Stadium virus prevention steers spotlight toward fan privacy

The metal detectors every sports fan has become accustomed to at the gate might soon be accompanied by thermal body scanners as part of the gargantuan task of preventing the spread of the new coronavirus and other airborne diseases.

And that might be just one thing the public will need to be comfortable with in order to bring games back for in-person viewing.

Tickets have widely transitioned from paper souvenirs to smartphone screens, but how about using your face as your proof of purchase Nascent forms of crowd monitoring — like laser-driven density detection and camera-based calculations of line length — will likely grow faster in a post-pandemic era of live sports that must highlight hygiene.

“The pandemic really ups the need for greater assurance of stadium safety,” said Bob Boland, an athletics official who teaches at Penn State and has more than two decades of experience in sports and law as an instructor, consultant and agent. "Vaccine treatments, containment, they all could be game-changers, but people will need to be comfortable with mass body temperature screening and other technology that could be in play.”

Not unlike the aftermath from the 2001 terrorist attacks, when long waits to pass through magnetometers and have a security guard wave a wand over pants pockets became the norm.

“After 9/11 we overdid it, meaning we were so intent on making every building be safe and everyone safe that we made it extremely inconvenient to go to games and events. But we said that it would get better over time, and it did,” said Marc Ganis, cofounder of the Chicago-based consulting firm SportsCorp. “Now how do you do that?”

Technology will be a vital piece of the puzzle. It will also further test a fan’s willingness to potentially sacrifice a little more privacy in exchange for the opportunity to sit...

source https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Stadium-virus-prevention-steers-spotlight-toward-15314867.php