A Premier League football stadium is hosting a homecoming gig for the city’s most prominent current music artist. They should be spot on with organisation, shouldn’t they? Let’s see!
BOOKING
Being a music event rather than the usual football at the stadium, the ticketing is different. Usually, for football, tickets are purchased directly from the football club through a ballot system.
Tickets for the Sam Fender events were available to buy via a range of ticketing outlets, including Ticketmaster, See Tickets and AXS. Although these ticketing outlets have a process to order accessible tickets online, this facility was not available for accessible tickets. People with any kind of access needs were required to contact the football club directly to purchase tickets. The stadium has specific wheelchair areas and can offer help with seat selection for people with mobility impairments. The box office staff know the stadium facilities well, so they can make sure suitable tickets are sold to the people who need them.
There was no additional access platform in the pitch standing area, so it was essential to know that your needs would be met.
For football and rugby events at the stadium, the stadium's capacity is 52,258. Within that capacity, there are 234 seats allocated as wheelchair spaces. There are wheelchair spaces in all four stands, both in elevated positions and pitchside. Not all of these spaces are usable for music gigs due to the placement of the stage.
In addition to the wheelchair spaces, there are 125 dedicated accessible seats, denoted by having very few steps and generally flat access and 85 amenity seats that offer additional leg room. Again, these are available in all areas of the stadium.
There is also a sensory room, designed to create a safe therapeutic space, to promote resilience and recovery. The sensory room is located next to an internal viewing area, assigned specifically to those using the sensory room.
When I rang to make a booking, the staff asked me about my access requirements and offered me what they felt was the best option for me. Although there were wheelchair bays in the Leazes stand, these are on a low level and might get some view obstruction from the pitch standing area. It was suggested I choose the Level 7 bays, all of which have unobstructed views, but they also recommended which bays would have the better and/or closer view of the stage.
In the end, I opted for Level 7 Block D. I made my card payment over the phone and received a confirmation email shortly after. I then received an email asking me to complete an access requirement form and to send them proof of my disability.
My eTickets were emailed to me a few days before the show. They could then be added to a mobile wallet on my phone to be scanned at the stadium.
I also received an email the day before the event with the stage times and necessary information, plus a link to an FAQ page on the Newcastle United website.
The Newcastle United website also has a full Access Statement which gives a very informative description of disabled facilities at St. James' Park.
LOCATION AND GETTING THERE
St. James’ Park towers high above the city. The city is on a hill, so depending on where you are heading from, be prepared that your route to the stadium is likely to be uphill!
On the edge of Newcastle’s bustling city centre and just a few minutes’ walk or roll from Newcastle Central station on the East Coast main line, it offers brilliant links to other areas of the UK.
The Tyne and Wear Metro service stops nearby at St James’ station. The Metro system connects Newcastle city centre, Newcastle International Airport, Sunderland, and the Tyneside coast. According to the Nexus website (the Metro operator), the whole of the Metro system is accessible. There is a very in-depth access guide on their website.
Many bus routes also stop in the area, and a National Express coach station is nearby.
There are some accessible Blue Badge parking spaces on the streets around the stadium, as well as a lot of general on-street parking. Parking with a blue badge in Newcastle City Council on-street parking bays is free and unlimited. However, please check the local signage and be aware of loading bays and taxi ranks, which have additional restrictions.
Parking charges are payable for disabled badge holders in both disabled and pay-and-display bays on council-run car parks..
Blue badge holders get a one-hour grace period beyond the expiry of the paid-for session, and it’s free after 7 p.m. For example, if you arrive at 5pm and pay for one hour of parking, 6-7pm is your grace period. It’s free after 7pm, so you can arrive early, grab something to eat, and only pay for one hour!
The pre-event email had a link offering to book off-site parking with The Big Parking Company, a 15-minute walk from the stadium in a primary school car park.
There are lots of hotels nearby covering a broad range of budgets and requirements.
GETTING IN
As we’d been to the stadium before, we knew which side we needed to be at and where to aim for.
The stadium has designated accessible entrances on all sides.
We headed from the city towards Gallowgate / Barrack Road, where we knew we had step-free access.
