The United States Golf Association (USGA) is introducing facial scans for admissions at the US Open, according to Find Biometrics, which cites Sports Business Journal.
The system was tested a couple of weeks ago at the US Women’s Open (Lancaster Country Club, Pennsylvania), where about a thousand fans per day tried biometric day passes. Registration apparently took a literal half-minute.
According to USGA’s Express Entry and Express Re-Entry Policy, the system is optional. If you opt out you must present a digital ticket or other credential for admittance. If you leave the grounds, however, you may not re-enter except through the facial-scanning re-entry system.
If you opt-in, you must submit a photograph of your face, which the USGA passes on to the company providing the service, Wicket. Wicket uses the photograph to “generate a scan of your face geometry (‘a biometric identifier’) and/or generate information based on your face geometry used to identify you (‘biometric information’) (collectively, ‘Biometric Scan’).” On tournament day, your face is scanned at the gate and compared with the biometric scan.
The USGA reserves the right to retain the photograph and the biometric scan for six months after the event, after which it will destroy all and instruct Wicket to do the same. The USGA pledges to disclose none of it to affiliates or suppliers except as required by law and to sell or share none of it without your express consent.
According to the story on the company website, Wicket scored its first big client in 2020. This was the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, then hoping to expedite admission to its stadium despite the hindrance of Covid masks and so-called social distancing. How to get fans through the funnel fast? Wicket’s answer was “facial ticketing” through facial scanning and authentication. There would be no bar or QR codes, no mask removal, and no long queues.
Since then, according to Wicket, more than half of the Browns’ season-ticket holders have enrolled in the program. The team has reduced its ticketing lanes by 75 percent, the gates are cleared ten minutes faster, and every Wicket ticketing lane produces a savings (of an unclear nature) of $8,000. The system is now in place all over the stadium and at the team’s practice facilities. It manages admission to suites and clubs and enables ”facial payments” at concession stands.
This would appear to be the next step in sports venue payments. According to The Ascent (part of The Motley Fool), nearly all of MLB’s ballparks, the NFL’s stadium and the NHL’s and NBA’s arenas have been cashless since 2022. Some have installed “reverse ATMs,” where you add cash to a card for payments at the venue. And these reverse ATMs charge a service fee – $3.50 for the addition of $200, according to the Wall Street Journal. Not only is cash banished, but its use is punished.
