Community Day
17 March 2007

The doors at Wembley Stadium were opened for the first time on Saturday 17 March, 2007 for a special Community Day for local Brent residents.

Wembley Stadium attracted approximately 34,000 residents from the local Brent area who had an exclusive look inside the new venue. Ticket holders helped organisers test the state of the art facilities including turnstiles, escalators and toilets.

One of the main attractions on the day was a celebrity football tournament featuring the likes of Chris Evans, Jamie Theakston, John Barnes, Brian McFadden and Tim Lovejoy. Mark Bright scored the first goal at the new stadium and the eventual winners of the mini tournament were the Soccer AM Team.

Alex Horne, Wembley Stadium’s Managing Director said: “The Community Day on Saturday was our first step towards obtaining our General Safety Certificate.  Overall, it was a magnificent effort by the Wembley staff who had less than a week to prepare the stadium to stage the day.  We were very pleased with the event and are now learning from the inevitable teething problems that we experienced on the day. We are all looking forward to welcoming the English and Italian teams and 60,000 football fans to enjoy the new Wembley stadium."