How we got here: from coins to bar codes

Section I:

The history of the printed ticket

Bar codes provide a business boost

Smart phones bring more tech to the ticketing gate

1. The history of the printed ticket

In the days when Shakespeare was still penning new plays, the “fan experience” at the Globe theater cost a penny to stand in the uncovered yard in front of the stage, while a balcony seat cost two, according to historians. A nice cushion for the tush? Another penny. Yes, this was the era that bore us Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, but maybe also the first coming of premium seating.

From when the ancient Romans used pottery shards marked with seat numbers to enter the Colosseum until present-day events, the through line has been drawn across history that in order to view an show or game, one needed to pay the appropriate price of admission. And for much of that time until only recently, the physical ticket — in whatever shape or form — was the accepted method of entry.

Over the years, if there was any technology that entered into the ticketing business, it had to do with printing. Since the forgery business has been around almost as long as ticketing, event holders sought to gain an edge by whatever printing means they could. Elaborate typefaces, special paper, and in more modern times, things like watermarks and holograms were all used in attempts to defeat bad actors. But it took until the arrival of the bar code — and its migration to ticketing around the turn of the century — for technology to truly advance the business of tickets and verified entry to events.

2. Bar codes provide a business boost

Originally invented for retail inventory purposes, the somewhat simple bar code became a powerful tool in many businesses, especially as bar code equipment followed the traditional tech path of things getting smaller and cheaper. As one of the first technologies in the field known as automatic identification and data capture (AIDC) — which refers to refers to the methods of automatically identifying objects, collecting data about them, and entering them directly into computer systems, without human involvement — bar codes provided an instant lift to the live events business.

By attaching bar codes to tickets, event providers could now more easily determine the authenticity of a ticket, with a simple and powerful scan from a device — thereby eliminating or lessening the need for human verification. Bar codes also allowed tickets to be more easily shared in a digital fashion, cutting down on printing and mailing costs. As increased usage spurred innovation, things like battery-powered handheld scanners appeared to add even more benefits to the live events business.

3. Smart phones bring more tech to the ticketing gate

As people worldwide started to gradually accept mobile and online transactions in everyday life, so too did digital transactions start to grow in the live event business. With better ticket security more options to purchase or exchange tickets online began to appear. However, the historical pull of the printed ticket — which now meant maybe a PDF printout of an emailed ticket — still allowed fraud to plague the business, as bad actors got better at duplicating even the bar-coded printouts.

Technology, however, didn’t slow down. The 2007 arrival of Apple’s iPhone and all the “smart phones” that followed would eventually provide a base for chip-level transaction technologies to proliferate, bringing much higher levels of security and the ability to link a lot more information to financial interactions.

Technologies like Radio Frequency ID (RFID) and Near Field Communications (NFC) were introduced to power chip-to-chip communications between cellular phones or credit cards and receiver devices, opening the door to the “tap to pay” economy that is rapidly becoming the standard method of transactions. Even the older technology of bar codes found phone-based improvement, with the development of “rotating bar codes” that could be continually refreshed over a live internet connection.

For teams and venue owners and operators, the ability to produce chip-based ticket interactions held a great amount of potential promise.

As technology started to allow for more information to be attached to ticket transactions — if not the ticket itself — teams and venues set a course to promote “digital ticketing,” where a fan’s ticketing actions would be enclosed in an “account” where the team or venue might be able to mine some simple data (email, phone number) or more material information (income level, family size, seating and event preferences) attached to each purchased ticket.

Those data could then be used for revenue-generating ideas that could be more quickly realized, like converting a somewhat interested fan who came to a few games to a season-ticket holder. Finally, teams might be better able to answer one of the biggest problems of the live event business — trying to figure out who, exactly, was in your building. Even before there were fully baked ways to get this “digital ticketing” done, teams aggressively started such data-hunting programs because of the income potential those programs held.

1. The legacy of the printed ticket has deep historical roots, which still hamper digital-ticketing efforts today
2. The introduction of the bar code to ticketing was the first proof that technology could provide real business advantages
3. The arrival of smartphones and chip-level transaction technologies opened the door to a wealth of transaction improvement opportunities

Early attempts at ticket tech integration

Section II:

Chip-based tech shows its power as venues scramble to implement tech

Covid changes everything

Smart phones bring more tech to the ticketing gate

4. Chip-based tech shows its power as venues scramble to implement tech

The power of chip-based technology for event entry was not embraced first by stadiums and arenas, but instead by single-purpose activities like ski resorts and amusement parks. For the 2008-09 ski season Vail Resorts rolled out RFID-based lift passes, which allowed skiers to gain access to lifts by either leaning their jacket sleeves (which had season-pass pockets) toward a ticketing gate or by having their chests scanned by staff with radio readers. No longer did skiers have to pull a pass out of their jacket and show it to a lift operator for visual verification. Instead, skiers could be verified automatically and then greeted by name as staffers read the information on the handheld readers.

