When Chris Del Conte was hired as Texas’ AD in 2018, one of his first moves was to lower concessions prices at Darrell K Royal Texas Memorial Stadium by an average of 30% on the 10 most popular items.
Texas’ Fan First menu promptly ratcheted up order volume. After COVID waned and the stadium converted to digital ticketing and cashless transactions, Texas deployed its first grab-and go markets. There has been a steady stream of Mashgin units sprinkled throughout the 102-year-old stadium ever since.
Return on investment has routinely been realized by the following season, said Texas athletics CFO Rob Novak. At minimum, converted stands have produced 30% year-over-year revenue lifts, as well as increases in fans’ average check size per transaction (which hover, currently, around $20).
“This one is just straight ROI,” said Novak. “Whether we play Wyoming or Ole Miss, we’re going to have a sold-out football stadium. We’re going to keep innovating in this space. It’s just a no-brainer.”
Texas is adding 18 “power counters,” the name for Mashgin’s new lower-profile unit, ahead of the 2026 college football season. That’ll take Texas’ deployment to 111 units, nearly all of which are in the football stadium.
The power counter weighs about 40% of the traditional Mashgin kiosk and is 16 inches shorter, as Mashgin continues to dial in the unit’s form factor. The new format is the result of Mashgin’s natural product evolution, with a likely added nudge from competitors whose slimmer tech uses iPads or other tablets. Northwestern’s Ryan Field will have 62 power counters when it opens this fall, while the Bills’ Highmark Stadium will have 52.
Running cable has been the main hurdle to deploying Mashgin in Texas’ century-old stadium.
“We’ve had to think outside of the box to make them work,” said Jason Carstens, district controller for 1883 Provision Co., the Sodexo Live entity that runs the stadium’s F&B business.
The Mashgin markets have more than doubled revenue at the locations where they replaced traditional F&B stands. Some of them have registered year-over-year sales increases of up to 125%, while transaction times went the other way, dropping from 35 seconds to a 10-second median.
“I’ve done a couple of presentations for Sodexo when we’re bidding for new campuses, and those are usually the two pillars I stand on,” said Carstens.
The third deck on the stadium’s east side was a particular mess. There were only eight F&B locations serving more than 25,000 people. Long lines of waiting fans jutted into the concourse.
Thirty-eight Mashgin units were deployed as part of a $2.5-million project in 2024 that converted every traditional stand on that level into a market and added four more locations (for 12 total). Now, the Mashgin market queues, inherently shorter, snake along the walls of the concourse thanks to a smarter physical footprint.
“In addition to the revenue and guest experience,” said Mashgin VP/Sales Brandon Scott, “I’d have to imagine the fire marshal is much happier because there aren’t a hundred people standing in line.”
