Facial recognition comes to Great American Ballpark with MLB Go-Ahead Entry

Major League Baseball’s biometric stat sheet is getting longer, as more ballparks roll out the Go-Ahead Entry facial recognition system for expedited entry and assorted perks inside. Great American Ballpark in Ohio, home of the Cincinnati Reds, has joined the Phillies’ Citizen Bank Park and others in deploying the system, which operates on biometrics from Japan’s NEC.

An item in the MLB’s weekly newsletter, focused on the Philadelphia Phillies, notes the opportunity for fans to enroll in Go-Ahead Entry on the MLB Ballpark app for a “free-flow ballpark entry experience” at Citizens Bank Park. Those who register won’t even have to stop for a brief check, but can enter the park “at full walking speed.”

Now Reds fans can also access what Tim O’Connell, ​​senior vice president of facilities and operations for the team, tells local Cincinnati news are “faster, more seamless entry points to the ballpark.”

Go-Ahead Entry converts registered selfies to numerical tokens that are paired with the user’s account. Facial authentication matches faces of entrants with the enrolled tokens and allows access. The biometric ticketing system is now available at Great American Ballpark and Citizens Bank Park, as well as four others: Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros; Nationals Park, home of the Washington Nationals; Oracle Park, home of the San Francisco Giants; and Kauffman Stadium, home of the Kansas City Royals.

According to previous announcements from MLB, fans can expect to see the system roll out at one or two more parks this season.

Facial recognition could help calm K-pop chaos, says Hybe

Crowd access control at a friendly old baseball game is one thing; the masses who worship at the altar of K-pop bring a whole different level of fevered fandom. In response to rampant ticket scalping – which Korea JoongAng Daily calls “a malpractice still very much prevalent in the K-pop scene” – South Korean entertainment conglomerate Hybe has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Internet bank Toss and ticket provider InterparkTriple to develop facial recognition technology to help address the issue.

Hybe will use Toss’s facial recognition technology as an authentication tool to verify a ticketholder’s pre registered biometrics during entry. Chief Operating Officer Kim Tae-ho says he hopes that the introduction of facial recognition technology will “significantly reduce the procedure and time required for identity verification and address issues related to illegal ticket sales and distribution.”

This year, the government in Seoul vowed to come down hard on illegal ticket scalping – but, as reported in the Korea Times, the crackdown has caused headaches for some legitimate ticket holders.

Article Topics

biometric ticketing  |  biometrics  |  face biometrics  |  facial authentication  |  facial recognition  |  MLB Go-Ahead Entry  |  NEC