Facial authentication is surging across sports leagues. A tech exec explains the interest.

When thousands of NFL fans enter stadiums this fall, their faces will be scanned by technology from Wicket. Many of the league’s 32 franchises are using the platform to check credentials of staff and media entering restricted areas, but three teams — the Cleveland Browns, the Atlanta Falcons and the Tennessee Titans — are deploying it to authenticate the identity of regular ticket-holders.

At least a half-dozen more NFL franchises are currently studying or planning to use Wicket for fan-facing ticketing purposes this season, according to Jeff Boehm, the Massachusetts-based company’s chief operating officer. 

Facial authentication is increasingly used by other sports leagues, too. The Australian Tennis Open and United States Golf Association all use Wicket face scans to authenticate fans entering their events, as do the New York Mets. (Wicket isn’t the only game in town. CLEAR technology — which matches facial biometrics to ID photos — is primarily used in airports but has made deals with several sports stadiums and arenas.)

Wicket technology allows fans to choose not to participate, and the company takes privacy and data security very seriously, Boehm says. But he also acknowledges that team owners and other customers can do whatever they want with the face-scan data once they’ve bought the technology, and Wicket has no control over whether they monetize whatever they collect.

While small at 50 staff members or less, Wicket, which launched four years ago, has drastically expanded its reach in the last 18 months, Boehm says.

Boehm spoke with Recorded Future News about his rapidly growing company and what’s next. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

RECORDED FUTURE NEWS: Which teams in the NFL did you pilot Wicket with last year?

JEFF BOEHM: So Wicket began way back in 2020 with the Cleveland Browns as one of our first teams, and they have been an early adopter and use the technology broadly around their stadium. Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home of the Atlanta Falcons, has been another early adopter, and has used the technology broadly. And then the NFL approached us and used it across four other stadiums. They’re the customer. They have the choice of what they publicize or don't publicize. So there were four other teams beyond Cleveland and Atlanta that used it last year. We’re certainly excited to have them, and, subsequently, all 32 NFL teams as clients. [Editor’s Note: The Tennessee Titans, Cleveland Browns and Atlanta Falcons individually have used Wicket for fan-facing interactions, Boehm said. An NFL spokesperson said the league’s official deal with Wicket is for a credentialing program and does not account for how individual teams may choose to use the tool for fan-facing access. The teams that participated in last year’s credentialing program pilot were the Atlanta Falcons, the Cleveland Browns, the Denver Broncos, the Arizona Cardinals, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Las Vegas Raiders.]

RFN: The Cleveland Browns owners have invested in you, right?

JB: The Browns were really a founding customer for Wicket, helping us test and deploy the solution for the first time, actually during the COVID pandemic at the Browns’ stadium. Based on their early role in helping us prove out the solution, we granted them a nominal equity interest to recognize their contribution. So they did not make a direct investment, but they have a minority equity stake in the company.

RFN: And so with the 32 teams that can use it, I noticed the Browns and the Falcons use it to authenticate fans and speed up processing people to get into stadiums. Do you have a sense of other teams that will use it beyond just for credentialing the media, staff and vendors getting into restricted areas?

JB:  There's really four use cases we'll see in the stadiums. The earliest one was the ticketing one. And we have a number of stadiums and teams, not just in the NFL, but in other leagues that use us for ticketing. 

The second is payments. So actually being able to speed up concessions, and again, the Browns were one of the first ones there. We rolled out a program there two years ago, and continue to expand that. 

The third is this credentialing example, where again, all 32 teams are using this, and there are again teams or other venues that use this as well. We’re actually used for conferences and other live events in a similar way for credentialing. 

And then the fourth is more traditional access control. So if you have a building, rather than using a magnetic card or a PIN pad or something like that, you can use your face. Teams like the Browns use us for all four use cases. Some venues only use us for one. Some use us for multiple [cases]. The Tennessee Titans expanded and used us for ticketing as well last year. 

RFN: And by ticketing, you mean when a fan walks into a stadium? 

JB: Yes.

RFN: How does that work? 

JB: So before they come or they can do it literally at the gate, but typically at home, they click on a link. It could be on the team's website, or in an email or anything like that, and they're directed to a web page where they opt in. As I mentioned, opt-in is very, very important to us. They opt in to use the program, they take a selfie, and then they log in and connect it to their ticketing account, whichever ticketing account or ticketing company provides ticketing to that venue. And so now your face is connected to your ticketing account, so that when you show up, your tickets appear. And if you just have one ticket, you walk right in. If you have four tickets you can say who else is coming in with you. They're not scanned. But you can have multiple tickets on your account and then you walk into the stadium.

RFN: Are there other sports leagues you know of that are using it for ticketing or concessions?

JB: The New York Mets use us for ticketing. … This year we went live at the USGA [United States Golf Association] for the U.S. Open and the U.S. Women's Open, where they used us both for ticketing and for credentialing. 

The Australian Tennis Open used us this year, all for ticketing. There's also soccer teams like the Columbus Crew that use us for ticketing. The Columbus Crew also uses us for access control for their employees. So in all, there are, in addition to the 32 NFL teams, there's about 10 other professional sports teams, plus other venues and leagues like the USGA that use us. 

In addition, there's a number of conferences and live events that use us as well to help guests get into that event or to that venue.

RFN: I read that opt-out is really important to your company, but in your privacy policy, it's clear customers [like sports teams] ultimately make the decisions about how long data is stored and what they do with the data. Do you dispute that?

