Sports venues are racing to go cashless to cater to younger and tech-oriented fans with promises of quicker service and fewer hassles dealing with cash. An added benefit for the venues is increased consumer analytics.
But some industry veterans and team executives see speed bumps in the rush to go cash-free.
“Why is it in the fans’ interest to do it?” asked Chris Bigelow, president of The Bigelow Companies, a food service consulting firm.
Bigelow expects to see pushback from fans worried about personal data collection via their debit or credit cards, as well as an aversion to the cashless model being forced upon them.
“I think you are also going to have the problem of people are very hesitant on giving up any information and [have the question], ‘Why are they tracking me?’” he said.
The idea of losing a sale — any sale — gives pause to some venues going completely cashless.
“I think everything is moving that way,” said Brooks Boyer, senior vice president of sales and marketing for the Chicago White Sox. “We are just not ready to jump in head first. If people want to pay cash for something, I think it’s in our best interest to take it.”
Venues also have to make sure their cash-free pushes aren’t running afoul of state and local laws related to accepting currency, said Carlos Bernal, president of Delaware North Sportservice. Philadelphia, for example, just passed an ordinance restricting cashless restaurants. And some states, such as Massachusetts, prohibit companies from being 100 percent cash-free, Bernal said.
Bigelow expects to see more political waves against cash-free venues, with critics arguing that the policies discriminate against fans who don’t have credit or debit cards.
TD Garden’s card transactions account for 85.8 percent of total concessions sales.td garden / delaware north
Lee Zeidman, president of the Staples Center and adjacent Microsoft Theater and L.A. Live development, said going cash-free is more of a challenge in his arena because the Lakers, Kings, Clippers and Sparks all have different owners and Southern California residents and international tourists have shown a proclivity to use cash.
“We found more of the patrons going to the cash side,” Zeidman said of tests done last year that tried out going cashless.
Testing is key, according to Jaime Faulkner, CEO of E15, Levy Restaurants’ analytics arm. Going even further, Faulkner said that testing needs to drill down into the different parts of a venue.
“Concourses behave very differently within the same venue,” she said. “We absolutely will do testing all around the venue.”
Levy is the concessionaire at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which went cashless earlier this month, and Tampa Bay’s Tropicana Field, which will do the same on MLB’s Opening Day.
Venue managers and team executives often try to be out in front of the industry, especially when it comes to technology, Zeidman said, and that can turn into a problem. Thinking through all possible scenarios is crucial, such as when kids come to games or events on a field trip or as part of a group. Most of the time their parents hand them money to spend, not a credit or debit card.
“What we don’t want to do is tell a 12-year-old that he has to walk halfway across the stadium to go buy whatever he needs to buy,” said Faulkner, who added that buildings need to have protocols in place for such situations.
The most broad of those is how to deal with fans who still want to pay cash.
Mercedes-Benz Stadium is deploying reverse ATMs for people without credit or debit cards to exchange cash for a Visa debit card. Fans won’t pay ATM fees on those transactions. At Tampa Bay Rays games, fans can exchange cash for a gift card at team stores, and staffers will be in concourses to help with questions and exchanges, according to Bill Walsh, vice president of strategy and development for the Rays.
Despite pushback and potential barriers, consumer trends are hard to ignore. Delaware North has seen card transactions at Boston’s TD Garden go from 47.5 percent of total sales during the 2016-17 season to 85.8 percent this season as it deployed more credit card points of sale and accepted Apple, Google and Samsung mobile payments.
Jay Satenspiel, regional vice president for concessionaire Spectra, said the cash-free experience has to be simple and easy, especially for older, reluctant, sometimes fearful fans. That includes something as simple as menu boards with larger fonts and images. Spectra is testing out a new self-serve, cash-free concessions area at the Chicago Cubs’ spring training facility in Arizona.
But in the end, Satenspiel pointed out, cash-free stadiums and arenas are simply following a larger societal trend.
“I look at my kids coming up and my grandkids coming up and so forth — their whole world is technology,” he said. “They don’t understand what cash is anymore.”
Mike Sunnucks can be reached at msunnucks@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
