If you were looking to go to the Super Bowl next year and use cash at the stadium, you might be out of luck. Daniel Kaplan of The Athletic is out with a new feature looking at the trend of stadiums that are pivoting to cashless events, and it could affect the Super Bowl.
As Kaplan points out, professional sports teams like the Atlanta Falcons and Tampa Bay Rays have already made the transition at their stadiums. Kaplan reached out to several team execs and got an interesting response from the Miami Dolphins.
“Tom Garfinkel, the president and CEO of the Miami Dolphins, which is the host team for the 2020 Super Bowl, wrote in an email, ‘Doing a lot of research now and contemplating cashless Super Bowl,'” Kaplan writes.
If the Dolphins do decide to go cashless for the Super Bowl, it would be a massive step for the movement. The trend is already picking up steam, and if the country's biggest sporting event opts for it, it could spread even quicker.
In his same piece, Kaplan writes that the Baltimore Ravens are strongly considering going cashless at M&T Bank Stadium in 2020. As stadiums look to transition away from cash, it's not just traditional credit and debit cards that they'll be using.
As Kaplan writes, teams are looking into developing their own apps for in-stadium purchases. The Falcons said that “by next year, the team’s app might be the primary purchasing medium in-stadium.” It's a very interesting development, although as Kaplan notes, there will be plenty of pushback.
Opponents of cashless transactions, such as privacy advocates, aren't going to go down easily. It'll be very interesting to see if Garfinkel follows through and if it continues to spread across the NFL.
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