All-seater Stadium - Worldwide

Worldwide

FIFA, UEFA, and CONCACAF also mandate that all matches in competitions that they control be held in all-seater stadia. This means that in countries where standing terraces are commonplace, either the stadia cannot be used at all, or the standing areas must be closed to spectators. Either temporary seats have to be installed (as is the case with Croke Park, home to the Republic of Ireland national team during the Lansdowne Road redevelopment), or the standing areas must be converted to seating (as is the case with several of the larger stadia in Germany, many of which were used in an all-seater configuration for the 2006 FIFA World Cup).

Many cricket stadia in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia are not all seaters, many areas of the ground provide grass banks offering cheaper entry, this means that spectators can sit on the grass and enjoy the sunshine. Classic examples of this include the Adelaide Oval, the WACA Ground in Perth and the Basin Reserve in Wellington.

North American stadia rarely have standing-room terraces; rather, many stadia have bleacher seating, which are tiered seating areas using flat benches and are usually uncovered. In most large facilities, bleachers are in a relatively small section far from the playing field, and are often referred to as the "cheap seats". (In baseball stadia, generally, the bleachers are often located along the outfield. One example of this is in San Diego, where the only ground-level bleachers are located beyond the right field corner, and others are on the top of a historic building in the left field corner.) Because standing-room terraces are so uncommon, the term "all-seater" is not generally used. When standing-room areas do exist, they are generally not sold separately from seats, but rather are provided for spectators who wish to view a portion of the game from a different angle (such as the bullpen area and centerfield terrace at Seattle's Safeco Field), or are admission-free (such as an area at San Francisco's AT&T Park, where the game is visible from a public waterfront walk, through a series of fenced archways which form a part of the outfield wall).