Feature: Build a stadium smart card infrastructure in five easy steps - December 2003  

Brian Hawkins

The use of smart cards is set to grow rapidly across the UK if British home secretary David Blunkett has his way and we're all issued with an ID smart card, writes Brian Hawkins, marketing director of TeamCard, the UK's leading sports management and reward system with 250,000 card holders. But smart cards are nothing new, and in sport, more than any other industry, smart cards have been enjoying a run of success for well over a decade.

Sport, with its many bodies, both clubs and associations, has been a natural home for card-based membership schemes. When members use their cards, they provide bodies with vital data that can be used to create a more understanding and commercial organisation. Cards reveal who did what, why, where and when. The smart card case is simple: if you know what your members want, you're well-placed to profit by offering the right merchandise, events, and entertainment.
However, card systems have come under fire in certain departments. There's no doubt that many bodies have ended up with a poor deal and a system that is entirely inappropriate for their long term needs. In this article I will explain how the right three inches of plastic can provide an efficient, cost effective and profitable link between sports bodies and their lifeblood.

Planning

Although it's a well-travelled theme, it's worth repeating the importance of considering all likely card uses at the beginning of a project. One of the well-promoted advantages of card technology is a multi-function capability; the industry talks up access control, electronic cash, reward, and ticket management on a single card, but this can be a misleading picture.

Step One - Compelling Use

At stage one, a sports body must make membership cards smart, put them in the hands of the members and provide compelling reasons for them to be carried and used. In the past, too many membership schemes have supplied cards with no obvious utility and they quickly end up gathering dust, lost in a drawer somewhere.
TeamCard holders use their cards when applying for tickets and for various interactions with a sports body. As long as the card is central to the relationship, members will give it a top slot in an otherwise overcrowded wallet and use it regularly.

Step Two - Deliver Benefits

Immediately, sports bodies and members can tap into the revenue generating capabilities of smart card technology. TeamCard holders are automatically introduced to a retail reward scheme, working both online and on the high street. Every time a member makes a purchase with a retail partner, the partner provides points, worth a penny each, to member and body. Members then redeem points with the body directly for cheaper merchandise or tickets. The system rewards members with lower costs - yet another compelling reason to carry the card - and sports bodies with increased revenue and data on their members' purchasing behaviour. Within a very short space of time, the data will provide sports bodies with commercial insight into their membership and the ability to recognise emerging trends and anticipate future demand. It's a clear win-win scenario for a sports body and its membership.

Step Three - Commercialise HQ

The next step is to get the HQ smart card enabled and encourage fans to use their cards for official purchases; including merchandise, equipment, tickets and leisure facilities. Point redemption encourages members to buy goods directly, delivering a higher profit margin to the body. The combined earn and redeem benefit encourages members to grow their commercial relationship with the sports body at the expense of its margin snaffling resellers.
At this point some sports bodies, such as smaller associations with multiple venues, will be happy with the revenue and member information that supports rapid commercial development. Larger sports bodies, regularly hosting events and matches, have far more benefits to consider.
For a kick off, soccer clubs on the European continent have scored by installing an electronic cash system. Smart cards can store small cash equivalents to be used by members ordering food and drinks; generating cash in advance and significantly reducing the cost of cash handling and fraud in the process. What's more, evidence suggests that members benefit from faster service times and are less likely to miss vital moments of the event when standing in a queue.

Step Four - Secure Access

For many sports bodies, the stadium is the jewel in their economic crown. Smart cards can manage access, making the stadium experience safer and more efficient in the process. UK soccer clubs installing TeamCard, such as Chelsea, Bolton, Crystal Palace, and Millwall, have all reported improved safety procedures, reduced ticket touting and a significant drop in hooliganism as a direct result.
These benefits are down to the efficiency and incorruptible nature of smart cards; queues are fast, fraud is impossible and clubs know exactly who is in their ground at a given time. Anyone causing trouble is easily identified by their card and will have it disabled for future games.

Step Five - Advanced Ticketing

Smart cards deliver advanced ticketing options that go way beyond the capability of everyday paper systems. For a start, sports bodies can ensure that the most loyal fans get priority tickets for big, sell-out matches because the system logs the number of games attended and automatically reveals who has been most loyal over the year.
The attendance data is also useful to advertisers and sponsors, who can run match day promotions when their favoured audience is likely to be in attendance, or can offer points to encourage members to arrive at the stadium early. Overall, attendance data provides valuable member and commercial value.
No matter how big the occasion, there's always a sizable group of ticket holders that can't attend a match, usually for good reasons, and will either let their ticket go to waste, or sell it on. Either way, the body loses an opportunity to resell the ticket. Under a smart card ticketing scheme the ticket holder can be compensated with reward points if they allow the body to resell the seat; once again benefiting both parties from a simple transaction.

Conclusion

Smart cards are increasingly popular, in sport and beyond, because they give sports bodies a comprehensive platform for managing their members. A full system provides commercial data, actual revenues, marketing opportunities, efficiency, security, ticketing innovations and goodwill.
Whilst other card systems can provide one or two parts of a matrix, only smart cards can deliver a future proof system that inspires ongoing commercial evolution, turns members into happy customers and helps secure the financial future of the sports body. Unfortunately, many sports bodies mistakenly believe that other cards can do the same job. In my experience, that's proved to be a very expensive mistake.
Only four things in life are certain; birth, death, taxes and a smart card to administer it all.

For further information about TeamCard visit www.teamcard.co.uk

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