Managing an army of temporary workers to staff a Taylor Swift concert, a Uefa Champions League final, an Oasis reunion gig, or the Wimbledon tennis tournament can be a logistical nightmare.
Several thousand people – working in everything from catering, security, ticketing and merchandise to cleaning – all need to be in the right place at the right time. They will have been recruited by dozens of different staffing agencies. Miscommunications happen all the time while up to 15 per cent of staff can fail to show.
Ubeya, an Israeli startup, has developed a pioneering AI-powered software platform that tracks and manages everything – from recruitment to deployment to payroll.
It takes away the hassle for the venues, and for the thousands of workers, who can apply for shifts with a single click.
“Managing 4,000 workers, even if they’re in one office, is complicated,” says chief executive Omri Dekalo. “But on a matchday you don’t know them, they don’t owe you anything. It can be chaos.”
Ubeya’s workforce-management system handled Oasis’s 2025 reunion shows at Wembley, and Swift’s unprecedented eight dates at the stadium in 2024 plus the Uefa Champions League Final between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund the same summer.
Dekalo says prior to Ubeya there’d be queues of workers arriving at venues and it would take several minutes to check each one against a spreadsheet to sign them in. With Ubeya, most of that process happens in advance via an app, with workers clocking in with a simple tap or QR code.
The company has bundled together new technologies to give operators a unified, real-time view of everything that’s happening, while allowing casual staff to communicate through the dedicated app.
Workers, already recruited by agencies, receive job opportunities on their smartphones and can apply for shifts – from bartending to cleaning – with a single tap.
The venue still makes the final hiring decision, but Ubeya streamlines communication and improves the workers’ experience. Engagement and reliability increase as a result.
Workers can choose where they want to work, rate their employers, and track their earnings within a transparent and flexible system.
Ubeya, founded in 2017 in Tel Aviv, quickly gained traction in the UK, where large venues rely heavily on outsourced staff. “Ubeya became the standard for managing large events in the UK within just a few months,” says Dekalo. Today, the company supports thousands of organisations globally and has expanded beyond Europe into the US and other markets.
Its platform is used across major UK venues, including Wembley Stadium, Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Silverstone circuit, as well as by global workforce operators.
“We understood there was no real solution for people working in the field who lacked a way to communicate with their peers,” says Dekalo, who co-founded the company with Yuval Weinbaum, formerly of Google. “Think of it as Slack for deskless workers.”
The company initially worked with catering firms and staffing agencies in New York before shifting its focus to large-scale events. “I told Yuval we need to focus on companies with the biggest pain – those managing large temporary workforces,” he says.
Ubeya doubled down on this niche during the Covid lockdowns, when events shut down.
“Many companies left the space, but we invested in it and built a solution specifically for large-scale event operations,” says Dekalo. “There is no other company that allows you to manage staff from multiple vendors in one place.”
Previously, venues such as Wembley relied on constantly updated spreadsheets from multiple suppliers. “Now everything is managed in one real-time system,” he says.
Ubeya now employs more than 50 people and has raised more than £12 million to date while deepening partnerships with major workforce operators such as Compass Group and Delaware North.
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