Spectator injuries at sports grounds data

The SGSA annually collates and publishes a summary of reported injuries at football grounds in England and Wales.

Data is requested from all Premier League and Football League clubs plus Wembley and the Principality Stadium and includes all competitive league and cup games.

The SGSA has created a Standard Medical Incident Report Form (PDF) for clubs to use.

Spectator injury data reports

Comparable injury data for 2020/21 was not available due to the majority of fixtures that season taking place without spectators present. However, due to the safe return of spectators to live football in the 2021/22 season we have been able to revert to our pre-pandemic publication schedule.  The next report will be published in autumn 2023.

The reports for 2021-22, 2019-20 and 2018-19 have been revised due to a coding error made by our outsourced data analysis provider, NatCen. This was identified in June 2023 and resulted in the underreporting of spectator injuries for 2018/19, 2019/20 and 2021/22. The error has been rectified in the figures and supporting commentary included in each of the reports. report.

These corrections do not change our overall conclusions about trends and patterns of injuries.

Spectator Injury data report 2021-22 revised (PDF)

Spectator injury data report 2019-20 revised (PDF)

Spectator injury data report 2018-19 revised (PDF)

Improving spectator injury data

In 2019, Imperial College London concluded a project evaluating how to improve spectator injury data.  The research outlined five recommendations:

  1. The SGSA should develop strategic objectives detailing the reasoning behind the collection, usage and analysis of spectator injury data
  2. The SGSA should collect data detailing all medical incidents that occur at sports grounds, not only injuries
  3. Improvements should be made to the data collection form.
  4. Clubs should use the same form to collect medical incident data
  5. An online submission portal should be created.

Read the full Improving spectator injury data report (PDF) project report.

Spectator injury data strategic objectives

The SGSA annually collates and publishes a summary of reported injuries at football grounds in England and Wales. Currently this represents SGSA’s principal dataset.

Data is requested from all Premier League and Football League clubs plus Wembley and the Principality Stadium and includes all competitive league and cup games. The SGSA introduced a new approach to the collation and publication of such data from the 2016/17 season onwards. Such data collection has the following strategic objectives:

  1. Medical incident data helps inform decisions on the nature and scale of medical provision at football grounds subject to SGSA licensing, and on any changes to the physical infrastructure and/or crowd management at those grounds to ensure everyone can continue to watch live football safely.
  2. Data should be collected on all medical incidents occurring at football grounds subject to SGSA licensing, including but not limited to spectator injuries and injuries to members of staff
  3. High quality medical incident data, including on spectator injuries, is dependent on consistent and accurate data recording and reporting by individual clubs, and consistent and accurate data collation and analysis
  4. High quality medical incident data should be clear and transparent, to help inform decision making by all those, including supporters, with an interest in the operation of football grounds subject to SGSA licensing. SGSA will ensure that spectator injury data continues to be collated, with macro-level data at league level published annually on the SGSA website together with supporting commentary and analysis
  5. SGSA will use medical incident data collected at football grounds subject to SGSA licensing in the 2020-21 season, together with a range of other evidence, to help SGSA discharge its statutory responsibilities associated with (i) licensing Wembley, the Principality Stadium and PL/EFL grounds in England and Wales to admit spectators, and, (ii) the oversight of local authority safety at sports grounds and safety certification functions