Our team is always pushing ahead with innovative new products and features for our facial authentication platform that’s purpose-built for sports and live events, and periodically we like to share what we’ve been up to. Below are some recent examples showcasing how Wicket continues to be an industry-leading provider of facial biometrics in the diverse sports and entertainment landscape.
Let’s dive in.
League-Wide NFL Credentialing Program
In the Fall of 2023, Wicket worked closely with the NFL to deploy a facial credentialing pilot across 6 team stadiums. The pilot utilized our integration with Accredit Solutions’ dynamic credentialing platform to allow gameday staff, such as operations and press, to pair their face with their credential for streamlined and secure access.
Being happy with the pilot program, earlier this year the NFL expressed their interest in a league-wide rollout, and our team immediately got to work onboarding all 32 teams and their staff for the largest scale facial biometric sports deployment in history. Fact check: True.
To give some context to the scale, thus far in the 2024 season, our system has enrolled over 250k credential holders and processed 1M+ matched credentialing decisions across 650+ Wicket devices. Our ability to deliver solutions at this scale is part of the reason that our customer base has grown to include all 5 major US pro sports leagues plus teams in the NWSL, Australian Rules Football, and other major sporting events like the Australian Open, USGA, and college football.
New Facial Payments Use Cases
Over the past few months, Wicket has also expanded our facial payments offerings to include some new integrations and form factors to help our customers drive additional revenue through streamlined transaction workflows.
A few examples of this include an integration with Mashgin AI-powered checkout kiosks, embedding of our recently introduced Android AuthKit SDK into Tapin2 self-service kiosks – both of which utilize our integration with Lava for stored payment and loyalty. We also built out an integration for authenticated entry into AiFi autonomous stores, which will debut in early 2025.
These solutions utilize a Wicket wallet with stored payment and verified ID so that fans never have to swipe a credit card or show an ID – speeding up transaction times and providing the ability to easily tie back to loyalty systems so fans can get rewarded for their purchases. We continue to build out versatile facial payments solutions that work for a variety of customers, and if you’re curious to hear or see more – reach out or click the link below to see some videos of it in action.
Expansion of Conference Check-In Capabilities
Wicket recently opened up our platform in the form of a developer-friendly credentialing web hook that’s now available to customers – giving approved 3rd parties the ability to build Wicket’s facial authentication workflow into their existing products and applications to speed up check-in and session scanning at their conferences.
This builds on the success we’ve had with our RainFocus integration that has allowed early adopters such as Salesforce to utilize our technology at dozens of events, including Dreamforce 2024, where our “Digital Pass” solution saw over 30k attendees enroll to speed up their check-in process.
Revamped Wicket Edge Application
When Wicket deployed our first facial authentication product in 2020, it was for safe and touchless entry into sports stadiums to adhere to strict guidelines that were put in place due to Covid-19. We called our core application Wicket Entry, but in the years since, this application has expanded into many other versatile use cases beyond entry – so we took the opportunity to rebrand the application to Wicket Edge and to revamp the entire user experience with lessons learned over those years.
We set out to implement a thoughtful user interface that made it intuitive to users and staff while simultaneously allowing our customers to build in more robust on-device design capabilities to further customize the experience and align with their preferred branding. Wicket will continue to prioritize our user experience with learnings from over 3 million transactions across our ticketing, access control, credentialing, and payments use cases.
Single Sign-On (SSO) for Customers
Wicket now offers the option of Single Sign-On (SSO) log in for customers using our Access web application. We’re excited to share this new capability to align with the needs of customers that use SSO within their organizations, and we have support for a broad list of IDP providers.
If you are a Wicket customer looking to utilize this new option, please reach out to our support team and they’ll be happy to get you set up so that you can eliminate the need to use a username and password when logging in to Wicket Access.
Welcome to Wicket
We’ve been busy bringing on new venue and event customers over the past few months for a variety of use cases – here are a few:
Ticketing: USGA, CFA Peach Bowl, Sporting Kansas City, University of Florida, Geelong Cats
Access Control: New Orleans Saints, Kansas City Chiefs, Punta Gorda Airport
Credentialing: NFL, Zscaler, Workday, Nvidia, Ticketshow
Payments: LAFC, Angel City FC
Wicket In The News
NBC Nightly News – Behind-the-scenes look at NFL’s facial authentication technology
Sports Business Journal – Wicket named Mercedes-Benz Stadium tech partner
Forbes – Wicket named as part of MLS Innovation Lab’s second cohort
Stadium Tech Report – Wicket facial concessions program growing rapidly in Cleveland
Sports Business Journal – Florida Gators become Wicket’s first college sports customer
Did You Know?
Stadium Tech Report recently came out with their 2024 Stadium Connectivity Outlook Survey, and the results show that 47% of respondents have biometric technology on their list of top initiatives for 2025. If you’re interested in exploring the usage of facial authentication technology in 2025 with the leading provider in sports and entertainment – reach out!