Meet The 2025 Award Judges
The Stadium Events & Hospitality Awards includes 15 categories for 2025, all of which are judged completely independently by industry experts with many years of experience. Here’s a little more on how the winners for each category are selected…
The Judging Panel:
The majority of categories are judged by an independent panel who each submit their first, second and third placed votes in six different categories – Chosen using strict criteria developed by the Stadium Experience Leadership Team. These votes convert to scores, with the highest scoring venues winning the top awards. This team judges the following six categories;
- Best Retail Catering Award
- Stadium Event of the Year Award
- Matchday Sales Team of the Year Award
- Non-Matchday Sales Team of the Year Award
- Operations Team of the Year Award
- Above & Beyond Recognition Award
The judging panel for 2025 includes six new faces. The team includes:
- Louisa Watson, 2025 Chair at Beam (NEW)
- Amy Manton, Commercial Manager at The Delegate Wranglers (NEW)
- Andrew Perolls, Chief Executive Officer at Greengage Solutions
- Sam McGrath, Director at Heard About Sam (NEW)
- Sandra Eyre, Director of Business Development at MIA (NEW)
- Craig Prentice, Founder at mum
- Simon Ramsbottom, Projects Manager at tobook (NEW)
- Shirley Wynne-Jones, Event Director at SWJ Events
- Sam Cowdrill, Stadium Account Manager at venuedirectory.com (NEW)
- Kerrin MacPhie, Board Advisor ICC Wales
Read more about the biographies of our judging panel.
Matchday Hospitality Judges:
The Matchday Hospitality Awards make up 4 different categories of the awards (Small, Medium, Large & Overall). These are judged separately by a team, led by Head Judge, Rod Bowker. As Head Judge, Rod creates an expert team of chef judges, each with over 20 years’ experience in the chef and hospitality industries, and part of chef industry associations such as The British Culinary Federation, Craft Guild of Chefs and more.
On the day the judge has a strict criteria report pack with them, which has been developed jointly by the Head Judge and the Stadium Experience Leadership Team. Each full report is then validated by the Head Judge and Stadium Experience to ensure consistency across the board. The full reports are made available to each venue after the awards event to aid the venues future learning and training.
The 2025 Matchday Hospitality Award judging team includes:
- Rod Bowker (Head Judge)
- Ian Barry (NEW)
- Lee Corke
- Graham Crump
- Omero Gallucci
- Paul Gilmore
- Mark James
- Ian Jaundoo
- Rob Kennedy
- Donald Leitch
- Chris Mann (NEW)
- David McKown
- Mark Sweeney
- Neil Thomson
- Adrian Vigus-Brown (NEW)
- Sue Woolcock
British Culinary Federation – New for 2025!
Stadium Experience has a new format for this award in 2025 (see announcement), by partnering with both the British Culinary Federation and Xcelerate Centre for the prestigious live-kitchen Chef Team of the Year Award. The British Culinary Federation (BCF) will fully co-ordinate the competition and judging process. The BCF is a National Member of World Chefs and the home of England’s National Culinary Team. BCF President Peter Griffiths MBE (and previously the Head Judge for the Matchday Hospitality Awards) will be the Chair of Judges for the competition. The judging team will represent a number of chef bodies including British Culinary Federation, Craft Guild of Chefs, Association of Pastry Chefs and more.
Up to 12 chef teams have 90 minutes to prepare, cook and present a four-course menu suitable for their Club Chairman to entertain Head of the FA, RFU or the Cricket ECB to a business luncheon. Judges will be marking on Presentation, Portion Size, Flavours, Textures, Temperature, Timing, Working Practices and Methods.
Sandown Effective Sales Solutions – New for 2025!
Sandown Effective Sales Solutions Ltd are specialists in mystery shopping, sales training and support, and will be the 2025 official judge for the Non-Matchday Mystery Shopper Award.
The category will be judged based on a mystery shopper corporate/business event sales enquiry call and follow up communications, which will be made during Spring 2025. The judging criteria has been developed to ensure those venues offering the top levels of service achieve the maximum scores and recognition. View the summary criteria and full criteria being used for this award judging.
Following the awards, venues will receive a full call recording, comprehensive report and the newly added benefit of recommendations and suggestions on how to improve for future.
Club Directors:
The Visiting Football & Visiting Rugby Directors Awards are voted for by club directors across the UK. They are specifically asked to consider the welcome, service and catering when casting their votes. These votes convert to scores, with the highest scoring venues winning the top awards.
Event Agents – New for 2025!
The Event Agents Choice Award is new for 2025, and is voted for by event agents to choose their top stadium venue they have recently enquired with (one vote per person/per event). They are asked to consider the whole booking journey including enquiry, event planning, and service received by the venue when casting their vote. The most votes win the top awards.
Key Awards Dates:
The majority of awards opened for entry in October 2024 (some even earlier), and will close on Monday 31st March 2025. The results will be announced at the prestigious awards evening on Thursday 3rd July 2025 hosted at The American Express Stadium, home of Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club. The event, sponsored by Global Payments Inc, will welcome over 400 guests from stadium venues across the UK. Guests will be hosted in the stunning Mayo Wynne Baxter Lounge, with guests sampling the club’s exclusive and 2024 award-winning ‘Tunnel Club’ menu, which will be produced by MasterChef: The Professionals winner, Steven Edwards. The celebrations will continue until 3am with an onsite after party at the venues newly built fan zone – The Terrace. Tickets for the event are now on sale, and start from just £120 each – Book Tickets.
Debbie Rigney, Marketing & PR Manager for Stadium Experience and awards organiser, commented: “This year’s awards will mark the 18th annual awards organised by Stadium Experience. All of our awards are judged completely independently by specialists in their field with many years of experience. We would like to wish a warm welcome to the new judges for 2025, and thank them for their support – Without which the awards couldn’t run. Their skills and expertise have been invaluable in developing the judging criteria each year and ultimately recognising the very best in stadium events and hospitality.”
Find out more about The Stadium Events & Hospitality Awards 2025.
Read more about how The Stadium Events & Hospitality Awards are judged.
See more about awards sponsorship opportunities for 2025.
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Thank you to our 2025 Awards Sponsors