Disney’s introduction of its RFID-based Magic Band wristband in 2013 for its amusement parks showed how a wearable technology could allow guests to simply access ticketing, parking, lodging and payment information in a safe, secure way, by presenting the wristband to a reader device. By storing information digitally and communicating via a wireless chip, the activity experience as well as the business case in both cases were greatly improved.

With the mid-2010s arrival of smartphone “wallet” and payment applications, devices people carried with themselves every day for communications could now be used for transactions. While coffee drinkers may have been quick to adopt “tap to pay” procedures at retailers like Starbucks, stadiums and arenas had a harder time convincing fans to fully buy in on the “digital ticket” idea.

Though many frequent eventgoers, like sports season ticket holders, quickly embraced the ease of NFC-based “tap to enter” digital ticketing, getting casual fans to accept the process was (and still is) an ongoing challenge. Unlike the ease of bar-coded tickets — which can just be opened in email and scanned from a phone screen — NFC “tickets” require the extra tasks of “loading” information into a wallet app or a team app with similar functionality. Given that most fans only attend just a few events a year, most probably concluded that there wasn’t enough value in any of the enticements to sign up for some digital process you might only use once.

Teams and venues tried as best they could to push digitial ticketing forward, even implementing some of the new “self-scan” ticketing devices that were starting to hit the market. Looking much like a handheld scanning device encased in a thin hardware tower, the early self-scan hardware devices, known as “pedestals,” would eventually come to support both bar-code scanning as well as NFC and RFID “taps.”

But the lack of thorough education for fans on self-scan processes and the non-standard mix of new systems could often lead to entry confusion, as fans struggled to get bar codes read (sometimes hampered by bright sunlight) or to find out where to tap their phones. At many stadiums, entry staff turned into an always-busy help team, often taking phones from fans to show them how to best position the devices against the “self-scanning” readers.

And then — all of a sudden there were no events anymore. And then when there were events again, the last thing you wanted was a gate staffer grabbing your phone.

5. Covid changes everything

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the United States in full force in March 2020, live events shut down completely. Later that year and into 2021 when events started re-opening again (usually with attendance limits), the thing that had changed most about events was the way you got in.

Digital ticketing, that innovation that teams, venues and acts had tried hard to convince fans previously to accept with only minimal success, became a 100 percent thing overnight, and few complained. Everyone wanted to go to games and shows again, and if that meant learning a new way to do things, so be it.

While the reasons behind the immediate adoption of digital ticketing were mostly due to fans’ social distancing and health concerns, teams and venues quickly seized on the opportunity. Sales of the new self-scan ticketing “pedestals” soared as venues needed to support practices like flexible-location entry zones located far away from the architectural stadium gates and doors to accomodate social distancing. Adding more of the pedestal devices and spacing out the entry real estate did wonders in reducing lines, which were one of the biggest concerns of fans, especially during the initial re-opening of events.

Pedestals were also popular with venues at this time since they generally required fewer staffers to operate, a big feature during the immediate recovery from Covid when there was a huge shortage of workers wanting to take stadium staff jobs. Once again, technology had answered an urgent call for ticketing.

But for teams and venues who were still affected by the loss of live-event revenues from the pandemic, the business question of “what’s next” now included all the new entry technology that had been adopted. Had the rapid move to digital ticketing resulted in the expected benefits? Were all the promises from the vendors and service providers being realized? Why were we still using bar codes? And what about facial authentication, did we need that too?

6. 2025: Making business sense of the choices

As the calendar year changed to 2025, some of the ticket technology challenges from earlier on still face venues. While more attendees are adopting wallet-type ticketing options, bar code tickets still exist, forcing venues to continue to support both technology options. A new technology entrant, the use of facial authentication for ticket verification, is starting to gain significant traction after being adopted by several large professional teams as well as the NFL itself.

