In March, the ANA Inspiration in Rancho Mirage, Calif. was where fans got to watch the top women’s golfers in the world compete for the first LPGA major championship of the year. Also watching the tournament closely was NEC Corporation, a company that has provided facial recognition technology in the interest of public safety and security at various sporting events around the world.
The LPGA noted that this was “a biometric first”, as it was widely believed to be the debut of facial recognition technology at a golf event. NEC had worked with the LPGA and the tournament to pilot a program using facial recognition that according to the company would help ensure a “pleasurable customer experience” that the sports organization wanted its fans to have.
So according to the LPGA, the video face technology was positioned at the main entrance to Mission Hills Country Club, where faces of individuals were captured and extracted from the feed and matched in real-time. Also, media members underwent NEC’s NeoFace Watch face recognition solution before they could securely access the media center in what the company called “a unique VIP experience” for media and other credentialed patrons to get “frictionless entry into various secured environments around the golf course.”
According to the Japan-based company, NEC’s NeoFace Express rapid access solution eliminated long wait times by accurately identifying media members and tournament staff all while keeping a lookout for known persons of interest to law enforcement by searching against state/local and national law enforcement databases, keeping potential threats away by alerting the appropriate authorities.
Now, another sports league is looking into adding facial recognition technology. The NHL and some of its teams are fielding pitches from companies offering the technology that could help safeguard arenas, TSN reported.
Peter Trepp, the CEO of facial recognition technology company FaceFirst, told TSN that he met with the NHL in recent months.
“We’re very much in play with a number of stadiums, stadium management companies and teams,” Trepp told TSN, declining to say whether any teams are already using his company’s technology. “They’re looking to keep out the really bad guys and the technology has improved dramatically in the past few years. We can identify someone literally as they walk through the door. Identification happens within a few seconds. Then you can intercept them right then.”
A senior executive with an NHL team told TSN that he expects facial recognition tech will be adopted by the club and others in the league within the next two years.
“One of the reasons we haven’t seen this adopted is because we’ve been lucky,” the executive said. “We’ve seen attacks at concerts, at the Boston Marathon, at the Olympics, and at international soccer games. If there was an incident at a hockey game, this is something that would have already happened in the NHL.”
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Companies have previously tested their facial recognition technology with teams and also for large sporting events including the Super Bowl dating back to 2001.
Last October, Panasonic announced that FC Groningen launched a face matching pilot that brought four Panasonic Full HD security cameras with facial recognition software at turnstiles. The facial images of the Dutch club’s fans were sent to the control room in the stadium, where Panasonic face matching software compared them to a database of registered supporters with a stadium ban. Due to privacy legislation, only the images of the supporters with a stadium ban are saved, without any accompanying personal data.
That same month, NEC announced that facial recognition technology was provided at Atanasio Girardot Stadium in Medellin. The stadium is home professional football clubs Atletico Nacional and Independiente Medellin. The system including NeoFace Watch was delivered to the stadium operator, and it featured 170 high-resolution cameras spread across 40 sites throughout the stadium, including entrances, passageways and seating areas.
The system references images from a database of individuals who caused issues at past events in order to limit their access to the stadium if necessary. The system is also able to automatically detect unusual or suspect behavior in real-time, and to quickly send notifications to stadium staff.
For large events, facial recognition technology is being implemented. After NEC announced in 2015 that it would support the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo with safety equipment and software such as biometric authentication and behavior detection, the company proceeded to provide facial recognition among other solutions to RIOgaleão – Tom Jobim International Airport in Rio de Janeiro leading up to the 2016 Olympics.
And at the UEFA Champions League final in June, NEC had its NeoFace Watch software platform — for real-time CCTV surveillance, as well as still image and recorded video face search — used in and around the National Stadium of Wales in June. Faces were matched against 500,000 images.
“It was a great success,” South Wales Police Assistant Chief Constable Richard Lewis said in a statement.