City Football Group to pilot Blink Identity facial biometrics to enhance fan experience

Jul 16, 2019, 5:14 pm EDT | Stephen Mayhew

Blink Identity has won the City Startup Challenge, a five-day startup competition in Manchester, England hosted by City Football Group (CFG), a holding company that administers association football clubs under the ownership of Abu Dhabi United Group, China Media Capital and CITIC Capital. The company’s flagship club is Manchester City F.C. in the English Premier League.

Blink Identity has won a pilot project opportunity with CFG by demonstrating its proprietary facial recognition at walking speed solution to enhance the fan experience and engagement. Blink Identity was selected to start work in the next few weeks, facilitating their VIP and academy access solutions to improve overall guest experience and security. Blink’s biometric technology can verify the identity of up to 60 people per minute walking past a camera at full speed.

“We’re thrilled to have been chosen to work with the City Football Group, integrating our facial recognition at walking speed solution into their elite programming,” says Mary Haskett, CEO and co-founder of Blink Identity. “Our state-of-the-art biometric technology has high throughput rates and accuracy, which, combined with our ‘privacy first’ policy, will improve dwell times, overall and specific security issues, and also back and front of the house operations for this prestigious organization.”

The Texas-based startup raised $1.5 million in a seed funding round last year from Sinai Ventures, Live Nation, Colorado-based incubator Techstars, and some other live entertainment-related funds. Founded by Mary Haskett and Dr. Alex Kilpatrick, Blink Identity is focused on bringing its face recognition technology to live event venues and commercial spaces.