Exploring Biometric Applications in Venues and Stadiums

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Pro AV today. Today's discussion is gonna be a fun one. It's also one that there are a lot of questions around, especially when you start talking about the security access control worlds, and that's biometrics. A lot of people might have a very specific, knee jerk reaction when they hear that. But hopefully, today we can dig in a little bit deeper and get some of those answers and to ask those questions and give us some of that feedback I brought on, my guest today, Jeff Beam from Wicket. Jeff, thanks so much for coming on. Certainly. Thank you, Ben. Appreciate you inviting me into this conversation. Well, you're very welcome, Jeff, and we're looking forward to to having your insight. And, you know, I wanted to kinda start us off on a high level. You know, there's this certain mysticism, if you will, around biometrics. I think a lot of that is due to kind of the natural ambiguity and end user doesn't know what they're always necessarily opting into, and there's just all sorts of conversations and curiosity around it. On a high level, what are some of the typical concerns that you see from folks when even having conversations about biometrics? Well, I think I think you hit the nail on the head with the first point there, Ben, which is there's just there's a lot of uncertainty. And I think as with any new piece of technology, people just aren't really certain about it at first. And if there's ever any negative stories about it, they gravitate towards that and sort of, oh, is this data being used against me somehow? Or is it profiling me? Or is it somehow biased? And these sort of uncertainties and almost like urban legends that crop up because of people just not understanding the technology that well. And so a big part of of what we do and what we encourage our customers to do is just be very forthright and and and educate their users on how the technology is being used and how safe it is and how this data is not being used against you in some way, but its goal is to make things easier for And so I think there's this, there's this sort of visceral negative reaction at times to new technologies that once people start to understand and get used to it, then they're more comfortable with. Well, one of the things that that, you know, people ask about you mentioned it, right, is is privacy. Am I giving up my identity? Is somebody hacking my face and using it for a deep fake. And that's I I feel like it's kind of a an almost different conversation at this point, but, you know, when when you think about the world of of biometrics specifically in in access control and even the ticketing and retail side of the world, privacy is one of the most paramount concerns. Right? In many times, if not all the time, the users required to opt in in some forms. Is that still correct? Absolutely. Yeah. No. We we I mean, I again, I can't speak for all biometric technologies out there, obviously. But certainly in in all cases, the use of our technology as an example, and we can get into that at some point where facial authentication technology It is one hundred percent opt in. Users have to opt into it, and they can opt out at any time. And I I do I agree. I think that's a really critical factor here is that people know what they're opting in for, and they have control over it. And they can if they don't wanna participate, they don't have to. Well, and, you know, when you think about biometric access, right, I think a lot of times people, you know, the most familiar version might be something like a clear. This is, obviously, we're talking about something that's a little bit different. Right? You know, facial authentication can meet a lot of different things, a lot of different verticals. When you talk about security and access control specifically, the easiest is to say, hey, this person is who they say they are, but I I think it even goes beyond that. Right? Can you talk about some of those use cases? Maybe it's stadiums, venues, establishments that are using it obviously for the access control side, but maybe even beyond that for for the ticketing and retail side as well. Absolutely. So, yeah, so I think that at at the very basic, we are validating that or recognizing a face and and associating that with an identity of some form. But I think that at at its core as a technology nugget is valuable, but where it really becomes more interesting is when that connects to other systems to help speed up access or validation of who that individual is. And you brought up a great example, which are stadiums. So when you walk into a stadium for a sporting event or concert or anything like that, you typically have to then show that you have tickets to this conference or to this event or to this, the sporting event. And, you know, that requires bringing out your phone and looking for those mobile QR codes, hoping to sell fake signals strong enough or finding that code in your pictures or wherever it may be. And instead using technology like ours, you can walk up and it can recognize you and say, okay, I recognize that as Ben Thomas, but then I can also say, Anne, I know that Ben Thomas has a ticketing account with this ticket provider that says he has three tickets to this game. And so it immediately pulls up those three tickets and allows you to walk right in without having to pull out your QR codes or your phone or anything like that. And the goal is to use, in this case, facial authentication technology to make that entire experience frictionless. And easier and faster and get people into the stadium faster or allow them to purchase concessions at halftime or allow them to get into, you know, backstage if they're allowed to, more easily without having to without having to show any other form of ID or anything. At that time, just really speed up that transaction, make it much make it much more frictionless. Well, let let's stick on that customer experience for a second. I think, you know, even even when you have this familiarity of people leveraging the technology, there is unfairly sort of this nefarious slant to where people think that, oh, they're they're stealing my data. They're trying to, you know, create all these, you know, fan videos of me. I'm opting into all this weird stuff But really at the end of the day, biometric