The Stadium Events & Hospitality Awards is an annual celebration designed to continually drive-up standards and recognise the very best venues across the UK stadium industry. Over 400 guests from 60+ stadia join together to celebrate the achievements of their stadia colleagues in a glittering awards ceremony.
Here are a few more details about how the categories are selected each year, and how the categories are all independently judged.
Each year the categories featured at the awards are selected by the Stadium Experience Leadership Team using feedback from the member venues of Stadium Experience, along with considerations for any wider developments which may affect how a stadium operates.
Each award category is independently judged – Stadium Experience does not judge any of the awards.
To summarise;
The majority of categories are judged by an independent panel who submit their first, second and third placed votes in each category – 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. The panel judges the following categories;
The judging panel for 2025 includes:
The Matchday Hospitality Awards are judged separately, lead by Head Judge, Rod Bowker. As Head Judge, Rod creates an expert team of 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. The Head Judge allocates a judge from the team to attend a match once a fixture date is received (in the interests of fairness, the allocated judge cannot be decided or changed by the venue). Each judge visits an average of 2-3 stadium venues per year.
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 current list of judges are shown below, please click to read more about their culinary and hospitality experience.
Stadium Experience has refreshed this award for 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 and more.
Judges will be marking on Presentation, Portion Size, Flavours, Textures, Temperature, Timing, Working Practices and Methods. Judges commentary is available on request following the awards evening.
Sandown Effective Sales Solutions Ltd are specialists in mystery shopping, sales training and support, and will be the new 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.
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