Earlier today, I emceed a local luncheon for my alma mater (Appalachian State), leading a conversation with the baseball and softball coaches ahead of their season openers. I was nervous, but it went incredibly well.
SBJ conference stage, here I come!
A firsthand look at facial recognition venue tech at Mercedes-Benz Stadium
Karl Pierburg watched Falcons fans march through Gate 1 of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, standing a few feet away from a handful of the venue’s Delta Fly-Through Lanes. The entry points, an integration with facial authentication company Wicket, usher fans into MBS with a quick look at a tablet.
Pierburg, SVP and CTO of Falcons’ parent company AMBSE, alternated between intrigued observer and friendly greeter on that Dec. 10 morning. This year featured the largest expansion yet of the Delta Fly-Through Lanes, which started with a pilot in 2022. By the end of the recent NFL regular season, 12 lanes stood outside of four MBS gates. AMBSE says that nearly 6,000 of its 16,000-plus season ticket member accounts (an account can represent up to 13 individual tickets) are registered for the lanes.
While he talked me through the process, Pierburg perked up to a potential issue -- a guest approached as the rep for a group of 11. Pierburg felt more comfortable with eight tickets or less in one interaction, so he watched this exchange intently. When the system digested the request and gave the go-ahead green screen, he let out a loud “Wow!” The sequence was a reminder that tech is so much about learning from successes and failures -- and being surprised by results.
“We try to do things quick, fast, learn, learn, learn, learn,” Pierburg said when asked about a strategy if it hadn’t worked. “And sometimes that means you have little hiccups or little whatevers. I’m never going to be upset about that.”
Feeling the 'auto-burn'
Rob Seaner, the CTO at Wicket, said that group ticketing was one of the earliest hurdles the company faced as it turned toward sports venues in 2020. When Wicket attended its debut game as a facial-authentication partner with the Browns, the system was initially set up to process -- or auto-burn -- every ticket associated with a user’s ticketing account. They quickly learned that most fans have multiple tickets associated with their accounts, sometimes sending them to friends because they can’t enter the stadium at the same time.
That process became the foundation for the Wicket experience. If an account only has one ticket linked with it, Wicket can auto-burn that single entry and make a fan's entry take only a matter of milliseconds, while a person with more than one selects the tickets they’d like to process and then enters with some or all of their group.
“Group ticketing has been, on the ticketing front, a really big learning for us where it was an avenue that we can separate ourselves,” Seaner said. Wicket has since surpassed 1 million fans scanned since that debut, with new clients including the NFL’s Panthers and Titans, as well as LAFC in MLS.
The sign-up process for the Delta Fly-Through Lanes at MBS is nearly as quick as the experience. Registration required logging in through a Ticketmaster account and then uploading a selfie. I did this the day before my trip. My biggest struggle? Trying to remember (and ultimately resetting) my Ticketmaster password. When I walked up at game day, the Wicket tablet recognized my face before I even had the chance to stop in front of it.
Because Pierburg gave me multiple tickets to test so I could see the multi-ticket screen, I selected one and was cleared to carry on. The longest part of that journey was lifting my hand to highlight my ticket. The sequence lasted less than five seconds, including pleasantries with my nice lane operator.
Pierburg feels like the auto-burn function is a huge benefit because it creates an experience of immediate recognition. Through feedback, he said, users have told him that they appreciate the personalized welcome message as they enter MBS. That led to a natural question: what would it take to make a group auto-burn function?
Continuing to improve
The contextual awareness to make that happen, Seaner shared, is a hard problem to solve, mainly because it requires a necessary amount of separation between groups so a system could recognize clusters. That’s not a flawless setup either, with the likelihood that larger people might block smaller folks from the camera’s field of vision. Plus, that setup feels like it would disrupt the natural ingress flow that Wicket produces now.
Grouping challenges aside, Seaner said that he’s developed a greater interest in a single-ticket entry idea for all, which dovetails with the industry’s focus to gather more data on their fans/users for customizable experiences. And it’s worth noting: Wicket recently announced a new partnership with fan-experience platform Lava to add more personalization to the game-day experience through their complementary offerings.
Just before starting a walk through the MBS concourse, Pierburg noted the varying degrees of preparedness from Falcons fans as they entered. They moved at different speeds, with different comfort levels, in the more-traditional turnstiles further down the gate. While first-time users of the Delta Fly-Through Lanes might be slightly hesitant at first with a new process, the user experience he’s observed afterward is one of confidence and satisfaction.
“We really feel like it rewards a prepared fan,” Pierburg said.
Generative AI, leadership roundtable among key sessions at SBJ Tech Week
SBJ has rolled out the full agenda and roster for Tech Week in Manhattan on March 5-7 (my first with SBJ). It’s a stacked lineup featuring voices from every corner of the sports industry.
I'd love to connect with as many of you as possible during the event. Drop me an email if you’re going to be attending and want to meet up!
Two sessions at Tech Week have my immediate attention, and I look forward to hearing in person:
- On Day 1, it's “Generative AI's Applications Across the Sports Industry: Major Tech Brands Share Their Insights and Predictions." This panel features reps from the biggest brands in the tech space, including Anil Jain from Google Cloud, Julie Neenan Souza from AWS, Monica Ellingson from IBM Consulting and moderator Gary Warech of Veritone. We’re all still trying to understand where and how generative AI can make the biggest impact in pro sports. These folks should get us on the right track.
- On Day 2, we’ll have a tech leader roundtable, featuring execs who have helped turn their organizations into trendsetters: Keia Cole from BSE Global, Kari Escobedo from the Mariners, Christa Stout from the Trail Blazers and Humza Teherany from MLSE.
Speed reads
- Using machine learning, FanDuel and other leading sportsbooks have fine-tuned their ability to predict which bettors are likely to deliver the most profit, over a sustained period, and serve them promotions designed to keep them moving in that direction, writes SBJ's Bill King. If the research that indicates early markers of problem behavior proves applicable to the larger swath of U.S. sports bettors, sportsbooks also should be able to identify, and correct, problematic play.
- Golf fans will have a new, high-tech way to consume the PGA Tour when it makes its way to Pebble Beach early next month, as the tour has teamed with Apple to launch PGA Tour Vision, reports SBJ's Josh Carpenter. PGA Tour Vision coincides with the launch of Apple Vision Pro, the spatial computing headset that is available for purchase starting Feb. 2.
- Advance Sports hopes to use AI to streamline recruiting and make it more "human," writes my colleague Rob Schaefer.
- Schaefer also reports that Cosm is partnering with NBC to bring select live broadcasts of the Premier League, Notre Dame and Big Ten football and horse racing to the immersive technology company’s forthcoming shared reality venues in L.A. and Dallas.
- Sevilla FC, the perennial LaLiga contender known for its analytical prowess, collaborated with IBM to apply generative AI as a way to streamline the player recruitment process and utilize comprehensive information in the player recruitment process, writes SBJ's Joe Lemire.
- SNA Displays provided Michigan State’s Breslin Center with a new $3 million center-hung video board and more than 725 linear feet of ribbon boards in an offseason project to enhance the 35-year-old home of Spartans' men’s and women’s basketball and volleyball programs, reports my colleague Bret McCormick.