The question then for teams and venue owners and operators is, what is the mix of technologies that is going to help the most, and who is going to provide them? In addition to the actual hardware-based verification technologies themselves (bar codes, NFC, biometrics), teams and venues are looking to the ticketing hardware providers to also provide integration to all the services that could interact with a fan’s ticketing profile, including payments, loyalty programs and sponsor activations. They also want their systems to be as flexible as possible, with options ranging from suite-door scanner systems to moveable, wireless-enabled pedestals to the solid, old-style turnstiles with their one-at-a-time physical barriers.

After reviewing the market Stadium Tech Report has put together a short list of market leaders, who have all proved effective at finding customers across the spectrum of venue types and sizes. Next is a quick list of the leading providers, and a short profile of their background of products, services and customer wins.

1. Chip-based technology is proving to be a solid supporter of digital ticket strategies
2. Covid provided a huge lift to the digital ticket industry by removing the barrier of historic opposition to change
3. As 2025 starts, there still are no clear single technology winners or single paths to a better digital ticket future

What do venues need, what can vendors provide

Section III:

Short profiles of top entry technology providers

What should venues look for in a provider?

Are the ticketing technology promises being met?

7. Short profiles of top entry technology providers

ALVARADO

Alvarado, one of the oldest providers of access technology, is still among the market leaders, having placed its pedestal ticketing platforms at recent NFL Super Bowls held at SoFi Stadium, Allegiant Stadium and Caesars Superdome. Perhaps best known for its line of slim battery-powered pedestals with detachable dolly wheels for easy mobility, Alvarado sells everything from handheld and wall-mounted ticket scanners to full-size turnstiles in its stadium portfolio.

Acquired in 2019 by the Switzerland-based dormakaba group (which recorded approximately $2.8 billion in revenue the past year), Alvarado claims it has more than 100 sports and entertainment customers, including venues in all U.S. major pro leagues and at bigger university venues.

AXESS

Axess America is the U.S.-based arm of Axess AG, an Austria-based firm perhaps best known historically for its innovative access systems for ski resorts and parking lots. For stadium customers, Axess offers a wide mix of handheld, pedestal and turnstile ticket-verification systems, including the first pedestals to provide support for Wicket’s facial authentication software.

In the U.S., some of Axess America’s major customers include the Denver Broncos, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Detroit Lions of the NFL, and the Oklahoma City Thunder of the NBA. In business since 1998, the overall company reported doing approximately $60 million in revenue a few years ago.

FORTRESS

Fortress US, the North American division for the London-based Fortress GB, provides a wide range of scanning systems, including pedestals and turnstiles, as well as a base of integrated software features that can be combined with a team or venue’s ticketing operations to support applications including loyalty programs, payments and sponsor activities.

The capabiliity and extended list of technologies available from Fortress, which include facial authentication, has gained the company a high-profile list of customers, including the NFL itself and NFL teams, as well as the Kentucky Derby. Fortress, which has been around for two decades, counts as customers more than 100 venues in the UK and Europe and 50 sports stadiums in the U.S., along with 26 Live Nation entertainement venues.

JANAM

The Bethpage, N.Y.-based Janam is well known for its handheld scanner systems, which the company has been providing since 2007. When Covid came along Janam showed its ability to innovate by developing pedestal scanner systems, several of which could use the company’s handheld scanners by simply sliding them into the top of a hardware pedestal base.

Janam was acquired in late 2022 by access specialist HID, which in turn is owned by the Stockholm, Sweden-based Assa Abloy, a access-specialty company with 61,000 employees and recent yearly revenues of approximately $12.6 billion. With the associated corporate resources, Janam can draw from the expertise developed by selling all kinds of products associated with access control.

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL

One of the more curious entrants in the entry technology marketplace is not a vendor company but Major League Baseball, a U.S. professional sports league. After some tests with the Philadelphia Phillies in 2023, last season MLB rolled out its “Go-Ahead Entry” facial authentication ticketing systems at six MLB stadiums, as well as in another test deployment at the All-Star Game in Arlington, Texas.

The large, purpose-built pedestals  (called “monoliths” in MLB descriptions) contain a much bigger camera than other facial authentication systems, designed to be able to capture fans’ faces from a farther distance and without forcing them to stop. MLB has not yet announced any plans to make the systems available outside of MLB stadiums.

SKIDATA

SkiData, another company with a long history in the ski-resort access world, is also known for its turnstile offerings, where it continues to innovate with options like a model with a soft-plastic barrier bar that fully retracts to speed up transaction times. A supplier of stadium products since 1991, SkiData offers a full line of products from suite-door readers to self-scan pedestals to turnstiles, as well as parking-lot gates.

