Turnstile pace monitor for the matchday control room
Problem
Ahead of kickoff, the control room's picture of how fast supporters are actually getting in comes from radio calls: a steward reports a queue building at one gate, and the control room supervisor has to judge, from a description, whether that is normal congestion or a gate falling behind. Turnstile counts exist inside the access control system but are read gate by gate, on request, not watched continuously. A slow gate is usually noticed only once the queue has backed up onto the concourse or a supporter has already missed kickoff, at which point the safety certificate conditions on crowd density are already close to being tested. Nothing keeps a running comparison between where entries should be by a given time and where they actually are.
Product idea
A dashboard that takes turnstile counts per gate and plots cumulative entries against a target curve built from expected attendance and kickoff time. Each gate shows on pace, behind pace or ahead, updated as counts come in. One rule drives the escalation: when a gate falls a set margin behind its target curve with a fixed number of minutes left to kickoff, the tool sends a named alert, to the duty manager first, to the control room supervisor if unacknowledged, rather than a general channel nobody owns. It does not redirect supporters or open extra lanes itself; that decision and the radio call stay with the people in the room. It only surfaces which gate needs the decision made, earlier than a walked concourse would.
Who it is for
Control room supervisors and duty managers watching ingress on matchday, and the matchday operations manager who currently has to ask each gate individually whether it is coping.
Possible first version
A live dashboard showing cumulative entries per gate against a manually configured target curve, built from expected attendance and kickoff time. Counts are entered periodically by gate stewards or pulled from a CSV export of the access control system rather than a live feed. One alert rule: a gate behind its target by a set margin triggers a message to a named duty manager, escalating to the control room supervisor if unacknowledged within a fixed window. Out of scope for version one: direct integration with turnstile hardware, automatic lane reassignment, and support for more than one venue configuration at a time.
- Build classification
- Workflow application
- Rough effort
- 3-5 week first release
- Roles involved
- Control room supervisor, Duty manager, Matchday operations manager
- Relevant to
- Professional club, Venue & stadium operator, League office, Collegiate athletics
- Systems in play
- Access control and turnstile systems, Radio and communications systems, Spreadsheets
- Product framing
- Monitor
Questions we get asked
What do we need in place before this works on our first matchday?
Three things: an expected attendance figure to build the target curve against, a capacity or expected share per gate so the curve is split sensibly, and a way to get counts into the tool during the event, either a steward reading a number off the turnstile display every few minutes or a periodic CSV export from the access control system. None of that requires a live feed. Without at least the target curve and one working count method, the dashboard has nothing to compare against and is not worth switching on.
Does this replace the access control system we already run turnstiles on?
No. The access control system stays the system of record for who is in the ground and controls the physical gates. This only reads counts out of it, or takes them by hand, and turns them into a pace comparison the control room can act on. If the access control platform already has a dashboard, this is not competing with it. It exists because that dashboard shows current totals, not whether a gate is on pace for kickoff.
Our stewards already call in when a queue is building. What does a screen add?
A radio call happens after someone notices, which usually means after a queue is already visible. The dashboard compares counts against a target curve continuously, so a gate quietly falling behind, before it has produced a visible queue, shows up before anyone would think to call it in. It does not replace the radio call. The alert is an instruction to make one, sent to a named person rather than left for whoever happens to be listening on the right channel.
What does the screen show if the counts stop updating mid-event?
It marks that gate's data as stale rather than freezing the last number without saying so, because a flat line that looks calm is worse than an honest gap. Where counts are entered by hand, a missed update is common and should be expected, and the tool needs to make that visible rather than let the control room mistake silence for a gate that is coping. This is worth testing deliberately before the first live matchday, not discovering during one.
Is this your workflow?
Tell us one sports workflow that still runs on paper, spreadsheets, WhatsApp or an outdated system. We will map it and show you what a simpler product looks like.
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