Might the fan experience have gotten to its current point without COVID-19? Potentially. But the immediate need for no contact and more space begat some of the trademark components of the frictionless fan experience of today.
“What it did is it gave the industry a chance to pause and reset and say, ‘If we could do this, and we didn’t have all the pressure of turning buildings every 10 days, what would it look like?’” said Brandon Scott, vice president of sales for self-service kiosk provider Mashgin.
For entry, Wicket started as a creative idea that has now become a growing fixture in sports and beyond. The facial authentication provider first broke through with the Cleveland Browns, as the franchise looked for a safe way to get scaled-downed crowds back in. Wicket technology now extends through ticketing, purchasing and credentialing.
“The reality was it was solving a problem that was pandemic induced,” said Jeff Boehm, Wicket’s COO, “but the benefit stretched way beyond solving a pandemic problem because fans genuinely loved it.”
The QR code had its glow-up during the pandemic, becoming a go-to route of communication for the medical and restaurant industries. In sports, Digital Seat Media helped some venues open with QR codes at every seat to put essentials within easy reach of fans.
“We really worked a lot with the teams and said, ‘How can we make this, even though it’s a limited experience for the fans on game day?’” said Cameron Fowler, CEO of the company, which has outfitted more than 1.2 million seats at this point.
Cashless and touchless solutions were a necessity, bringing forward the components of grab-and-go experiences that populate sports venues nationwide. Mashgin was primarily focused on cafeteria settings before the pandemic brought convenience store success with Circle K. Mashgin arrived in sports in 2022 and is now in approximiately 150 venues.
Amazon Just Walk Out got one day of practice with its autonomous store in a sports venue before the world shut down: a deployment at the United Center with concessionaire Levy Restaurants. The necessity for service with fewer workers helped the industry lean into a shopping format it was already curious about.
“Grab-and-go had just gotten to sports and really made an impact,” said Ben Miller, head of sports and entertainment for Just Walk Out. “But the question was, how scalable of an idea was it?” The answer? Very scalable at this point, with Amazon Just Walk Out, Zippin and AiFi continuing to proliferate the spaces that fans shop. Amazon Just Walk Out, for example, has more than 70 stores worldwide in sports and entertainment venues.
Sandeep Satish sees a straight line from the innovation of the pandemic to the Intuit Dome. Levy’s chief commercial officer pointed out that in 2019, the company had rolled out cashless offerings at Tropicana Field and Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which laid out precursors for mobile-ordering and self-service kiosks. “There was an appetite to innovate around food and beverage and retail technology using the existing technology, which at that time was still pretty new,” Satish said.
