Memphis transforms during Christmas. Graceland wraps itself in lights. Churches fill up for candlelight services. The AutoZone Liberty Bowl brings tens of thousands of college football fans to Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium on New Year’s Eve. And behind every one of these events, somebody has to figure out how to keep people safe.
Event security in Memphis has always been complicated. The city hosts major gatherings at venues scattered across a wide geographic footprint, from the FedExForum downtown to suburban megachurches in Cordova and Collierville. Each venue brings its own layout challenges, crowd dynamics, and threat considerations. The holiday season amplifies all of it.
The AutoZone Liberty Bowl: 60,000 Fans on New Year’s Eve
This year’s Liberty Bowl matchup pits Navy against Kansas State on December 31. The game is expected to draw around 55,000 to 60,000 fans to Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in Midtown Memphis, and the economic impact could exceed $25 million according to bowl organizers.
Security for the Liberty Bowl involves coordination between multiple agencies. The Memphis Police Department provides the primary law enforcement presence, with officers positioned at entry gates, parking areas, and along the surrounding streets. The University of Memphis police assist with traffic control, since the stadium sits on their campus. Private security contractors handle interior positions like concourse patrols and VIP area access.
Bag policies have tightened across college football in recent years, and the Liberty Bowl follows the NCAA clear bag policy. Fans can bring one clear bag no larger than 12” x 6” x 12” and one small clutch purse. Metal detectors at every entry point have been standard since 2017.
What most fans don’t see is the planning that happens months in advance. Bowl security coordinators conduct site surveys, review threat intelligence briefings from the Department of Homeland Security, and run tabletop exercises with first responders. The Memphis Fire Department stations EMS units at predetermined locations inside and outside the stadium. Shelby County Emergency Management maintains a command post that monitors weather conditions and crowd flow in real time.
For the security industry, bowl games represent high-profile contract opportunities. Local firms compete for sub-contracts to provide the unarmed personnel who check bags, scan tickets, and monitor parking lots. The pay isn’t spectacular (usually $12 to $15 per hour for event shifts), yet the exposure is valuable for companies trying to build their reputation in the Memphis market.
Graceland: Elvis, Christmas, and Crowd Control
Graceland draws roughly 600,000 visitors annually, making it the second most-visited private home in America after the White House. During the Christmas season, those numbers concentrate into a few dense weeks as tourists arrive to see the mansion decorated the way Elvis Presley loved it: blue lights lining the driveway, a nativity scene on the front lawn, a Christmas tree in every room.
This year’s Holiday Concert Weekend on December 13-14 featured the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and dancers from the New Ballet Ensemble performing Elvis Christmas music in the Graceland Soundstage. Events like these draw capacity crowds into indoor spaces that require careful planning for ingress, egress, and emergency evacuation.
Graceland operates its own internal security team supplemented by contracted guards and off-duty Shelby County deputies. The property sits on Elvis Presley Boulevard in Whitehaven, an area with its own security challenges. Visitors walking between the mansion and the entertainment complex across the street need safe pedestrian crossings, and the parking areas require continuous patrol.
One security professional I spoke with, who has worked Graceland events in the past, described the challenge as “tourist-dense crowd management.” Visitors come from all over the world. Many aren’t familiar with the area. Some are elderly or have mobility limitations. The security team has to manage crowd flow through narrow corridors and gift shops while maintaining a welcoming atmosphere that doesn’t feel like an airport checkpoint.
Graceland has invested in camera systems and updated its access control technology over the past few years. The Guest House at Graceland hotel, which opened in 2016, brought additional security considerations with 450 rooms worth of guests requiring 24-hour coverage.
Church Security: A Growing Priority
The conversation around church security in Memphis changed after the December 2019 shooting at West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, where a gunman opened fire during a Sunday service. An armed volunteer security team member stopped the attacker within six seconds, likely preventing far more casualties.
That incident, which happened just days ago, sent ripples through Memphis’s faith community. Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, one of the largest Southern Baptist congregations in the country with weekly attendance exceeding 7,000, has maintained a trained security team for years. Their model includes both armed and unarmed volunteers, many with law enforcement or military backgrounds, stationed at entrances and positioned throughout the worship center.
