The Exemplification of ‘Fan Zones’: Mediating Mechanisms in the Reproduction of Best Practices for Security and Branding at Euro 2008

The paper starts with an assessment of the internal spatial organisation of the eight host cities of the European Football Championships 2008 into a complex patchwork of tightly enclosed and monitored fan zones (also called ‘public viewing events’). Fan zones, such is the paper’s basic assumption, constitute a previously tested and exemplified solution to the problem of how to deal with security and branding in the event city. The paper examines the mediating mechanisms through which the ‘fan zones exemplar’ was transferred from the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany to Euro 2008 in Austria/Switzerland. Based on rich empirical insights, the exemplar is studied in its various forms and stages: as a written bid requirement for Euro 2008, as a lesson drawn from exchanges and collaboration at earlier mega events and as the object of a wide range of conferences, exercises and external assessments. On this basis, the paper also brings to the fore a number of more fundamental insights into the public–private coalitions of authority and into the patterns of learning and lesson-drawing in contemporary security governance.