“Today the MLB announced that the Oakland Athletics are piloting a new NFC ticketing solution which lets fans enter the stadium by tapping their phone (or Apple Watch) to a ticket scanner – just like you’d do to use Apple Pay,” Fitz Tepper writes for TechCrunch. “”
The feature uses the NFC technology that is used for contactless rewards cards (like Walgreens Balance Rewards) via Apple Pay, and this is the first time the technology is being used outside of reward cards or stored balance gift cards,” Tepper writes. “The pilot lasted for a six-game homestand starting Sept. 22nd after iOS 11 launched, and was the first time a professional sports event supported contactless tickets in Apple Wallet.”
“The tech is being developed by Tickets.com, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of MLBAM,” Tepper writes. “They power the ticketing for 23 MLB teams and while there will be no more games this season that support contactless entry, the firm will be working with those teams (and its non-MLB clients) to implement the technology for the 2018 season.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Secure and seamless certainly sounds like a winning combination for event entry!
MLB has been the leader of all sports organizations in employing cutting age technology in the digital age.
(Good luck to The Mighty New York Yankees in tonight’s wild card game against Minnesota.)
UPDATE: Yanks 8, Twins 4
now on to the ALDS with The Tribe. 🙂
this should have been done long time ago soon after iPhone 6/6S with apple pay was released, too late now
Looks like only users will be aloud at those games then? Guess that means I won’t see anymore of those annoying Android people ruining my day out then! GO TWINS!
Sounds like a home run!