When the Memphis Redbirds play at AutoZone Park, security knows what to expect. Baseball crowds in Memphis are predictable. Families come early. Beer sales taper off around the seventh inning. People trickle out before the final out. The whole thing is orderly and calm.
Soccer crowds are a different animal entirely.
Memphis 901 FC kicked off its inaugural USL Championship season in March 2019, and by midsummer the team was averaging over 6,600 fans per home match. That’s strong for a second-tier soccer league. It’s also a number that caught AutoZone Park’s security team off guard more than once during those first few months.
A Stadium Built for Baseball, Hosting Soccer
AutoZone Park seats about 10,000 for baseball. For 901 FC matches, the configuration changes. The dirt infield gets covered with sod. A pitch runs along the first baseline. Seating sections shift. Concourse traffic patterns change because fans cluster differently for soccer than they do for baseball.
All of that matters for security.
“The flow is completely different,” said one event operations manager who works AutoZone Park regularly. “Baseball fans spread out. They walk around. Soccer fans pack into specific sections and stay there. You get pockets of high density that you don’t see at Redbirds games.”
The Bluff City Mafia, the team’s main supporter group, camps out in a designated section and brings drums, flags, smoke devices, and serious energy. They’re loud. They’re passionate. And they require a different kind of security attention than a family of four eating hot dogs in the third-base seats.
Nobody’s saying the Bluff City Mafia is a problem. They’re not. They’re the heartbeat of the 901 FC atmosphere and the club knows it. The challenge is managing that intensity alongside casual fans who showed up because they saw something on Facebook and weren’t expecting the atmosphere to feel like a European match.
The Companies Handling the Work
AutoZone Park’s security operation for 901 FC matches involves multiple layers. The venue has its own in-house staff. Then there are contracted security companies. Then MPD provides officers for traffic and perimeter control.
Several firms handle contract security for events downtown. Allied Universal, the biggest name in the industry, provides personnel for numerous venues across Memphis. Securitas has a strong presence in the commercial corridor along Union and Poplar. Phelps Security, a Memphis-based operation, handles a chunk of local event work.
Shield of Steel, a veteran-owned company out on Lamar Avenue, is another name that shows up on event security rosters around town. They’ve been in business since 1998 and their pitch is pretty straightforward: armed officers, GPS-tracked patrols, and a staff pulled from law enforcement and military backgrounds. For a smaller firm they punch above their weight, though the limited roster means they can’t always staff a full major event solo. They tend to work well as part of a larger security package.
GardaWorld and Walden Security round out the usual roster of companies you’ll see working events in downtown Memphis.
The point is, no single company runs security at AutoZone Park on match days. It’s a layered operation. And when 901 FC started playing, those layers needed to figure out how to work together for a sport none of them had much local experience with.
What Soccer Crowds Do Differently
If you’ve only worked baseball or football events, soccer throws a few curveballs at you.
First, there’s the continuous play. Baseball has natural breaks between innings. Football has timeouts and quarter changes. Security staff can rotate, take bathroom breaks, and reposition during those pauses. Soccer runs 45 minutes straight, then halftime, then another 45. For the full duration of each half, the crowd’s energy stays constant. There’s no lull.
Second, alcohol consumption patterns are different. At Redbirds games, beer sales are steady through about six innings. At 901 FC matches, fans hit the concession stands hard before kickoff and at halftime. That creates two intense spikes instead of a gradual curve. The halftime rush is especially chaotic because everyone has roughly 15 minutes.
Third, there’s the away fan situation. USL Championship teams travel with supporters. When Nashville SC (before they moved to MLS) came to AutoZone Park in the summer of 2019, the visiting supporters brought their own crowd. Managing two passionate fan groups in a stadium that wasn’t designed with soccer supporter sections in mind takes planning.
“We had to set up buffer zones,” said a security supervisor who worked several 901 FC matches. “You need space between the home supporters and the away section. At a purpose-built soccer stadium that’s designed in from the start. Here we’re improvising with a baseball layout.”
Tailgating Culture and the Pregame Scene
901 FC’s pregame tailgate scene grew fast. By July, the area around AutoZone Park on match days looked more like a college football Saturday than a professional soccer event. Grills smoking. Music playing. Cornhole boards set up in parking lots.
The tailgate atmosphere is great for building a fan base. It’s a headache for security.
People drink more at tailgates than they do inside the stadium. They arrive earlier. And transitioning from a relaxed parking lot party to a structured stadium environment creates a bottleneck at the gates where tipsy fans meet bag-check protocols.
A few matches early in the season saw long gate lines because the security screening process couldn’t keep up with the rush of fans arriving 15 minutes before kickoff. Most soccer fans don’t show up an hour early like baseball families do. They tailgate until the last possible minute, then flood the gates.
The solution was adding more entry points and stationing additional screening staff specifically for the 30-minute window before kickoff. It helped. Lines got shorter. The process got smoother. By midsummer, gate management was noticeably improved over those rough early matches.
Incident Management on Match Days
The good news is that 901 FC’s first half-season produced no major security incidents at AutoZone Park. A few ejections for intoxication. One altercation between fans in the concourse after a rivalry match that security broke up in under a minute. Some confiscated items at the gate, mostly outside food and drinks.
By any measure, that’s a successful record for a brand-new sports franchise playing in a converted venue.
Credit goes to the security teams for adapting quickly. And credit goes to 901 FC’s front office for investing in the operation. The club brought in consultants with USL experience early in the planning process, and that groundwork paid off.
“They didn’t try to just run Redbirds security with a soccer schedule,” said one consultant familiar with the setup. “They recognized this was a different product with different needs.”
The Cost Question
Professional event security isn’t cheap. Licensed armed officers run $25 to $40 per hour depending on the company and the contract. Unarmed guards are less, usually $15 to $25. A full match-day security operation at AutoZone Park with 30 to 40 contracted personnel, plus in-house staff, plus MPD coordination, adds up fast.
For a first-year USL Championship team still building its revenue base, that’s a meaningful expense. The temptation is always to cut corners. Fewer officers at side gates. Shorter shift coverage. Cheaper vendors.
To 901 FC’s credit, they haven’t gone that route. The club seems to understand that a safe, well-managed stadium experience is part of building a loyal fan base. People won’t come back if they feel uncomfortable or unsafe, no matter how exciting the soccer is.
That said, the team will need to find ways to optimize costs as operations mature. Maybe that means negotiating longer-term contracts with one primary security provider. Maybe it means investing in technology, like camera systems and digital ticketing that reduce the need for manual screening. Maybe it means training volunteer ambassadors to handle crowd management tasks that don’t require a licensed guard.
Other USL markets have found those efficiencies. Memphis will too, given time.
What Other Venues Can Learn
The 901 FC experience at AutoZone Park is a case study in adapting security for new event types. The stadium didn’t change. The infrastructure didn’t change. The crowd changed. And that required a different approach.
Every venue in Memphis hosting events outside their normal programming should take notes. FedExForum has its concert security down cold, yet a different kind of event would require fresh thinking. The Orpheum handles theatrical crowds beautifully, and a comedy show with a younger demographic would need different protocols.
Security isn’t one-size-fits-all. The companies and personnel who staff these events know that in theory. Memphis 901 FC’s first season forced them to prove it in practice.
The team’s on track to finish its inaugural year with strong attendance numbers. AutoZone Park’s security operation is on track to finish without a major incident. Both of those things required effort, money, and a willingness to learn on the fly.
That’s a pretty good first season for everyone involved.