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The trend of professional sports stadiums toward adopting cashless technology to bring greater operating efficiencies to concession stands and other retail outlets within the venue has taken another leap forward with Square Inc.’s 10-year deal to provide payment and merchant services to Los Angeles’s SoFi Stadium and adjoining Hollywood Park development.
With the deal, SoFi Stadium, the largest venue in the National Football League and home to the NFL Los Angeles Rams and Chargers, will become a fully cashless venue this season. Every checkout and purchase point within the stadium, including concession stands, bars, retail stores, and roving vendors, will be equipped with POS technology for card acceptance. Concessions vendors with handheld terminals will enable fans to pay for purchases at their seat using a credit or debit or mobile wallet.
The stadium will also use more than 1,000 Square Register and Square Terminal units that will allow the stadium to support special food and merchandise pop-ups at any location, for any type of event.
“Square is at the forefront of innovation across payment and transactions and shares our passion for incredible customer service,” SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park chief technology officer Skarpi Hedinsson says in prepared statement. “As a cashless venue, our partnership will offer fast, reliable, and secure contactless payments for guests that helps to create a safe and streamlined experience at SoFi Stadium.”
A major benefit for sports venues from cashless technology lies in the transaction data they can leverage to gain insights into sales trends, such as top-selling items and busiest purchasing times for all concessions, bars, and hawkers. This data can enable stadium operators to make more informed decisions when it comes to staffing, inventory, and promotions.
Eliminating cash acceptance removes costs from handling cash, which include paying personnel to count the cash and safely store it and armored car services to transport it, according to experts. It also avoids so-called shrinkage from employees pocketing money, they say.
“Cash reconciliation can be cumbersome,” says David Cromwell, senior vice president of operations for the Chicago Cubs. “Going cashless has definitely allowed us to become efficient [from an operating standpoint].” Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs, went fully cashless at the start of the 2021 season.
While sports stadiums were trending toward all-cashless environments prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the trend has accelerated since stadiums have begun reopening to fans. Levi’s Stadium, home to the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers, recently announced it will be cashless for the coming NFL season.
“The trend toward cashless has been building and it has gotten to the point that teams that were [reluctant] to put cashless technology into their venue now have the technology to do it,” says Geoff Johnson, a general manager at payments processor Fiserv Inc. “Consumers are showing that they will embrace cashless in sports stadiums because they have come to expect it outside those venues.”