We needed to enter the stadium via Shearer Walk, which is a crowd corridor running underneath the grandstand but outside of the actual stadium. The corridor is covered and is the area where team coaches and VIP arrive at the stadium on a matchday.
At the end of Shearer Walk, where it joins Strawberry Place, just before the pathway starts to pass underneath the stadium grandstand, there was a large merch outlet. The outlet was surrounded by metal barriers covered in tarpaulins with no actual counter. I could see all of the items available for sale, and the card reader was held in the staff member’s hand to receive payment, so I had no issues using it.
As the pathway started to pass underneath the grandstand, several staff members were wearing bright blue jackets offering assistance to anyone who needed it. These are called 'Local Heroes' and offer help and support on matchdays. We were approached and asked if we knew where we were going. We said we needed a lift to Level 7 and showed them our tickets. They showed us to a door immediately to our left, which was marked as an accessible entrance and was labelled as Lift 1. Access to th elift was only available to access customers and proected by securoty staff.
Just inside the door, on the right-hand wall, was a digital scanner to scan both of our tickets. Security staff then checked our seat numbers and showed us to the lift. They told us which level we needed and we headed up.
The lift was relatively small. It took a while for us to get up, as many staff members were using the lift to move between levels and bring supplies to the hospitality suites.
Once we exited the lift, we were on the Level 7 concourse. It was then just a case of checking the numbers on each doorway to find our seats. The doors were all clearly marked, but there were no staff on the concourse to help.
There were no visible security checks, and despite rules on what couldn’t be taken into the venue, our bags weren’t checked.
FACILITIES
Once we were inside the stadium, the facilities were minimal.
The regular food and beverage outlets on the concourse that are used on matchdays were open, serving a range of hot and cold drinks, snacks and hot food.
The food choices were very limited to ‘stadium’ food - hot dogs, loaded fries, etc.
Soft drinks were served in plastic bottles, and hot drinks were in Newcastle United-branded paper cups with lids. Pint cups were again paper and Newcastle United branded with some clear plastic. 2-pint cups were plastic, and some of the alcoholic drinks, including lagers and ciders, were in plastic bottles. Free tap water was available at the food counters.
The regular outlets were at regular intervals along the concourse. Each one has metal railings to help form orderly queues at the counters. Some of the counters have a lowered section marked as an accessible counter with a yellow sign and a low-level card reader. In principle, this works well; however, the accessible counter still has the metal railings, which make it very difficult to get back out from the counter when it’s busy. There isn’t enough width to turn a large wheelchair around between the railings. You are also unable to wheel alongside the edge of the counter to reach over sideways, which will make it unusable for many people.
There were additional ‘pop-up’ bars serving pints, cocktails and spirits. Although the concourse is pretty wide, the presence of people queuing on both sides made it very difficult to get around once the stadium started to fill up. At one point, about 20 minutes before Sam Fender was due on stage, one of the lager bars just along the concourse from us had a 45-minute queue! Add to this the queues for the toilets, and the concourse was jam-packed.
Inside the stadium, we had no access to any merchandise.
Two BSL interpreters were working throughout the evening down at the front of the Milburn stand. We had a good view of them. They were very enthusiastic throughout!
Then there were the toilets. In principle - excellent!
There was an accessible toilet at each entry point to the seating areas on Level 7. From the concourse, you follow a passageway out onto the terracing and the accessible toilets are tucked away, just before you go outside.
Each door is marked to indicate whether it is a left or right transferring toilet. The doors require a radar key to gain entry.
The toilets are a good size, lots of room to manoeuvre and all the facilities you need. They also have baby changing facilities. They get a bonus point for having automatic hot water taps - these kinds of appliances usually have a disc to turn, but you just have to wave at these for hot water. They get a second bonus point for doors that lock from the inside. Quite often, radar keyed doors don’t lock properly from the outside, so you risk walking in on someone and usually need to take someone with you to maintain your dignity. These doors have an alternative handle mechanism on the inside, which works well.
Further along the Milburn stand from where we were seated, there was a Changing Places. Located near Lift 5, the unit is fully equipped and well maintained. There is an additional facility on the opposite side of the stadium, too.
