to know about RMC events? It's a great job. It's a scenario where you get to see people enjoy what they're coming to, right? And it's an opportunity for you to help with that enjoyment. We are always growing as a company and we're always growing as a family. We're always looking to bring new people on board to join our staff. And the people that work with us, they're just truly outstanding and they're the reason why we're successful. So, you know, not to be advertising for hiring, but if someone's looking for a great job that's lots of fun, that puts a little extra, you know, cash in your pocket, this is the thing to do. I truly enjoy it. And, you know, I hope that I'm with RMC events for the rest of my career and someday I get to retire and hopefully I'll be able to attend events with a guest mentality again. Well, it does sound like you really enjoyed it as you've grown up through the company. So, thank you, Mark, for your insight into security staffing at sporting events and security in customer service positions. So, thanks to our viewers today for joining us on the sports playbook. In two weeks, our guest is Elizabeth Abdenore, an attorney who works on Title IX issues that impact college sports. We will see you then.