Panasonic Brings Face-Based Entry to Belgian Soccer Stadium

Fans of the Belgian soccer club RWD Molenbeek will soon be able to access their home stadium via biometric recognition. The service comes by way of Zetes, and thanks to facial recognition technology from Panasonic.

For RWD Molenbeek fans, this means that when season tickets are ordered online, they’ll be asked to upload a selfie. They will then be matched to that image by face-scanning cameras when they come to the stadium for a match, automatically granting them access. It’s the same idea behind the biometric boarding systems emerging at a growing number of airports around the world, offering greater convenience to customers while improving efficiency for administrators.

In a statement announcing the deployment, RWD Molenbeek Chairman Thierry Dailly proclaimed, “The very high reliability of the recognition system combined with fast data processing has enabled us to install a system that is as unintrusive as possible for our members, and speeds up the checks at the entrance.”

Zetes CTO Alain Wirtz, meanwhile, emphasized the sophistication of Panasonic’s technology, which he said offers “extremely high recognition rates, even in poor lighting conditions or when the face is partially hidden.” Panasonic took a controlling stake in Zetes in April of last year, and fully acquired the company that July.

RWD Molenbeek’s face scanning system will go live in September.

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June 14, 2018 – by Alex Perala