The Investigation of the State of Safety in Stadiums of Iran Professional Football League

Football stadiums are the main infrastructures of this popular sport in every society. It is essential to observe essential standards in these stadiums such as safety, enhancing the quality of competitions, attracting more spectators to the stadium and receiving the host permission for international football competitions and so on. The present study aimed at demonstrating the state of safety of Iran professional football league stadiums. The statistical population which equaled the sample included all 16 stadiums hosting Iran professional league competitions in 88-89 (the ninth league). A researcher-made checklist based on the Asian football confederation standards was used. The reliability of the checklist was determined by the examiners and Pearson correlation coefficient (r=0.93). Data were collected at stadiums and descriptive statistics (mean, graph and frequency distribution) were used to describe the data. The results demonstrated that stadiums were in a good condition with 67% safety and Fooladshahr stadium in Isfahan with 88% safety was considered to be the safest and Takhti stadium in Bandar Anzali with just 47% safety had the lowest safety. According to the results of the present study, it is suggested that more attention should be paid to the safety when establishing new stadiums or rebuilding the existing ones in order to ensure the safety of the stadiums for all users.