As the longtime warden of all things technology for the San Francisco Giants, chief information officer Bill Schlough has seen (and sometimes deployed) many different types of tech. So when he tells you a new one really gets him jazzed, it makes sense to pay attention.
The newest addition to Oracle Park’s tech stack is the facial-authentication ticketing system provided by Major League Baseball, which uses technology from NEC. Called “Go-Ahead Entry,” the camera-based ticketing gates (called “monoliths” in MLB lingo) are already seeing rapid acceptance by fans attending Giants games, according to some early season numbers provided by Schlough.
“I haven’t been this excited about a technology in a long time,” said Schlough about the Go-Ahead Entry systems during a recent phone interview, when he showed his technical age by recalling another “cool” technology once offered by the Giants, which were scanners that let you download starting lineups to your Palm Pilot so you could keep score digitally.
If you haven’t yet heard of the MLB Go-Ahead Entry system, here’s a quick primer: Using camera and facial authentication technology from NEC, the MLB program allows fans to verify ticket information by simply walking by the gate monoliths and looking at the camera. Fans must pre-enroll in the system via MLB’s Ballpark app by taking a selfie picture and linking that to their ticketing account. Once at the game, fans can use the Go-Ahead Entry lanes and have tickets validated just by walking past and looking at the pedestal’s camera. Multiple tickets on the same account can be verified with one look, allowing groups of family or friends to enter at the same time.
‘Walking in like you own the place’
Just describing it in words, however, does not do the system’s coolness justice, according to Schlough. While some stadiums have deployed facial-authentication systems (most using technology from a startup named Wicket) that require fans to stop and show their face to a tablet, Schlough said MLB’s Go-Ahead Entry devices can verify a fan’s face at a walking pace, a difference that he said is best appreciated by trying it out.
“This is a different approach, where you don’t break stride [when you pass the monoliths],” Schlough said. “You just walk in like you own the place. It’s pure joy!”
According to Schlough, the Giants have installed two Go-Ahead Entry monoliths at two different locations. One is at the Lefty O’Doul Bridge entrance to the park, on the south side near the bay. The other is at the entrance at 2nd and King Streets, a higher-traffic area for fans. Schlough said that through the first seven games of the season (one exhibition and six regular games) the Giants are already seeing an average of 11 percent of fans per game using the Go-Ahead Entry gates at the 2nd and King entrance. At one Sunday game the Giants saw 1,198 fans use the Go-Ahead Entry gates at the 2nd and King entrance, Schlough said.
With some clear signage that explains the system outside the gates, fans are able to quickly enroll in the system by taking a selfie and agreeing to a couple information-release pages. With their Ballpark app tickets now linked, they can simply walk by the monoliths into the park without stopping, a process Schlough said has resulted in more than a few high-fives from fans to the team greeters on the other side.
“I just love seeing the reactions,” said Schlough, who took a little bit of pride in being the first Bay-area franchise to offer such technology to its fans. When combined with the team’s Evolv Express walk-through security scanners, Schlough said the Go-Ahead Entry technology is a true game-changer.
“It’s just so much more of an efficient way to get in to the stadium,” said Schlough, comparing the technology to the leap made when stadiums switched from hand-punched paper tickets to digital ticketing. According to Schlough, teams do pay MLB for the Go-Ahead Entry systems, but our guess is that the cost is somewhat subsidized by MLB since Schlough said the systems aren’t costly comapred to other stadium tech the Giants have deployed. (MLB so far is declining to reveal any cost or other specifics about the systems.)
The Go-Ahead Entry systems were first publicly trialed at Citizens Bank Ballpark in Philadelphia last year. For the 2024 season, the Phillies were joined in the Go-Ahead Entry rollout by the Giants, the Houston Astros and the Washington Nationals. More teams are expected to roll out the systems as the 2024 season progresses. By the end of the 2025 season, Schlough predicts more than half of the attendees to Giants games will be using Go-Ahead Entry to get in to the park.
New ribbon boards, spotlights and sound
The Go-Ahead Entry gates are just part of a fairly big tech revamp made by the Giants this offseason, a $15 million spend that included new LED boards, including new ribbon boards for the fascia along the first-deck overhang, a new sound system, and some new spotlights that will allow the Giants to do some cool new tricks like being able to shine spotlights on different parts of the field or by blanketing the stadium in a single color of light.
The sound system replacement, Schlough said, is the first audio upgrade since the park was first opened 25 years ago. One of the new LED boards will be an Oracle Park-specific placement, on the outside of the left field wall to give the kayakers in McCovey Cove a view of what’s happening on the other side of the fence. For Giants fans, having constant tech improvements at the ballpark is as natural a thing as crab sandwiches and garlic fries.
“It’s all about creating a more engaging experience,” said Schlough, whose park was the first known stadium to provide fan-facing Wi-Fi (back in 2004, when you needed a laptop and a Wi-Fi card to connect) and last year was one of the first to install Wi-Fi 6E thanks to an upgrade using equipment from Extreme Networks.
