AiFi-enabled frictionless fan experience

Article posted by Coliseum, September 5^th, 2024

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Joe Jorczak feels that a positive fan experience is one of the major revenue drivers for a venue – the fan should feel at one with the fellow fans – a sense of belonging and community.

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He strongly feels that a positive fan experience promotes a sense of shared experience and belonging that will resonate with them for years and will keep pulling back the fans to the venue. Jorczak, who works for AiFi, swears by his platform when it comes to a frictionless fan experience in a venue – AI-powered shopping and no waiting in long, serpentine queues.

Joe Jorczak is the Head of Global Revenue at AiFi, US, where he leads the sales team to deliver value to AiFi’s customers.

In an interesting and informative talk with ‘Coliseum’, Joe Jorczak, Head of Global Revenue, AiFi, US, asserts that AiFi Inc., the leading provider of frictionless checkout solutions, help do away with “crazy lines” in venues and provides zero friction experience to the fans. He also presents a case study on the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia (US) and why the fan-first policy venue is “so excited about working with AiFi because we are really flexible in thinking about the integrations – payment processors, third-party devices and things like that” and make the fans’ in-venue experience seamless – be it frictionless ingress-egress or savoring succulent food.

AiFi Inc.

Burlingame (US)-based AiFi provides the most flexible artificial intelligence (AI) platform that enables the retailers to affordably deploy and scale autonomous shopping solutions across their businesses.

Mercedes-Benz Stadium

The 71,000-capacity Mercedes-Benz Stadium is a multipurpose stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It opened in the year 2017 and is the home of the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League (NFL) and the Atlanta United FC of Major League Soccer (MLS).

Joe Jorczak avers that the biggest nightmare for the fans is to jostle through the lines to get into a venue and then again being greeted with “sea of people on the concourse and crazy lines while trying to get something hot to eat”.

He underlined that the fan experience at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium is totally frictionless as they take a very holistic approach towards fan experience – from the time they get their tickets until they are pulling out of the parking lot. And he says that helping the facility to make the fan journey enriching is AiFi and Hanwha Cameras.

Jorczak added, “The Mercedes-Benz Stadium is known for having this fan-first, fan forward experience. They really focus on trying to make sure the fans get through the lines really quickly. They were looking at autonomous solutions and got in touch with us in the year 2022. They had a very traditional kind of approach – combination of self-checkout, kiosk, traditional walk up to the point of sale (POS), and it was just kind of antiquated view and it didn’t really fit the vibe and ethos of the facility.”

AiFi bought about a sea change in the fan experience aspect at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

ATL Market

The ATL Market is a checkout-free concession stand at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium – “AiFi helps further the fan experience at the ATL Market when it comes to food and beverage. Fans can walk up and swipe or tap their credit card to pay. Once inside the store, then they can grab whatever they want and then they simply walk out. There is an exit, they leave, and once they leave they will be charged for all the other things that they purchased. It eliminates the process of waiting in a line, then check out, it avoids the line you see in the other concession stands. This is the kind of experience we want for all the fans and all the guests to go through when they come to watch an event.”

Apart from the ATL Market, the Mercedes-Benz Stadium has more locations powered by AiFi – the Drink Mkt and the AT&T Perch “and probably 10 to 15 across the venue that they are looking to expand into” giving more fans the opportunity to experience AI-powered shopping and never wait in line.

Jorczak informed that the AiFi-powered concessions at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium have led to an increase in revenue per caps and the venue has seen a lot of “repeat visits as we have the right assortments tailored for the right audiences”.

He pointed out, “If the people are comfortable with the technology they will come back again and again. It should be a scenario of nobody-waiting-in-line, everybody-in-their-seats, cheering-the-team -on. We are going to be powering 35 stores across the entire venue and that’s going to include merchandise as well so we are going to integrate power of ideas into the solution. So, that way again, you have this integrated experience, you can really think about new designs, new layouts, new locations.”

Sum-up

Jorczak’s secret sauce – The most pertinent factor, according to him, is a “flawless fan experience, to be creative with the format and being able to know who your guests are to do things like tailor promotions, in-store promotion, marketing campaigns, it just opens up a world of possibilities in terms of how you get more of a relationship and an ongoing dialog.”

Wrapping up, Joe Jorczak stated, “Innovation is core to what we are doing at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium as an organization. We see the fan experience as the center of everything we do and we provide the best experience possible so that they will come back and have a great time. And that’s what it is all about.”

The future of the stadiums lies in embracing frictionless checkout experiences. AiFi, with its cutting-edge computer vision technology, stands at the forefront of this movement revolutionizing the fan experience within the stadiums and beyond.

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