MLB pushes ahead with biometric entry as teams offer free tickets for participating fans

Major League Baseball is continuing its push to deploy the biometric Go-Ahead Entry system at ballparks across the league, with some teams even offering free tickets to those who opt-in to the facial recognition program.

WFLA Florida reports that the Tampa Bay Rays franchise is giving away two free tickets to a Rays home game at Tropicana Field to fans who enroll in Go-Ahead Entry. The park is also modifying its gates to accommodate the biometric system, with Gate 7 reserved exclusively for the program and Go-Ahead Entry lanes added to Gates 1, 5 and 6.

Enrolment in Go-Ahead Entry requires fans to register a selfie on the MLB Ballpark app. Face biometrics are then converted to a unique alphanumeric token attached to the user’s account; the original photo is deleted. Per a release from MLB, “when an enrolled fan walks through Go-Ahead Entry Lanes, a facial authentication camera scans their face to match with the enrolled tokens in the system and allows access.”

The facial recognition access control system recently rolled out at Great American Ball Park, home of the Cincinnati Reds, bringing the total number of stadiums using biometrics to six, including parks in Philadelphia (where it was piloted), Houston, Washington D.C., San Francisco and Kansas City.

Go-Ahead Entry uses biometric technology provided by NEC, but the overall system is proprietary to MLB.

Vegas police still believe plastic wristbands are best security option

As professional sports leagues lead in normalizing facial recognition and biometrics for access control, ticketing, beer purchases and more, the technology is getting pushback from an unlikely group of critics.

In a continuing refusal to comply with the NFL’s new policy on biometrics for security at stadiums, Las Vegas Police say they would not, and will not, allow the league and its digital ID partner, Wicket, to register their biometrics, citing – of all things – privacy concerns. In comments to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Las Vegas Police Protective Association President Steve Grammas stands firm on the force’s insistence that facial recognition and other biometric systems put officers’ personal information at risk. “We’re going to stand by our officers and not require them to submit,” Grammas says.

The situation has struck more than one observer as mildly absurd. On LinkedIn, Micah Willbrand, chief privacy officer and VP enterprise for NEC Corporation of America, notes that an “interesting situation is arising in the biometrics market: Police wanting to use biometrics for investigations into crimes. Police not wanting to be enrolled in biometrics services over privacy concerns. Didn’t have that on my bingo card for 2024.”

Article Topics

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