What Could ‘RFID’ Mean for Your Event?
What Could ‘RFID’ Mean for Your Event? Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID for short, is used for automatically identifying items, packages and people. The RFID tag is attached to an object after which they can be traced and tracked, and today the technology is used in inventory management, asset tracking, toll collection, payment systems and, of course, in event management.
One of the early uses of RFID were the tags placed on animals for identification. Today, thousands of companies around the world use RFID to improve internal efficiencies and in most countries RFID tags are being used to pay for public transportation, to collect tolls on highways, to secure library books and shop items.
RFID and Live Events
RFID serves multiple applications, especially in the live event industry. Instead of paper tickets for entrance and regular payments, RFID brings the possibility to easily permit entrance and payments to visitors through radio waves. RFID can also be used for marketing purposes and Facebook already uses RFID cards at most of their live events, to allow guests to automatically take and post photos.
They could use the wristband to enter and exit the site, with the extra security of having the bike’s license plate numbers stored in the owner’s wristbands making sure only the owners could leave the site with their bike.
The first cashless live event fully integrating RFID was Harley Davidson’s key European event – Open Road Festival (2013), where all attendees and staff were issued with RFID wristbands. They could use the wristband to enter and exit the site, with the extra security of having the bikes license plate numbers stored in their owner’s wristbands to make sure only the owners could leave the site with their bike. With the RFID wristbands attendees could also pay at every selling point and keep track of their spending online. Merchants as well as visitors claimed the wristbands were easy to use, while the technology was able to withstand peak use moments.
RFID might bring even more: increase spend per customer, increase efficiency in operations, eliminate theft, enable real-time reporting and strengthen brand awareness.
Since the first RFID integration in the live event industry was a success, other live events have incorporated RFID as well. Among those were Sónar Barcelona, Eurosonic Noorderslag, Detonate Festival UK and Kappa Futur Festival. Besides faster transactions, reduced processing times and social media engagement, RFID might bring even more: increase spend per customer, increase efficiency in operations, eliminate theft, enable real-time reporting and strengthen brand awareness.
Technology is always evolving, becoming more useful and important every day, the case with RFID is the same. Products will be developed in such a way that the staff as well as the visitors in the live events industry can benefit from it. Even a few years after the first live event that fully used RFID and dozens of events later, RFID technology already is such an outcome that it will be only be a matter of time for the live industry to fully incorporate RFID.
About this guest post
Invengo – the global RFID technology provider is a leading developer and manufacturer of high quality, intelligent RAIN RFID (UHF) and NFC (HF) inlays, tags and connectivity solutions utilized in the Internet of Things (IoT). With a focus on RFID innovation, Invengo has created a leading product line in retail, library, (industrial) laundry, pharmaceutical, healthcare, (public) transportation and many other industries.