JB: So in order for anybody to use Wicket, they have to opt in. So that is not something that can be taken away. So there is opt-in language that has to be included before anybody can enroll to use our system in any environment. So they have to consent to use the system as part of uploading their image to use it. 

They own the data. 

RFN: The teams?

JB: The teams, the customer, whoever the customer is — whether it’s a team, or whether it's a company who's using it for access control or whether it's an organization like the USGA using it for a golf tournament. They own the data. And they have their own data privacy and security policies that we recommend they are transparent about and share with the people signing up for this. Unlike other systems, we're not centralizing this into some big, massive database that we're either monetizing or sharing or doing anything with.

RFN: You're letting your customers do that. 

JB: The customers own their data, correct.

RFN: So they can monetize it, but that's not your business?

JB: Right. Like they could with, same thing with if [fans] have team apps, if they are going to sign up to use a team app, or if they sign up to get emails from the team, or if they have a team loyalty account, or any of those things. That's in the same way, that's data that you are giving to the teams for them to use how they will.

RFN: Can you say roughly how many additional teams ... are already using this for ticketing, and roughly how many are studying using it for ticketing?

JB: I mean studying using it for ticketing, there's dozens and dozens of teams across different leagues right now that are studying using it for ticketing, and potentially going to be going live with ticketing for this.

RFN: Including the NFL? 

JB: Including the NFL, yes. I don't know exactly the number across the 32 teams that are studying using it for ticketing at this point. There are three or four teams that I've already mentioned that are publicly using it for ticketing, and there are definitely several others that are either studying or planning to use it for ticketing this season. 

RFN: So at least, say a half dozen, but possibly more?

JB: Yes. 

RFN: And the people who opt in presumably do it because it lets them get into events faster?

JB: Yeah, it's the convenience factor. I was out at the Cleveland Browns in December when we shot some of the videos you may have seen on our website, and you see huge lines getting in the traditional gates because everybody tailgates up until five minutes before kickoff, and then everybody wants to get into the stadium at the same time. And you see huge lines there. And then you see people just walking straight through at their express entry gates. 

You know they want to get in faster. The Browns actually see hundreds of people per game sign up right there on the spot because it's even faster to enroll right there while you're waiting to get in and then use the system — that's way faster than using traditional ticketing. The Browns have found that it's upwards of four times faster for fans to get in that way, so they can get in and get to their seats and not miss the action.

RFN: And the opt in, can parents decide to opt their children in? 

JB: No, there's age restrictions based on either local laws or based on the teams themselves. Typically, what happens is the parents have the tickets on their account, and so you don't need to opt your children in and your children's faces will never be scanned and never be used and they're not enrolled in the system. It is the parents or one of the parents, typically, who has the ticketing account, and they're the one whose face is associated with that account. And when they show up. It shows up and says, ‘OK, you've got six tickets on your account. You and your five guests, whoever they are, it doesn't matter, the six of you can walk in.’

RFN: On the media people and the vendors, I take your point about people being able to opt out, but if you're a staff member or vendor and you need your job is there pressure to opt in? 

JB: That I really don't know. Again, that's really up to the individuals deploying the solution. Certainly not from what we've seen, but it's really a question for other organizations and how they choose to deploy this solution.

RFN: Following up on how the teams own the data and can monetize it as they wish — can you elaborate?

JB: The data that we're talking about here, to the best of my knowledge, the NFL already knows who they're giving all their credentials to. They maintain a list already of who they're giving all their credentials to. So it's not like all of a sudden they’re gaining additional information here. They already know who they're giving out credentials to, and in the same way, if you look at it from a ticketing perspective, the ticketing companies know who's been buying the tickets, and so all you're doing is, and in fact, when you take a picture of your face, we actually immediately convert that into a mathematical representation of that, and so that's actually what's being used to validate your face when you enter. Again, we're not sharing pictures or using those pictures in other ways. The only place the picture is used is to validate that the person showing up is the same person who took a selfie before they came. 

RFN: I saw that in the past a tablet has been used [for authenticating faces]?

JB: That is the typical hardware deployment. When somebody walks up, they use an iPad. There's other options, but the iPad both combines the accuracy that we need in terms of the high quality camera so that we can do things like make sure somebody's not trying to spoof the system by showing up with a printout or something like that. Just the touchscreen and the versatility of it makes it an ideal form factor. 

RFN:  It sounds like you have no privacy concerns about this whatsoever because of the opt-in.

JB: We take data privacy and security very, very seriously. It's something that we watch very, very closely, and certainly with some uses of biometrics that are out there that I think cross the line, we want to be very careful about how our technology is being used. And so that's why opt-in is very important for us. The way that we use and store that data is very important for us, and so that is something that we monitor very, very closely. 

There's nothing in this NFL deal that gives me any concerns or pause, no. 

RFN: But your privacy policy leaves it to the customers to purge when they want. So you can't totally control how long it's stored.

JB: Sure and some of that is convenience, right? Because if I'm a season ticket holder with the Cleveland Browns, I don't want to have to re-enroll every single game. I want to be able to enroll once and I want the Cleveland Browns holding on to that data long enough that I can come back game after game, or even season after season. 

Whereas, some of the conferences that we've done — we were at a technology conference earlier this year — and they immediately purged the data as soon as the conference was over. And that's because it was a one-time conference, and it was all set after that. And so that policy is, in my mind, it's in the service of what's best for the fans. But I hear the underlying concern and I think we're doing all that we can to ensure that intersection of security and privacy along with convenience and benefit.

RFN: And you can't prevent them [customers] from somehow monetizing this data?

JB: Correct. They can do what they want with the data.