Safe in the stands?

After the sound of explosions reverberated through the Stade de France in Paris on Nov. 13, few noticed the exits blocked by police as the match continued. “We want to thank all those who saved 80,000 people,” French sports minister Patrick Kanner said.

The decision kept the chanting masses safely inside, mostly oblivious to the chaos in other parts of the city. As the ISIS threat leads the West to scrutinize security measures, a sports stadium remains one of a city’s safer places.

As Islamic terrorists killed 130 people around Paris, at least one of three suicide bombers around the stadium tried to enter the international soccer game between France and Germany. Security held. Subsequent threats canceled games in Germany and spiked armed security across the Western world, including in the United States.

Securing a stadium on a vast tarmac is different from securing, say, Chicago’s Wrigley Field, which occupies a city block and makes room for fans watching from nearby rooftops. But cities practice terror response at stadiums and elsewhere.

Even midsized cities like Raleigh, N.C., with a population of 430,000, have been drilling for terror post-9/11. “We were caught with our pants down on 9/11,” Raleigh master officer John Walls told me at the attacks’ 10th anniversary. Guidelines, along with intelligence, now come directly from the Department of Homeland Security.

Even in 2011, Raleigh police knew to expect multiple small strikes: “And we train all the time for that.” When intelligence suggested terrorists might try to take over an American school, Raleigh was drilling that too.

At stadiums, high-tech simulation software lets stadium officials time their evacuations and mitigate dangers even when people do not “remain calm.” Many venues show tutorials in the pregame: Godzilla gnaws on the Space Needle in the in-stadium video for Seattle’s CenturyLink Field.

If for nothing else, even in evacuation planning, time is money. Poor preparedness, whether for tornado or terror, means lost reputation and thus lost economic revenue. Law enforcement in Raleigh simulated a sarin gas attack on its 57,000-seat stadium nearly 10 years ago, long before Syria used the gas on its own civilians in 2013 and French forces began stockpiling antidotes against ISIS ambitions.

The Daily Mail reported at least two players for Paris’ top soccer club, Paris Saint-Germain, were hesitant to return to the city after the Nov. 13 attacks. “Playing for PSG is my job,” Brazilian defender David Luiz said, “but if it were up to me then I would not go back.” Still, a few minor injuries during the postgame evacuation were nothing compared to what could have been. The televised international match would have made a far flashier epicenter for terror.

Rugby rumble

Professional rugby is coming to the United States in April. The first league sanctioned by USA Rugby and World Rugby, the Professional Rugby Organization, will begin in six American cities. Canadian teams will join in 2017.

League CEO Doug Schoninger is marketing the sport as a true team game, capable of reviving what he says is a loss of role models. “We can reclaim those lost sporting values” of integrity, discipline, and respect, he said.

Each team may have no more than five players from outside North America, as the league wants to develop players for the national team. The sport returns to the Olympics next year for the first time since 1924. Both Canada and the United States lost every game they played in this year’s World Cup. —A.B.