Liverpool Football Club (LFC) celebrated this season’s successes by parading through the streets of Liverpool on May 29, accompanied by Calvin Harris playing a live DJ set, on the top of an open-top bus. Culture Liverpool delivered the celebratory parade and contracted Symphotech to manage parade safety.

The Liverpool team travelled from Paris, having lost in the UEFA Champions League Final, and took to the traditional red open-topped busses, where 500,000 fans greeted them along a 15km route through the city streets.

Planning for the parade began in March, as LFC progressed through the Premier League and various Cup competitions. It was confirmed that the parade would go ahead regardless of whether the Champions League was won, because of LFC’s Carabao Cup and FA Cup wins.

Sue Lees, city events manager at Culture Liverpool, said: “The club was confident that the team could win more silverware after the Carabao Cup victory, so we began conversations early. This also included planning for a bus for the Ladies Team who won their Championship – a first for the city.

“We had learned from 2019’s parade. Liverpool FC wanted the parade to have more colour along the whole route. Here, the team from Titanium helped us animate the entire route with pyro and flutter-fetti.

“It made sense to reassemble as much of the events team that had delivered the 2019 Champions League Winner Parade. Eddy Grant and the Symphotech event safety team were an obvious first call, to support Culture Liverpool’s delivery of another tremendous, safe parade.”

Eddy Grant, the parade’s principal safety advisor, liaised with Culture Liverpool Merseyside Police and other multi-agency stakeholders to plan the spectacular season finale. He explained: “It’s a great honour to be part of the team helping Liverpool FC bring so much joy to so many people, particularly given the dark times of late. It was a great call by Culture Liverpool to draw on the same event professionals who contributed their specialist skills to the last parade.

“This has been far from dusting off the old event folder though and there was no room for complacency when approaching an event with such a dynamic audience presence. The planning began in March but with the FA Cup win, it was certain there would be a parade, which gave us certainty in the planning period for this very complex event. We conducted extensive contingency planning which was tested and a thorough tabletop exercise with all stakeholders in May.”

Applying modern crowd management science, using rolling road closures to manage crowd flow and crowd management skills was essential. FGH Security and Arena worked with Culture Liverpool and Symphotech and supplied security and control barriers respectively.

Arena installed 3,000 Met barriers, 500 pedestrian barriers and 200 heras fencing panels across the site to secure the bus route and enable multiple road closures.

The production and logistical coordination with Jon Sims and his team from Event Design underpinned the whole delivery, with the colour of the Titanium Pyro being the icing on the cake.

Image: Jason Roberts