Smaller Memphis congregations face a harder calculation. Hiring professional security costs money that many churches don’t have. A single armed guard for a three-hour Sunday service runs about $100 to $150 through most Memphis security contractors. For a church with a weekly budget measured in hundreds of dollars, that’s a meaningful expense.
Some churches have taken a middle path. Christ Community Church in Midtown organized a volunteer security team in 2019, sending members through a training course offered by a local security consultant. The training covered situational awareness, de-escalation, emergency communication, and basic first aid. Armed response was not part of their program, a decision the church’s leadership made deliberately.
“We wanted our greeters to be more aware, not more armed,” the church’s administrative pastor told me. “The goal was to create a culture where people pay attention to their surroundings without turning our lobby into a fortress.”
Other Memphis churches have gone the opposite direction. Several congregations in the Germantown and Collierville areas now employ off-duty police officers during services, particularly for high-attendance events like Christmas Eve and Easter. The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office has made deputies available for church security details at standard overtime rates.
The Tennessee legislature passed a law in 2019 allowing concealed carry permit holders to carry firearms in houses of worship, unless the church posts a specific prohibition. That legislation sparked intense debate within Memphis congregations about whether to allow, encourage, or ban firearms on their property. As of December, churches across the metro area have landed on different sides of that question, and the conversation is far from settled.
Holiday Event Planning: What Security Professionals Consider
For anyone organizing a holiday event in Memphis, whether it’s a corporate party at the Peabody Hotel, a community celebration at Overton Park, or a neighborhood block party in Cooper-Young, security planning follows a general framework.
Crowd size and venue capacity. The most common mistake event planners make is underestimating attendance. A free community event that expects 200 people might draw 500 if the weather cooperates and someone’s Facebook post goes viral. Security staffing should account for the realistic maximum, not the optimistic minimum.
Entry and exit points. Every venue needs clearly defined ways in and ways out. During an emergency, people don’t leave the way they came in. They move toward the nearest visible exit, and those exits need to be staffed, unlocked, and free of obstructions.
Alcohol. Holiday events often involve drinking, and drinking increases the likelihood of confrontations, medical emergencies, and liability issues. Events serving alcohol should have security personnel specifically trained in recognizing intoxication and managing removal of disruptive guests.
Parking lot coverage. Vehicle break-ins at Memphis events are common enough that event organizers should consider posting guards in parking areas. The Wolfchase Galleria learned this lesson years ago and now contracts with security firms to patrol their lots during peak shopping periods. Smaller venues would be smart to follow that example.
Communication. Security teams need radios. Cell phones aren’t reliable in large crowd environments where towers get overloaded. A basic two-way radio system costs a few hundred dollars and can be the difference between coordinated response and chaos.
The Business of Event Security
Event security is one of the fastest-growing segments of the Memphis security market. Between the FedExForum hosting Memphis Grizzlies games and concerts, the Orpheum Theatre’s holiday shows, Graceland’s year-round programming, and the Liberty Bowl, there’s consistent demand for qualified event security personnel.
The challenge for security companies is staffing. Event work is irregular and often falls on weekends and holidays, which makes it hard to attract and retain quality guards. Companies that handle event security well tend to maintain a roster of part-time and per-diem officers who pick up shifts as they become available.
For event organizers hiring security, the advice is the same whether you’re running a 50-person corporate dinner or a 50,000-person bowl game: start planning early, communicate your expectations clearly, verify licensing and insurance, and walk the venue with your security provider before the event. Most security failures at events trace back to poor communication between the organizer and the security team, not to the guards themselves.
Memphis’s Christmas season creates both risk and opportunity for the security industry. The events are bigger, the crowds are denser, and the stakes are higher. Companies that can staff these events reliably and professionally are the ones building the reputation that carries them through the rest of the year.
Marcus Johnson reports on security industry trends in Memphis. Reach him at [email protected].