Levi's Stadium has "several new features the 49ers and their technology partners are introducing for this season's home games," according to Troy Wolverton of the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS. Fans using the Levi's Stadium app "will be able to send food to buddies located halfway around the stadium, pay for food and merchandise using fan club points and transfer tickets to friends and family members for free." Later this year, "they'll even be able to use the app to enter the stadium without having to show a printed ticket or scan a code." Perhaps the highlight feature of Levi's Stadium app 2.0 is the "personalized picture greeting on the scoreboard." That feature "automatically cues up curated fan pictures posted to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram with the hashtag #LevisStadium." When fans who have posted pictures to those services "arrive at the stadium, they're identified using the app and some new beacons located in and around Intel Gate A and their pictures are put in queue." The stadium app "then will alert fans that their pictures are about to be posted on the big board." The new features are "part of a broader trend by sporting teams to make stadiums and arenas more tech-friendly places by investing in apps and communications technologies." Experts said that as these types of features "proliferate at different stadiums, fans are starting to expect them." The new technologies also "help give the teams a greater ability to track and potentially control fans' experiences at a game" (SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, 9/16).