Now a part of the giant Swedish security concern Assa Abloy (which acquired SkiData from the Swiss Kudeski Group last July), SkiData has even more resources to keep finding big-name customers like Mercedes-Benz Stadium, U.S. Bank Stadium and Energizer Stadium, home of the St. Louis City SC of Major League Soccer.

WICKET

In the span of just a few years, a Cambridge, Mass.-based startup named Wicket has turned many heads in the stadium entry technology business with its facial-authentication ticket verification software. The Cleveland Browns, the Atlanta Falcons and the New York Mets were early customers, and have been followed by several more NFL teams and the league itself, which in 2024 selected Wicket as the technology base for the back-of-house credentialing system installed at all 30 NFL stadiums to better secure access to on-field, press box and other sensitive areas.

Wicket technology is currently being integrated into ticketing systems from Axess and Fortress. The company’s systems are also being used to allow facial authentication for concession purchases, including the ability to verify age and payment processing.

8. What should venues look for in a provider?

To provide a template for vendors to help select ticketing hardware providers, we turned to Steve Weydig, executive vice president of support and operations for Ticketmaster, for his views on the stadium entry technology marketplace. As a leading provider of ticketing services, Ticketmaster works both with its individual venue clients as well as with all the hardware providers to help determine the best paths forward for each situation.

“It’s certianly been an interesting evolution,” said Weydig of the history of ticketing technology, which even in recent history has seen moves from paper, to rotating bar codes, to NFC, and now to facial authentication. But even as he said Ticketmaster works with venues “on their individual time lines” for ticketing technology deployments, he did say there were several factors that all ticketing hardware suppliers need to meet.

First of all, Weydig said, hardware suppliers need to ensure their systems are reliable — “they have to be always online,” Weydig said. Then, the suppliers need to have high levels of security around the hardware and software verification features they might include in their systems. “You have to have assurance that the right fan is getting in,” Weydig said.

Next, Weydig said the ability to provide rich data and analysis of a device’s operation was “really important.” A venue, Weydig said, needs such performacne numbers to help determine staffing numbers and equipment placements, as well as to determine how fast fans are coming in. Last but not least is the ability for ticketing hardware systems to support other related back of house applications like fan loyalty programs and payments.

“There has to be an integration opportunity” for the ticketing hardware devices, Weydig said, “to get the analytics of how fans interact with the venue.”

In terms of actual verification technologies that need to be supported, Weydig said the current reality still sees a need for hardware providers to at least support both bar code and NFC transactions, even though the former technology may be next on the chopping block. While agreeing that NFC transactions do take some extra work on the fan’s part to save things to wallets, “once you have that first great [tapping] experience, you’re hooked,” Weydig said.

As far as facial authentication goes, Weydig said “we do see more identity-based discussions around the globe,” even while agreeing that the overall ticketing market “took a little bit of time to adapt to it.”

But with what he called “an incredible partnership” with Wicket, Weydig said that Ticketmaster sees potential benefits in using facial authentication for ticketing and is starting to see adoption of the technology for ticketing increase.

“It will be interesting to see where the industry takes facial authentication as a whole,” Weydig said.

9. Are the ticketing technology promises being met?

Even as the general adoption-curve processes for how to use the new ticketing technologies get better, and as fans learn to download their tickets before arriving at the stadium, there are still some signs at venues that ticketing technology is still not producing all the benefits its providers may claim.

Increased line speed, for example, is an often highly touted benefit of new ticketing technology hardware that is sometimes hard to see or measure. While companies may tout internal throughput numbers as gospel, observations in the field at live stadium events still shows the occurence of line backups either due to customer error, or perhaps a faulty deployment strategy of devices.

Such intermittent delays can usually be seen most at venues that have deployed the new walk-through security scanning systems, which truly have produced revolutionary increases in line speed for security checks. With that once-dominant bottleneck decreasing or gone altogether, the ticketing process in a stadium can get extra scrutiny as fans stream at a walking pace from security to the ticketing gates.

There are several areas of functionality, however, where newer entry technology has delivered as promised. Reducing the risk of forged tickets, producing a safer physical environment and lowering the staffing needs for entry procedures are benefits realized by almost all of the new technology deployments.

