Liverpool FC club revealed plans this week to implement a smart card access system to its ground, joining pioneers Manchester City FC in its move to completely ticketless entry to every football match. Season ticket holders already hold a smart card and the scheme should in time roll out to all match ticket holders. Ken Webster, Liverpool FC's IT manager, says that the club hopes the system will be fully up and running in good time for 2008, during which year Liverpool is to be European Capital of Culture.

The club made its announcement as it revealed its imminent implementation of Software4Sport’s TALENT Sport, an iSeries-based ticketing and CRM software system designed specifically for sports clubs. The smart card entry system, supplied by Software4Sport and cryptography and smart card experts Fortress GB, will link directly into the TALENT CRM system. This means the club can operate a loyalty scheme, reduce queuing times, improve security, save operating costs and generate extra income, all at the same time.

Introduced at the beginning of the 2003/4 season at MCFC’s new City of Manchester ground, the smart card system improves security and eliminates counterfeit tickets. It makes sure everyone who enters the stadium, whether a home or away supporter, a season ticket holder or a match ticket holder, now uses a card to gain entry. Fortress contact-less card readers fitted at each turnstile grant access, and because they are radio frequency based so cards are merely passed in front of them rather than swiped through a slot, entry time is more rapid. According to the club, the readers have halved entry times compared to when the club was still at Maine Road.

Liverpool chose TALENT not only because of its status within the sporting arena – it is currently used at 50 per cent of premiership football clubs, including Chelsea, Manchester City, Newcastle and Wolves – but also because it can integrate with business areas such as accounts, marketing and customer service.

TALENT Sport uses a broad range of application modules built around a central CRM database to enable sports clubs to carry out all their ticketing requirements while keeping track of and utilising every customer’s spending patterns and personal details to maximise marketing opportunities. Its functions include ticketing, merchandising, corporate box sales, web sales, memberships and loyalty with real time integration to clubs’ back offices.

It also provides an ideal platform to evolve into ticketless entry. When TALENT goes online around the end of the current season, it will be installed on a new iSeries 810 running OS/400 5.2.

Using TALENT's web sales facility, Liverpool will sell tickets, season ticket renewals and memberships over the web in real time, giving fans more choice in how they buy tickets and letting them avoid phone and ticket office queues. Previously, the club sold tickets by allocating a certain number of seats and selling them off through a competitor software system. TALENT, however, allows the club to sell straight from the main inventory in real time, letting the club track ticket sales on a minute-by-minute basis.

Even better, the system means the club can alert fans via SMS text messaging to any unsold seats. “TALENT will help us improve the service we give to our fans, corporate customers, sponsors and suppliers, as well as store information that we can leverage for targeted marketing campaigns," says Ken Webster.

Further to its smart card entry system, Manchester City FC has just introduced state-of-the-art interactive kiosks. Standing outside the stadium, these kiosks enable fans to buy last minute tickets online. First introduced last month, the kiosks allow fans to check their seat number, the best turnstile to get there and their smart card profile, including a loyalty point balance.

To find this information, fans pass their smart card over special readers and then see a stadium plan on a colour touch-screen. The kiosk then prints a receipt with the seat number.

Explaining how the kiosk system helps fans, Duncan Martin, retail controller at Manchester City, says: “For league matches we have thousands of people coming to the stadium without a fixed season ticket seat, all arriving at the same time. The kiosks mean that any customer who has forgotten their seat number can quickly find out where they are sitting without having to go to the ticket office. Not everybody has access to the internet at home, so the kiosks give all of our customers the chance to use our club website and will hopefully encourage people to make more use of their smart cards.”