English soccer fans get lifetime tickets in switch from paper to Smart Card

Thanks to a new kiosk system, "take a ticket, take a seat" has taken on a novel meaning for soccer fans in Manchester, England.

The Manchester City Football Club has put the system firmly in place following the success of a pilot project to introduce radio frequency ID (RFID) Smart Card ticketing last summer.

The system supplants paper tickets with RFID-based cards to eliminate ticket fraud and help facilitate the flow of fans into the 48,000-seat City of Manchester stadium.

"For league matches we have anything up to 4,000 people coming to the stadium without a fixed season ticket, all arriving at the same time," the club's retail controller Duncan Martin told vnunet.com.

"The kiosks allow any customer who has forgotten their seat number to quickly find out where they are sitting without having to go to the ticket office. We're also able to prevent people passing their cards back to others after they've already entered."

The club now provides fans with a single card and customer number for life.

The kiosk system continues to evolve. By the end of the season, fans will be able to buy last-minute match tickets and merchandise through the kiosks.

The system was developed by Fortress GB in partnership with Software4Sport and runs on an IBM server.