Cleveland’s NFL stadium is one of a growing number of venues using optional facial recognition technology to reduce time spent in lines.Kirk Irwin/The Associated Press
A live sporting event typically requires showing tickets and identification, making purchases, and dealing with security checks. Some sports fans are now going from the parking lot to their seats more seamlessly – getting alcohol and snacks along the way.
New technologies are inviting sports fans in North America and around the world to replace their tickets, IDs and credit cards with their faces.
“At its core, it is facial recognition technology connected to some other system,” explains Jeff Boehm, the chief operating officer of Wicket Software, based in Cambridge, Mass. “We connect you to your Ticketmaster account, or your credentialing system, or your payment method, or the security system that says you’re allowed to get into this building, and it just makes that interaction so much easier than traditional methods.”
Fans can get into stadiums four times faster and they can buy concessions – even ones that require identification – twice as quickly, Wicket says.
After signing up and uploading a picture of their face, fans can have their tickets, age, or other credentials instantly verified by on-site cameras, typically via an iPad.
Similar technologies have been used in the past, most notably with Amazon’s unsuccessful cashier-less retail concept Amazon Go, but they may have found more appropriate homes at arenas. Unlike typical retail environments, major sports venues need to get large crowds through the door and into their seats quickly, while concession and merchandise sales are often limited to breaks in the action.
“I don’t wait in 20-minute lines to check out at my grocery store,” Boehm explains. “If there’s 20 minutes between periods at the hockey game, and I want to get food before I go back, I don’t want to stand in line, so there’s a compelling need that this technology addresses.”
Boehm says Wicket was founded during the germophobic period of the early pandemic days, when the Cleveland Browns of the NFL was looking to get fans back into the stadium while adhering to strict safety measures.
“The idea was that somebody could take a selfie at home, and log into their Ticketmaster account, and then that selfie was associated with whatever tickets were on that Ticketmaster account,” Boehm explains. “Then when they showed up at the stadium they could walk up and simply look at an iPad, and even with their COVID masks on there was still enough face visible that the tickets would just appear on the iPad.”
Since that time Wicket has partnered with more than 40 major professional sports teams in the United States and installed its facial recognition software at about 150 venues, and at more than 1,000 events worldwide.
“We have worked with a Canadian NHL hockey team that I’m not allowed to name,” Beohm says. “We’ve done a few conferences in Canada as well, where people use us to make it easier to get into conferences and check-in to sessions.”
Boehm adds that the company converts selfies into complex strings of codes and therefore does not own or store any images or user identifications, and fans are free to voluntarily opt-in or out of the program at any time.
“You don’t have to use this, but we see hundreds of people at every single Browns game sign up on-site using the QR codes,” he says, adding that many do so to avoid lining up at the entrance.
While few Canadian venues currently accept a facial scan in lieu of tickets, many of them have made the switch to paperless ticketing and cashless transactions. As adoption increases, more innovation is likely coming.
“Sports fans don’t want to buy tickets to a game so they can spend half the time in line for snacks, drinks or merchandise,” says Cindie Ballos, head of account management at point-of-sale technology provider Square Canada, whose clients include the operators of McMahon Stadium and Scotiabank Saddledome, both in Calgary. “Moving to cashless payments significantly speeds up transaction times, meaning ticketholders spend less time in line, and more time enjoying the event they’re there to experience.”
Upgrading to a cashless point-of-sale system can provide significant returns for sports venues, as faster transactions mean more revenue during those limited breaks in the action. That clear use-case has made many sports stadiums some of the earliest adopters of new payment technologies in recent years, such as using facial recognition to quickly buy snacks and drinks.
“Expect advancements in contactless payments and enhanced loyalty rewards tied to digital wallets,” Ballos says. “Venues are also exploring AI-powered, checkout-free stores and frictionless payments to minimize wait times, ensuring fans can focus on the game rather than the transaction.”
Ballos adds that the shift toward cashless and contactless was already under way before the pandemic, but the need for social distancing, digitization and contactless transactions drastically accelerated its adoption.
“I truly believe that more sports venues will choose to go cashless going forward. We predict that within a couple of years cash will no longer be accepted at most major sporting events.”