When a sporting spectator receives a lifetime ban from a stadium for racism, vandalism, violence, streaking, etc. how is that enforced? There are tens of thousands of people who attend each game. What is a stop them from coming back? How does the banning process and enforcement work?
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Modern security camera systems, especially in places like stadiums, have insane AI processing capabilities that assign a unique ID to everyone who enters and makes it very easy to identify and track the movements of an individual
In the Netherlands, people with a stadium ban sometimes have to report themselves at a police station shortly before the match starts.
In Italy, for the worst cases you have an extra level of enforcement:
Every game day (home or away), you are summoned to the police station to sign a register, usually at the same time of the match: during the first half of the game, during the second half and a little after the end.
This is to ensure you are not near the stadium during events.
If you don’t go and sign, you could be arrested.
Asking for a friend, are we? This is a safe space, you can tell us what you did…
My brother used to work in the medical emergency staff in large football event and was often sitting in the “control room”. A large elevated room with perfect visual on the entire stadium.
Next to him there were two agents of the law enforcement agency for terrorism, organized crime, etc.
They had a camera with a huge lens, a computer, and a database. They were scanning the crowd, taking pictures, looking for some people in particular. It’s not that people banned from matches try to sneak it and sit quietly in the last row with a scarf on their face. They are in the middle of the rowdiest group, creating the same troubles that had them kicked out. No intervention was planned during the match, just collection of evidence.
Very much so depends. An nfl team is very different from a local minor league soccer game or whatever. They follow the same basic guidelines tho:
1. Ban your name and card from buying tickets. Pretty easy to get around but is a deterrent
2. Identify you at the door or in the stadium. For big stadiums they have some form of facial recognition that will give them an alert. Smaller venues will usually have someone watching the cameras. The list of banned people and the number of people entering are much lower. If they do get in a lot of times they are the kind of people that like attention so they do something that makes someone notice them
3. If they do come back in or if they did something especially bad, the stadium will pursue charges. If you’ve been banned and come back that’s trespassing. The threat of criminal charges does most of the work but then when people fuck around and find out it really discourages them from doing it again
4. How strict they are on it also depends a little bit on what you did and where you are. A lot of smaller places may have banned 10 people in the past but only really watch for one or two cause those are the ones that are likely to show up and will be issues. Most of the time if you come back 10 years later and look a little different and don’t cause an issue this time they won’t care. With facial recognition that might be changing some tho. I know stories about a good couple people that were banned from places when they were younger and now either come back unnoticed or even in the case of one group they got banned at a local stadium for being idiots when they were younger and now they are friends with the owner and joke about it
They don’t really check. I got banned from a JC penny in middle school for being obnoxious. My friends and I went back like a month later without incident.
Very generally, if a place is open to the public, and you get asked to leave and not come back, the rules change for you.
Now being there is trespassing. Now they can call the cops for you being there.
It’s not that they can keep you out, but it’s that they have your picture and since they’ve told you that you don’t belong and you came anyway, it’s actionable.
It depends on the venue, but I believe Madison Square Garden is actually using face tracking on banned fans to identify them.
https://slate.com/technology/2023/03/madison-square-garden-facial-recognition-stadiums-list.html#:~:text=In%20recent%20months%2C%20Madison%20Square,getting%20flagged%20by%20the%20software.
Many of these people are season ticket holders at their favorite club. Tickets cancelled
There is also a rise in e-ticket and app-based systems vs physical tickets. Instituted to cut down on scalping and counterfeiting. But it ties tickets to specific users and makes banning orders easier to enforce.
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