Greek football looks to digital ID ticketing, video surveillance to curb crowd violence

Football fans in Greece intending to watch games in stadiums may have to buy match tickets using a government digital ID app launched in 2022.

As reported by AP, this course of action is being taken by government as part of an offensive against fan violence during games. This step will be implemented in February alongside the deployment of surveillance cameras in all of the country’s 14 stadiums used for top tier football matches.

There are plans by football authorities in other European countries, including Italy and Spain, to deploy technologies like facial recognition as a response to the growing spate of violence during football matches.

In Greece, football has been played without fans in stadiums since the start of the year due to violent crowd incidents, one of which led to the death of a police officer hit by a projectile. The ban, imposed by government, is expected to run till February 12.

This and many other violent incidents during games are pushing Greek government authorities to take measures that will improve fan and player safety by clearly identifying who gets into a football arena.

Yiannis Vroutsis, Greece’s sports minister, has tabled details of the new ticket purchase measures to lawmakers, and told state TV that the move is to “identify people who are entering a stadium.”

“With the help of a mobile phone, a person’s ID can be automatically crosschecked with a ticket. Anyone without a cell phone won’t get into the stadium,” Vroutsis is quoted by AP as saying.

With the system, personal details of each fan watching a football game such as their full name, home address, phone number, and stadium seat, will be known by authorities.  This means that troublemakers during games will easily be identified.

Football clubs have been told to have the digital ticketing system in place on or before April 9.

As part of the measures, the government also intends to set up a registry of members of fan clubs, and a stadium ban for under-15s, except those in the company of an adult.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., there’ve been similar concerns over people rushing onto the court at the end of college basketball competitions. An ESPN commentator’s plea for fans to be kept off of the court went viral over the weekend.

In the face of this, a business professor and crowd management trainer, Gil Fried, has suggested that college basketball arenas be equipped with technologies such as facial recognition to identify those fomenting trouble, KCCI reports. One major conference has increased the fines levied against teams whose fans storm the playing surface, but NEC America CPO and VP of Enterprise Identity Micah Willbrand says no U.S. colleges have shown interest in the company’s facial recognition for crowd control yet.

Article Topics

biometric ticketing  |  digital ID  |  facial recognition  |  Greece  |  identity verification  |  video surveillance