Wicket has formed a new partnership with Paciolan to bring facial authentication to college athletics programs, arenas, and performing arts centers that rely on Paciolan for ticketing. The integration will let venues using Paciolan’s platform add Wicket’s face-based ingress to their existing ticketing workflows, with pilot deployments expected in the coming months and broader availability ahead of the 2026 college football season.
Paciolan, a Learfield company, supports ticketing for hundreds of live event venues nationwide and provides the ticketing backbone for 75 percent of Power Four Conference schools. Under the partnership, those venues can route fans through Wicket-powered express entry lanes that match live faces against registered images, reducing scan times at turnstiles without requiring physical tickets or mobile barcodes. The integration is also designed to support fundraising, concessions, and credentialing use cases built on the same facial authentication layer.
“Paciolan has always focused on providing best-in-class ticketing solutions for our partners and their fans and patrons,” said Brendan Lynch, President at Paciolan. “Partnering with Wicket allows us to extend that mission by introducing innovative identity technology that enhances both operational efficiency and the fan experience.”
Alastair Partington, CEO of Wicket, said the partnership “allows Paciolan schools and facilities to easily enhance their existing ticketing solution with Wicket’s facial authentication platform to deliver sensational event experiences to their fans,” adding that “in these high-energy environments, ease of use, speed, and reliability matter.”
Jeff Boehm, Wicket’s Chief Operating Officer, said the companies previewed the integration at Paciolan’s annual user conference, PACnet, earlier this year and “generated a lot of excitement among the colleges and performing arts centers there.” Boehm said Wicket is “finalizing the integration now to have it ready to deploy well before the college football season this fall.” Attendees at PACnet could sign up to use Wicket for conference check-in on arrival, with Wicket staff running live demonstrations of facial ticketing, payments, and credentialing workflows.
The Paciolan partnership extends Wicket’s growing footprint in college athletics. The University of Florida launched Wicket Express Entry for the 2025 football season, and Arizona State piloted facial recognition for student entry at its football stadium later that year.
Those campus deployments sit alongside a broader base of professional venue rollouts. Wicket’s facial ticketing technology has surpassed five million scans across professional and college venues, building on deployments such as Gillette Stadium’s opt-in facial recognition entry and payment system.
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
