Interdasting - cashless stadiums

Jun 18, 2019, 3:21 PM

What says you?
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Planning to root in person for your favorite team? In coming years, if not sooner, you may need to leave cash behind and arm yourself with plastic or a payment app if you want to buy a hot dog or jersey.

Mega events as disparate as the Super Bowl and Wimbledon confirmed they are considering making the move away from currency, and other venues are likely not far behind.

The development underscores a trend seen on a smaller scale in retail America. Already, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home to the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United, went cashless in March, as did the Tampa Bay Rays home, Tropicana Field. And overseas, Tottenham FC’s new London mega-stadium opened cashless in April.

“We will look at it very hard for the 2020 season,” said #### Cass, the Baltimore Ravens president, offering his team is not prepared to do so this season. The advantages, he said, are “the concession lines would be faster, once people get accustomed to it. And I think the more and more technology improves, cashless transactions will get faster.

“It’s inevitable at some point that we will have almost all cashless transactions,” he added. “That’s just the way. I mean, when you go into Starbucks now, not that many people use cash, and when they’re using cash and people are sort of grumbling to themselves, ‘Why is he using cash?’ Right?”

Alex Sommers, 25, speaking last week at a Rays game, agreed. “I can’t believe it took this long to make the move to only credit cards,” he said. “When I heard back in January that the Rays were making a move to only cards I was really excited and I knew it would be a great idea despite some of the pushback people gave it. I very rarely have cash on me, but I have plenty of credit cards and even if the system was still the same I would be paying with credit cards. From my point of view, the world is moving away from cash so the move just makes sense.”

His friend, Zach Quilla, 24, added, “all in all it was a smart business move to help keep lines shorter and let fans get back to their seats sooner to watch more of the Rays kicking butt.”

The move to cashless has critics. In 2017, 6.5 percent of American households were “unbanked,” according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., meaning they didn’t have checking or savings accounts. Some municipalities, like Philadelphia, even require retail outlets to accept cash.

Chris Peterson, director of financial services and senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America, whose dry cleaner he griped recently stopped accepting bills and coins, is deeply troubled by the trend. Beyond the unbanked issue, he said the loss of privacy from using electronic payment systems should alarm fans.

“People ought to be able to go to a ballpark, take in a game without having big corporate brother looking over their shoulder,” he said.

“Cash is like a … it’s a basic medium that people understand. And it’s a public payment system, that has some cost advantages for some segments of our economy. So while I get that it may be convenient, and maybe slightly more cost effective for what, Mercedes-Benz Stadium? I don’t know that it’s necessarily a helpful development for many middle- and working-class families.”

Steve Cannon stares forward from his salad in a midtown New York Le Pain Quotidien, and vigorously declared that his stadium answered the “bankless” issue with 10 reverse ATMs that, at no fee, exchanges cash for universal Visa debit cards. Cannon is the CEO of AMB Group, the holding company that owns, among other assets, the Falcons, Atlanta United and Mercedes-Benz Stadium. In the short time since the venue went cashless in March, food and retail sales are up about 15 percent, he said, evidence in his opinion that fans want the change.

A recent convert to vegetarianism, he said by collecting payments data, which is not possible with currency, the teams know if, for example, a particular fan is buying vegan dogs. Then the fan can get a thank you offer for a vegan dog (for the record his venue does sell vegan dogs, though he admits the stadium doesn’t do a brisk business with them).

“We will have a much more nuanced understanding of what your likes are,” he said, arguing the positives of the team collecting payment information.

There is one segment of the Mercedes-Benz Stadium universe Cannon conceded is unhappy: the venue’s bartenders, of which there are as many as 210 during an event. Some are not pleased about losing cash tips, Cannon said, and resigned: “We will manage that attrition and replace them with bartenders who are fine in a cashless environment,” he said.

Next up on the cashless train may be the biggest plum of all, the Super Bowl. Tom Garfinkel, the president and CEO of the Miami Dolphins, which is the host team for the 2020 Super Bowl, wrote in an email, “Doing a lot of research now and contemplating cashless Super Bowl.”

Even tradition-bound grass court spectacle Wimbledon is studying it. “We also have long-term ambitions to work together (with partner American Express) to take the site cashless in line with changing consumer behavior and expectations,” said Alexandra Willis, head of Communications, Content & Digital at the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club, which owns and operates Wimbledon.

And for critics like the Consumer Federation’s Peterson who worry about companies collecting consumers’ data, the news, at least from his perspective, may just get worse. The Falcons’ Cannon said by next year, the team’s app might be the primary purchasing medium in-stadium.

“Our goal in the future is to integrate the purchasing capability into your (team) app so that the phone will be your primary instrument to unlock value within the stadium,” Cannon said. “This year is (about getting) to a steady state in a cashless environment; right, get comfortable we are operationally sound, and the next year the goal would be to add that purchasing capability into your phone. So we will have Apple Pay and kind of a QR code capacity, much like the Starbucks app.

“I will know when you come in,” he concluded, “and what you buy and when.”

https://theathletic.com/1008188/2019/06/18/a-cashless-super-bowl-could-be-coming-soon-what-does-the-growing-trend-for-sports-venues-mean-for-the-fans/