technology is used for, obviously, pure safety, right, but also to elevate the customer experience. Can you talk about that customer experience and how specifically some of the biometric technologies you mentioned a little bit, whether it's the retail or ticketing? But how the customer experience actually is at very much at the core of this entire technology. Absolutely. And that's in fact, at at at wick at wickett, we talk about our goal is to enable a sensational event experience. That's what we are. Our goal is to improve that event experience. That's what we are focused on. We wake up every day thinking about how can we help our customers, which are big stadiums like the Cleveland Brown Stadium or City Field in New York or the Atlanta, Atlanta stadium with Atlanta Falcon's and Atlanta United play. How can we make that experience of walking into that stadium just much better? And you you you go to, like, again, now that we're an NFL season, you go to these NFL games, and you see everybody coming out of tailgating and amassing trying to get into the stadium faster, and you look over at the express entry or however the different teams, branded facial authentication lanes. People are just walking right in, and they're getting into the stadium faster. And they're they're happier when they get in there. In fact, couple of our teammates were just out at Cleveland Brown Stadium this weekend. And they said, most of the fans, they they get their face recognized, and they walk in, and they're high fiving each other because they're already in the game and they look over and they see their regular standard ticket lines are much longer. And in the same way, in fact, Cleveland just rolled out something they're calling Express beer, where if you register ahead of time, you can walk up to these express beer carts, show your face to an iPad on a stick a menu pops up, you say I want that beer and that bag of pretzels, and you click okay and you walk away. And you don't have to pull out an ID. You don't have to pull out a credit card. It's faster, it's more convenient, it just it makes fans happier. And, we've had numerous numerous of our teams have done fan surveys where the biometric aspect of the overall stadium experience always ranks the highest because once fans get into it, they love it, and they just keep using it because it is just it's so easy. Everybody's used to, you know, now unlocking your phone with your face or getting access to, you know, to, you know, your bank account on your phone with your face because it's easy. Convenient. The same thing can be applied here provided as you say, you trust the provider and you understand how they're using your data. And all of our teams are very forthright about their data is only being used in this way. It's not being sold to third parties. It's not being used in nefarious ways or sent off to some data broker who may be using it to do advertising to you or anything like that. It's only used to enhance your experience when you're there at the game. Well, look, you you make it easier for people to get alcohol. And then that's, you know, What's funny is that that that that is such a a customer facing technology, but what it also does in the inverse side is it protects the venue. Right? Because now you're you're verifying in a lot of different ways, but when you think about, you know, kind of flipping perspectives a little bit from the operator, from the venue operator side, Technologies like this historically have been pretty cumbersome to install to try now because of, almost the ubiquity of biometrics. It's now An iPad. Right? You could roll something like this out. You snap a finger, and you could almost have it next weekend. Right? Yeah. Absolutely. Again, in fact, take Cleveland again as an example, they just rolled out express beer this fall, and they started with it at just a couple of the beer carts around the stadium. And they had such a great response and fans loved it and they were, you know, coming back to you could do repeat purchases there, that they I think the next week or the week after, they they doubled or tripled the number of beer carts they had around the stadium. And it was very easy to do that because it is it is, you know, not big cumbersome heavy technology to roll out. It's very easy. And and we find the same thing on the ticketing front, where we roll out to new stadiums. We just rolled out at the Tennessee Titans as an example, and they started with a small number of ticketing gates. And they had good success, so they're expanding it to more ticketing gates so that more fans can use it to get into the stadium. And and it's easy to roll out and easy to bad. Well, what does that that rollout process look like? Right? I mean, obviously, it's very simple. But, you know, from a a guard standpoint, what sort of staffing is required there. Right? Because you're you're For the most part, folks are used to the okay, I'm gonna walk through a a metal detector. I'm gonna get wanted, and I'm gonna interact with somebody looking through my bag and doing all things, and then they're gonna scan my ticket, and then I've gotta show it to the person on the front. What does it actually look like from a from a operation standpoint in really building out those workflows? Yeah. So it's actually a much easier operation, Ben. In fact, again, back to Cleveland, they found that they actually were able to reduce the number of ticketing lanes by four fold. And still get fans into the stadium faster because of how much easier it was to operate these and how much faster fans were coming in. So, stadium, the ticketing operators need to learn the basic screen because it's a very simple thing. A fan walks up their face is recognized immediately pops up on the screen. Here are the tickets that you have, and do you wanna scan all those tickets you just scanning a couple of those tickets because you're not using all your seats today. If they have like a special club access or need to get wristbanded for a certain area of the stadium, their tickets pop up in a different color, making it really easy for the ticket operator to see that and act appropriately or act accordingly. And so it's it's a very easy, you know, understanding for the ticket operator just as easy as it is for them to be using those handhelds except that it's it's just faster, for them. So it is, it is something that's very easy for for them to roll out and very flat that as I mentioned already, they can expand the use very quickly around the stadium based on interest and engagement from the fans. One of the things that I I really enjoy about kind of biometric technology, and I'll say this. I I just went overseas, probably a month or so ago, and I never had to scan my ticket once I got inside the boarding area because I walked up. They identified that it was me, and it gave me access. Right? And Obviously, this is a little bit more maybe long term, higher level, but you talk about these these high volume areas, whether it's stadiums, venues, whatever. Airports, there's so many other places even that security has to be verified, office buildings, all sorts of places. Trade shows what what sorts of applications does this scale to? Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's honestly it's almost a challenge for us because the use cases are limitless. I mean, we I use it to get into my office here where instead of carrying around a key card or needing to punch into a number, I walk up to our front door here and there's a network camera that sees me coming. And by the time I get there, the door is unlocked, and I walk right in. And so, you know, it it's great for that. Any place that you are needing to authenticate and validate that I am somebody who is allowed to get into this space, you could use the technology there. As a company, given our size and our footprint, we're really focused on the live event space, but honestly, it can be used in in in many, many different areas. And there are some of our customers who use it in different areas beyond just the sort of live event space. But any place that you are needing to Again, authenticate your identity or some aspect of your identity, meaning, like, proving that you're over twenty one when you go to get that beer in Cleveland, or, you know, having having a credit card on file when you go to make that purchase at the concession or the, merchandise shop. Any of those places rather than having to pull that out, pull out your phone, pull out your card, just making that frictionless, you know, sort of giving you the freedom, to move through the space much more easily like you did when you were traveling overseas. Well, Jeff, I've gotta ask you to pull out your crystal ball for me, right, where it's kind of hilarious how, fast technology moves these days, but we're, you know, there there are just so many innovations that are happening, right, and whether more accurate biometrics, whether it's verification of things like deep fakes, there's so many different applications for this technology. But if you had to pull out your crystal ball and say, hey, in five ten, fifteen. If you wanna get crazy, go twenty years, what does this technology look like? Right? How is it scaling out into maybe different industries, but are some of the the the technological advances that you're seeing coming down the pipe? I I I think that it truly is a piece of technology that becomes ubiquitous for you verifying who you are in order to gain access to a space that you need to be verified to gain access to. I don't need to get I don't need to prove who I am to walk down the street. I don't need to prove who I am to walk into a corner coffee shop if I don't want to. But if I wanna speed up my purchase at the coffee shop and not have to pull out my credit card, not have to pull out my loyalty card and just use my face there, why not? That makes the whole process easier. If I wanna, you know, use that to get into, you know, a residential area or get into a corporate office security or an airport or an emergency room or whatever as a doctor, whatever it may be. It's just it's technology that can just make it much easier to verify the right people are where they're supposed to be. And and, again, that it just may that process easier. So I see it. I see it being used very ubiquitously. I do think that as technology providers and as our customers who are employing this technology for their customers, it's incumbent on all of us to instill trust in people like you and others that we're using this data responsibly, that we're not, you know, that it isn't being used for nefarious work means or that we're not selling it to the government track who you are or anything like that, that you gain confidence that we're using this data responsibly, and that you ultimately, you're seeing the benefit from it in the the the less ease of use convenience that it brings. Well, Jeff, I gotta say thank you because, you you've answered a lot of the questions that I have. Right? And I'm I'm would consider myself obviously somebody who's in the industry, but, you know, you hear all these rumors and things, you know, on the news and you wherever you wanna get your information from these days about, you know, AIs taken over biometrics is gonna run your live facial scanning. And it's it's You know, it's very sensationalistic, and I appreciate you providing that perspective of, somebody who really is in the know and understands what's happening. And these industry because you're you're helping shape it. Right? And, you know, with that perspective, I could say not only I appreciate, but our listeners appreciate it as well. Right? Whether folks in the traditional corp Pro AV community, whether it's the access control, physical security side, even the cybersecurity side of the world. Right? I appreciate that insight. I know they too as well. Well, certainly, thank you very much for including me. It's obviously a conversation and a topic I'm passionate about, and I I welcome I welcome further questions or comments or or ways that we can engage. Last question, how could people reach out to you if they have questions? Certainly. Thank you for freeing that up. So, so we are at Wickedsoft dot com, w I c k e t s o f t dot com. And if you wanna reach out to me an email, my email is my first name dot last name, at wicked soft dot com. I think my name will be in the show notes or wherever, and you can see it there. But jeff dot beam at wicked soft dot com, and I I welcome questions or ideas or or conversations about this. Well, Jeff, once again, we appreciate you coming on, and we appreciate you guys, the listeners tuning in and enjoying the conversation as well. Be sure to subscribe, and join us again next time for Pro EV today.