When I first went to use the accessible toilet near our seats, when the stadium was still relatively quiet, one of the security staff near the entrance asked if I had a radar key. I told him I did, and he reiterated that you need the radar key to access the toilet and, if at any point I needed a key, just ask! Brilliant, I thought - staff aware of how precious these toilets are to disabled people.
Fast forward a couple of hours - the stadium is busy, the concourse is packed, the queues for the ladies’ toilets are huge, so a queue starts to form at each accessible toilet. The doors were being left open so that anyone could use them. Staff could see how the toilets were being used, but they did not relock the doors when empty. I know it happens, but when it had been specifically pointed out to me that I, in a wheelchair, would need a key to use the toilet, it seems ridiculous that staff then don’t adhere to it.
As the evening wore on, the toilets became more and more untidy and mistreated, and I found myself having to join long queues to use the toilet.
SEATING
When booking over the telephone, I opted for tickets on Level 7 in the wheelchair section LL7D in the Milburn Stand.
A couple of words of caution. If you don’t like heights, you’re better off choosing seating options down on Level 1. The Gallowgate stand is closed for music events, so your best option is Level 1 of the Leazes Stand. Down there, you only have six rows of seats in front of you, and you should have a clear view over the pitch standing area.
Also, on Level 7, you are exposed! There is a huge cantilever roof on the stand, so you’re protected from the rain. For this event, the sun was shining, and it was a lovely day at street level. Up on Level 7, there was a cold wind, and we were glad we’d taken jackets along with us. The views are amazing from up there, and watching the sky change as evening came was beautiful.
In the concourse, there is clear signage to direct you to the right entrance for your seating. Your ticket will display an access number to look for.
Each passageway out onto the terracing is decorated differently, so it’s easy to identify which doorway you need if you come back out from the concourse.
There are multiple wheelchair areas along the length of the grandstand, each one with four fixed fold-down plastic seats for companions and spaces for four wheelchairs between. In our case, the companion seat was tucked in the corner beneath the stairs to the upper seating blocks.
Although there is no seating directly behind you, the bays themselves are not very deep. For the majority of spaces, this isn’t likely to be an issue, but with me being so close to the steps, the back of my chair, wheels and bag were slightly over the steps, and I felt I was causing a slight obstruction, and I was wary of people tripping over or falling onto me.
There was a small label in each space to indicate the seat number.
The wheelchair areas have a metal railing along the front at a reasonable height, and you are six steps above the row of seats in front, so you can still clearly see over anyone standing, and there are no roof supports to obstruct your view. Even when flags were waved before Sam came onstage, we didn’t lose much view of the stage.
Our view was good throughout the show.
What spoiled the night for us was the lack of care from the so-called security staff and negligence in terms of maintaining safety.
When we first entered the wheelchair bay, the safety stewards didn’t offer to help us find our seats, check our tickets, or even acknowledge us, to be honest.
As the evening went on, more and more people kept gathering just inside the doorway and moving into the wheelchair areas for selfies with the stage behind them. Not a problem - it was a fabulous view from up there.
It also seemed like people didn’t know where they were supposed to be sitting. People were hovering around, looking for seat numbers, then seemingly giving up. In that scenario, at most venues, the staff will jump into action, ask if you need any help and guide you to your seats. If directly asked, the security staff were pointing people in the right direction but otherwise not bothered.
While there were no acts on stage, people hanging around weren’t an issue. But it got worse as the night went on.
As the access ticketing is done in-house by Newcastle United, the wheelchair areas are kept exclusively for wheelchair users. Often, accessible platforms are also used by ambulant disabled ticketholders and the neurodivergent, but in this case, there was no seat for you if you weren’t in a wheelchair. This meant the wheelchair bays weren’t full. With no one visibly occupying the spaces, these were seen as an open invitation just to hang around rather than find your seat. By the time Sam came on stage, it was chaos. People surrounded me. People were standing on the stairs behind us, people bumping into me, tripping over my chair, and spilling drinks.
Getting in and out to go to the toilet was awful. Trying to make my way through the crowd in an area that should have been kept clear when you’re below their eyeline isn’t always easy. By the time I made my way back, someone was standing in my space and wasn’t happy when I pointed out that it was, in fact, my ticketed space. He called me a few choice words that I won’t repeat, before staggering off to get in someone else’s way.