While not all systems that scan barcodes use it, the “rotating bar code” technology championed by companies like Ticketmaster represents a huge leap forward in ticket security. The technology, which requires a live internet connection, basically keeps refreshing the ticket’s bar code at set intervals, making it almost impossible to copy.

NFC-based ticketing is even more secure, with encryption and its own “rotating” identification process used to secure ticketing information during transactions.

For facial authentication systems, it’s extremely hard to duplicate someone’s face. Concerns about the security of stored information are addressed by the fact that the systems used for sports ticketing do not store actual photos, but instead use a digitized mathematical representation of key parts of a person’s face, thereby reducing the security risks.

And even as fears of Covid have recessed, the now-accepted practice of touchless transactions across all the new models of ticket verification — scanning a phone screen, tapping a device or simply staring at a camera — have made the entry process one that reduces the risk of illness by reducing person-to-person contact.

And almost all of the new entry technology methods are also capable of measurable gains in staff reductions and lower operational expenses. Instead of having to have a person at each device, the self-scan pedestal systems (or turnstiles with the same scanning technology attached) now typically allow a single staffer to monitor multiple scanning lanes, intervening only when there is an issue. Data from early facial authentication deployments show that gates using the technology can handle more transactions than other technologies, reducing the number of entry lanes needed.

And even venues that continue to use handheld scanners can realize staffing benefits from the technology’s flexibility and portability. Staff members responsible for scanning, for instance, can be easily moved to different areas to handle crowded situations. Handheld staffers can also be more easily deployed to internal scanning locations, such as club spaces or hospitality areas that require additional verification. Handheld systems can also be more easily switched from venue to venue, such as from football to basketball at a university, thereby saving on overall capital expenditures. And most of the system providers are now offering versions of their scanning platforms that can be attached to suite doors, reducing the need for human verification for premium and club spaces.

1. Ticketing hardware providers offer a wide range of solutions from a healthy ecosystem of vendors
2. Venues should ensure providers offer high uptime, solid technology implementations and the ability to integrate with back of house functions
3. While ticketing systems could still improve, many of the promises of functionality and business benefits are starting to be met

What does the future hold?

While it’s useful to talk of the stadium marketplace for ticketing technology as a single entity, the variability of venues and their demands and needs suggests that for the time being, a hybrid approach of support is going to be a requirement for ticketing hardware providers.

On one hand, there is the example of the Intuit Dome, the new home of the Los Angeles Clippers that opened last summer with an emphasis on using facial authentication for all fan transactions, and by using facial authentication and checkout-free technology for all concession stands and team stores.

On the other hand are schools like Purdue University, where handheld scanning devices are still a great option, giving the school flexibility to trade ticketing equimpment back and forth between football and basketball stadiums.

So until if and when a single technology emerges as a clear winner, the current multiple offerings (bar codes, NFC, facial authentication) will likely need to all be supported for the near future. And while many of the entry technology hardware vendors are busy adding facial authentication support to products that already handle scanning and NFC, some stadiums also see a continuing period where separate entries may embrace more targeted approaches for more-focused devices.

The Atlanta Falcons, for example, already have a good percentage of their entry gates at Mercedes-Benz Stadium using Wicket’s facial authentication software for ticketing. According to the Falcons, the technology is preferred by frequent visitors, such as season ticket holders for the Falcons and for Atlanta United FC, the building’s Major League Soccer tenant. With no other types of ticketing supported at the facial authentication gates, fans using those entries have a “premium” experience that isn’t slowed down by people trying to figure out which technology to use, the Falcons said.

But Mercedes-Benz Stadium also has a large percentage of gates using traditional turnstiles from SkiData with support for scanning and tapping technologies. According to the Falcons, because the venue hosts so many diverse events, it needs a way for its infrequent guests to simply locate an entry technology they are familiar with, namely the metal-armed turnstile.

Farther down the road, some observers see the possibility of facial authentication taking over the balance of entry interactions, perhaps with improved camera systems that can simply scan a wide lane of people entering the building. Other ticketing technologies like NFC could then become “exception processing,” with fans not recognized by the facial authentication system being moved off to a separate lane for other verification methods. Such a process would align more closely with stadium security and concession-purchasing processes, which are already trending in this direction.

However it happens, the one certain thing about the future of stadium entry is that technology will continue to play an ever-increasing role. As one of the first points of contact with every paying customer, entry technology will be increasingly leaned on as a strategic lever by teams, venues and venue operators to improve their business functions.