Smart stadia

Smart Stadia is a very new but increasingly used term to describe sports stadiums, arenas or other venues that utilise smart technologies such as Smart Cards, Near Field Communications (NFC) barcode and other radio frequency identification (RFID) methods and even interactive touchscreen TV’s for interacting with customers.

The smart technologies link services such as prepaid cashless, access control, membership, loyalty, ticketing, local transport, parking and even community based programmes like healthy schools to a single token. That token is most commonly a card but could also be a wristband, watch, mobile phone key fob or anything that carries a memory chip.

Some stadia have touch-screen monitors, built into the backs of stadium seats that allow fans select from multiple camera angles, replays and statistics. The system can also be used to purchase merchandise and concessions. Madison Square Garden in New York operates this system.

There are also applications that are not customer centric and these include integrated CCTV, asset tracking and personnel locator.