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. Around 400 guests from 40+ 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. The categories available in 2023 will include:
*NEW* Non-Matchday Mystery Shopper Award – Recognising the professional and efficient teams handling sales enquiries for non-matchday events at stadia. This is a mystery shopper corporate/business event sales enquiry call and follow up email correspondence. The judging criteria is created by the Stadium Experience Leadership Team, with judging completed independently by HGEM.
Outstanding Contribution Award – Recognising those individuals or teams who are simply outstanding at what they do, and continuously shine. This can be something as part of their regular duties, or perhaps focusing on supporting the local community or business recovery from challenging times. Judged by the independent judging panel.
Best Retail Catering Award – Recognising the best retail catering teams at stadia across the UK. This team will demonstrate commercial growth, high quality food offerings or proactive sustainability improvements. Judged by the independent judging panel.
Matchday Sales Team of the Year Award – Recognising the very best matchday sales team in stadium venues across the UK. Entries will demonstrate strategies for growth, brave new ideas, and overcoming challenges. Judged by the independent judging panel.
Non-Matchday Sales Team of the Year Award – Recognising the very best non-matchday sales team in stadium venues across the UK. Entries will demonstrate strategies for growth, new ideas for unique and different events, creative use of their spaces, and overcoming challenges. Judged by the independent judging panel.
Best Stadium Events Venue Award – Recognising the very best stadium events venue within the UK. Judges are specifically looking for a stadium venue which consistently displays exceptional venue facilities and outstanding guest experiences. Judged by the independent judging panel.
Operations Team of the Year Award– Recognising the often unseen behind-the-scenes teams that make stadium events run so smoothly, going above and beyond the call of duty to provide the very best service to customers. Judged by the independent judging panel.
Chef Team of the Year Award – This is a live kitchen competition held as part of the HRC Event in London, and judged by Salon Culinaire expert judges. Chef teams have one hour to prepare, cook and present a three-course menu suitable for their Club Chairman to entertain the Head of the FA or RFU to dinner.
Visiting Football Directors Award – Voted for by Directors at each football club. They are specifically asked to consider the welcome, service and catering when casting their votes.
Visiting Rugby Directors Award – Voted for by Directors at each rugby club. They are specifically asked to consider the welcome, service and catering when casting their votes.
Matchday Hospitality Awards (Small, Medium & Large) – Experienced chef and hospitality experts attend a venue to try out their matchday offering. Each element is carefully considered and scored against strict criteria. This category is split into small, medium and large categories based on the number of hospitality seats on a matchday.
Overall Matchday Hospitality Award – As above, but instead pitches all venues against all, regardless of size.
Each award category is independently judged (Stadium Experience does not judge any of the awards). Some categories are voted for by stadium directors, HGEM judge the Non-Matchday Mystery Shopper Award, Salon Culinaire judge the Chef Team Award, and others are decided by teams of experts with many years experience in their fields.
HGEM judges the Non-Matchday Mystery Shopper Award by providing a mystery guest programme to assess the quality of sales enquiry calls and follow up email correspondence. HGEM are experts in their field, working closely with hospitality companies to measure and improve their guests’ experience. Their core services include mystery guest audits, building highly customisable feedback sites, optimising online reputation through review management, and bringing all the data together into one, award-winning Guest Experience Management platform – The Hub.
Fresh Montgomery organises the Chef Team of the Year Award. This is a live kitchen competition judged by specialist Salon Culinaire chefs who focus on immaculate hygiene, teamwork, quality and freshness of produce used, practicality, cost and suitability, originality, and of course taste and flavours.
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 in advance. These votes convert to scores, with the highest scoring venues winning the top awards.
The judging panel for 2023 includes:
Read more about the biographies of our judging panel.
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.
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.
Rod Bowker (Head Judge) | Geoff Acott | Lee Corke |
Graham Crump | Paul Gilmore | Mark James |
Ian Jaundoo | Rob Kennedy | Donald Leitch |
David McKown | Dennis Mwakulua | Neil Thomson |
Sue Woolcock |
Find out more about The Stadium Events & Hospitality Awards, by emailing office@stadiumexperience.com.
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