I spoke to the ‘security’ staff to ask why the area wasn’t being kept clear, and they replied that they had been told by their supervisor to, and I quote, “let people enjoy themselves” and “this doesn’t happen on matchdays”. I quite clearly wasn’t enjoying myself, but that didn’t seem to matter.
Partway into Sam’s set, I saw no other choice than to reposition myself in my chair, backwards into the space in front of the steps, where my companion should have been sitting. I felt I had some protection tucked in there, but I still felt uneasy with people standing above me.
It was a gig in Newcastle with a local lad performing - it was bound to get messy. The Geordies have a reputation for liking a drink and having a good time. What I didn’t expect was to be made to feel extremely vulnerable and to be verbally abused because of my disability.
I spoke to a senior security supervisor at the end of the show who said she would pass my feedback on to her bosses. She didn’t take any of my contact details, my ticket details, or anything. No apology either.
I believe it constitutes a breach of the Newcastle United safeguarding statement, which is published on their website. The events of that night certainly don’t reflect the ethics that the club portray towards their disabled spectators. Their Access Statement goes into depth on how they support customers' needs, yet when it’s a Sam Fender gig, it’s each to their own!
GETTING BACK OUT
The show finished with a bang with fireworks high above the stadium roof.
Getting out was then quite hectic, as I’m sure you can imagine. With a lot of intoxication, people were staggering all over, so I felt pretty vulnerable at times.
As I always recommend, we waited around for a little while for the seating behind us to empty. People were coming down the stairs and heading back to the concourse, as well as the rows in front of us heading upwards to the concourse. The passageway caused a bit of a bottleneck. Multiple staircases are leading back down to ground level, so the concourse was emptying quite quickly.
We headed back to the lift we’d come up in, Lift 1, and there was a very long queue. Unlike on the way up, there were no staff or security at the lift to police who were using it. As the lift also serves some of the hospitality suites, it was taking a while for the lift to arrive empty. We waited in the queue for a good few minutes with a few people with mobility aids or sunflower lanyards, but no other wheelchair users. A male member of staff then appeared at the lift and announced the lift was for priority use for those with mobility issues and asked that anyone who could do so, please head to the stairs. Amazingly, around ¾ of the queue dispersed!
It was only a few more minutes before we were all squeezed into the lift and heading back down to Shearer Walk.
Shearer Walk was manic - lots of people staggering around, heading in different directions, bumping into people. Again, since I was below their eyeline, people were walking into me.
Heading downhill was easy since I wasn’t having to push, but I had to hold myself back in case someone cut in front of me.
There were a couple of security staff dotted around, but no crowd control.
As you got towards the bottom of Shearer Walk, it was quite dark until you got back to the main road.
The main road hadn’t been closed, so there was still quite a bit of traffic at the main junction. We crossed the road as soon as we could to keep out of the crowds heading down to the Metro station.
The further you got from the stadium, the more the crowds thinned out as everyone headed in different directions, but all of the roads were very busy.
It didn’t take us too long to get back to our car and head home.
OVERALL EXPERIENCE
The gig itself was great - Sam Fender was outstanding and put on an excellent performance.
The stadium facilities are basic, but they served our needs while we were there. More food and merchandise provisions inside the stadium would have been beneficial.
Trying to get onto the concourse for food or drinks in a wheelchair was impossible from around an hour before Sam came on stage. Although there are accessible counters at the food outlets, getting there wasn’t doable in the crowds.
The staffing was poor, to say the least. No protection of the accessible toilets, no keeping wheelchair access clear, and no assistance getting in and out. I didn’t feel safe when people were crowding the wheelchair area, but the security staff weren’t adhering to the standards that are required on match days.
I emailed Newcastle United the morning after the event to let them know what had happened, and I was hoping that they would take the comments on board and implement changes for the two remaining gigs the coming weekend. Again, despite their access statement on their website and dedication to safeguarding, I feel I was fobbed off. I gave them every chance to give their side of the story, but their response when they phoned me just didn’t hit the spot.
