Wicket, Paciolan deal opens up big market for biometric ticketing at college sports

Biometric ticketing and facial authentication company Wicket has announced a partnership with Paciolan, which provides ticketing, fundraising, marketing, and analytics solutions for live entertainment organizations – notably, a significant share of major college athletics programs, accounting for 75 percent of the Power Four Conferences schools.

A release says that, through the partnership, colleges, arenas, and other venues using Paciolan will be able to leverage Wicket’s facial authentication technology to streamline ticketing operations, reduce friction at venue entry, and get fans into events faster.

“College athletics are all about the gameday culture, and in these high-energy environments, ease of use, speed, and reliability matter,” says Alastair Partington, CEO of Wicket. “This partnership allows Paciolan schools and facilities to easily enhance their existing ticketing solution with Wicket’s facial authentication platform to deliver sensational event experiences to their fans.”

Wicket’s integration with Paciolan’s platform will be available for programs to pilot in the coming months and football season.

Biometric tickets, from Boise to LA

Wicket continues to corner the market for identity-driven ticketing for live sporting events. Recent deployments include a “premium entry” option at the last five games of the basketball season for Boise State Athletics, as reported by the Boise Arbiter.

Chris Kutz, senior associate athletic director for external affairs, says nearly 100 people at each of the five games used facial authentication through the pilot program, and that it has cut the wait time for lines in half.

“We want to make sure the experience to get in our stadiums is easy and no one’s missing kickoff or missing opening tip because the line is outside the door,” Kutz says.

Wicket also debuted a new system at at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles, for the Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC) – what LAFC’s chief technology officer, Christian Lau, calls “a next generation biometric identity and access control system seamlessly integrated into the stadium’s all new turnstile and pedestal hardware, delivering faster, more secure, frictionless stadium entry.”

EU, UK privacy regulations make facial ticketing riskier

With new innovations come new privacy concerns. A blog from the law firm Pinsent Masons says that, while biometric ticketing is starting to is starting to find traction outside the U.S. for clubs and bodies looking to provide “holistic digital engagement with supporters,” what works in the U.S. regulatory market may not fly overseas, where biometrics are classified as special category personal data under GDPR rules for the UK and EU.

The piece quotes Pinsent Masons data protection expert Dom White, who says “for UK and European clubs, while biometric access systems can deliver operational benefits, their long‑term success will hinge on getting compliance right, tightly defining how the data is used, and being open and clear with fans from the outset.”

“There is also a clear cultural difference compared with the U.S. In the UK and much of Europe, football has a long‑standing tradition of fan autonomy, and there is generally far less tolerance for technologies that feel like surveillance or that control access to the game.”

Popular Spanish club Barcelona received a €500,000 (about $586,000) fine from Spain’s data protection authority (AEPD) earlier this year, for “failing to carry out appropriate data protection impact assessments when gathering biometric data.” The regulator also fined LaLiga, Spain’s national professional football league, on grounds that it failed to conduct a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) when implementing face biometrics for security in stadiums.

Article Topics

biometric ticketing  |  biometrics  |  data privacy  |  face biometrics  |  facial authentication  |  GDPR  |  regulation  |  Wicket