NBA Turns to CLEAR Health Pass for Fan Safety

The NBA has announced a new multi-year partnership with biometric screening company CLEAR that will see all 30 NBA teams have access to CLEAR’s COVID-19 health screening technology in an effort to safely bring fans back to arenas for the 2021-2022 season.

CLEAR’s Health Pass program — which combines health surveys with the secure linking of COVID-19 lab results and vaccination records — is already being utilized by one-third of the 30 teams in the NBA, including the Orlando Magic, Atlanta Hawks, and San Antonio Spurs.

This new partnership will go beyond Health Pass, and include CLEAR’s biometric screening kiosks — capable of reading an individual’s temperature, and currently used in hundreds of airports around the world — and selfie authentication via the CLEAR app.

Fans wishing to attend a game would download the app and upload an identifying document along with a selfie. Before entering the arena, they would then open the app, authenticate their identity with another selfie that is matched against the one on file, and answer a series of health survey questions.

Though kiosks and temperature screening are a part of the arrangement, league sources told ESPN that it will be up to each individual franchise to decide whether they wish to use the program and CLEAR’s services.

In an effort to address concerns over data privacy, CLEAR stressed that arenas would only be receiving information regarding whether a fan has passed the screening requirements, and not any other private health info.

“You can do this with hardware or without,” CLEAR CEO Caryn Seidman Becker told ESPN in an interview. “You can just be purely mobile to drive throughput. I am very optimistic that you can head back to full stadiums.”

Source: ESPN

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April 12, 2021 – by Tony Bitzionis