Accreditation System
The purpose of the accreditation system is to be able to identify persons who are authorised to have access to official venues and facilities at European Athletics events and is operated mainly through the issue of Accreditation cards, which are coded according to the permitted levels of access.
Accreditation cards must not be seen as a ticket that gives access to the competition venue but as a document to identify a person’s designated function, authority and/or status. Different forms of accreditation shall be used, such as the stickers for cameras and special signage for authorised vehicles.
The objectives of the accreditation process are:
- Ensure that correct accreditations are issued
- Provide appropriate access levels and privileges to venues and services for each individual
- Keep unauthorised individuals out of restricted areas
- Ensure that individuals with a designated function can reach their respective areas
- Comply with the standards of service determined by European Athletics
More details on accreditation key aspects to cover can be found in the European Athletics Accreditation Guidelines.
The next chart shows the main groups that have to be included in the accreditation plan:
It is self-evident that, the larger the event, the more persons will require accreditation and the greater the complexity of the system will be. Nevertheless, the same basic principles apply to all events.
European Athletics will provide the LOC with an Accreditation Masterplan which describes the various sub-categories, each of which is identified by its own specific colour. Some of the categories have pre-assigned privileges which are allocated by European Athletics and any change to these privileges has to be approved by European Athletics. Once the privileges have been agreed in the Masterplan it will be implemented in the European Athletics Event Management System.
The European Athletics Event Management System, as mentioned in this Chapter, provides online management of several areas of the organisation and Accreditation is one of the main ones. To feed the European Athletics Event Management System with the relevant information the LOC has to prepare, in close co-operation with European Athletics Event Department, an Accreditation plan. This plan has to be designed to deliver an effective system for controlling access to identified areas at all official venues. For more details on the accreditation plan please consult the European Athletics Accreditation Guidelines.
The responsibility for the creation and delivery of the plan should be assigned to a member of the LOC with experience in this field of work. Depending on the size of the event, several LOC staff members will be needed and it is highly recommended, especially at major events, to have, within the team, a dedicated person to manage each group (Media, VIPs, Teams, etc.).
The volume of accreditation requests can be considerable and the workload should be properly distributed to guarantee a good service to the final users.
The European Athletics Event Management System can manage all likely combinations of information and categories and is a very valuable tool to ease the work of all those involved and to ensure a smooth accreditation process.
Once the European Athletics Event Management System has been adapted to the particular event, European Athletics will give specific training on how the system works and which parts can be managed directly by the LOC accreditation department.
It is important for all persons needing accreditation to be informed about the system and procedures prior to their arrival at the event and these steps need to be specified in the accreditation plan.
The date for the completion of the accreditation plan is fixed in the Organiser Agreement or agreed with European Athletics’ Event Department.
Flows & accesses
As stated above, the aim of an accreditation is to enable groups of individuals to reach their authorised areas.
A plan needs to be created, it defines all the restricted areas and which accreditation categories are permitted to enter them.
The flows to and the locations of the restricted areas need to be carefully considered to ensure that, on the one hand, those authorised to enter them may do so as directly and easily as possible and, on the other hand, that unauthorised access is prevented. The security personnel at each position should be fully briefed about the access numbers at each checkpoint.
Once the circulation plan has been agreed with European Athletics it needs to be coordinated with the venue decoration & signage department (please refer to Venue Look & Signage Section).