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How to improve your stadium fan experience ?

As if running a huge venue holding thousands of spectators isn’t hard enough, adding an entire food and beverage service and catering to customers in a quick, smooth and comfortable manner can seem almost impossible. After all, the lengthy and often unmanageable queues are deemed part of the package when it comes to spectator sports. But with the right tech upgrade, having an integrated POS system designed to support larger venues can really make a difference for the stadium fan experience.

Find out how you can transform your stadium service below.

Discover SumUp POS

1. Opt for a powerful POS solution

The advantages that come with a dedicated stadium POS are endless and while an automated and digitised service used to fall under the ‘nice-to-have’ category, they’re quickly growing to be a key element in stadium management.

By implementing a POS system across all checkouts within the venue—whether that’s for food, drink, merchandise or table service—users can quickly order what they need and pay online. With orders either brought directly to their seats through in-seat ordering or left at a designated collection point (with the customer notified), stadium organisers are able to create an extremely efficient service that minimises queuing and streamlines the entire transaction process.

These solutions provide obvious benefits in themselves. However, by leveraging and integrating the latest POS technology, venues can also gain access to the data gathered from their customers and personalise their individual fan experiences such as memorising previous orders for season ticket holders and more. Enhanced analytics only serves to further improve the customer experience—something that was not being utilised before the pandemic.

With Point of Sale Pro by SumUp, your POS software and hardware can be scaled up to support stadiums, venues, festivals and multi-chain businesses with dedicated features that streamline your services.

  • Lightning-fast checkout 

  • Flexible orders

  • Slick hardware and easy-to-use software

  • Real-time data and reports

  • Multi-user access

Kit out your stadium or larger venue with all-in-one POS that’s easy to use, meaning your team can be trained in minutes and given their own login thanks to multi-user access.

Once you’re ready to go, you can speed up checkout and reduce queues with simplified orders and payments. Reduce wastage and keep track of your stock with real-time data and reports too, so your business can stay on top of its game.

2. Go cashless

Accepting cash payments at your stadium business means committing valuable staff time to several tasks that will simply disappear if you choose to go cashless—setting up cash floats at the beginning of the day, periodically refilling the registers with change, counting and reconciling cash for each register at the end of the day and making bank deposits.

With cashless payments, everything is digitised through your POS till system, meaning you’re ready to go as soon as the till is switched on and all that counting time is eliminated. By doing this, some venues are reporting labour cost savings of up to 2 hours per day, per staff member.

On average, it takes 15 seconds to complete a cash transaction. By contrast, chip and pin take between 5-8 seconds and contactless can be completed in just 2 seconds.

Additional benefits include vastly reducing the risk of exposing your business to human error and, because card and mobile transactions are automatically reconciled with your bank, there is also no need to pay for a security team to support your business with bank transfers.

3. Start mobile ordering

We like 2-in-1 solutions, whether it’s your toothpaste, shampoo or the point of sale software that manages your entire operation.

It’s specifically mobile and in-seat ordering that gives stadiums a way to offer convenience coupled with the atmosphere of a live experience.

Using a mobile-ordering method, fans can order their drinks or food from their mobile device and either have it delivered to their seat or collect it as soon as it’s ready. Concession operators can also now use wireless, hand-held POS terminals to take quick-purchase items like drinks or ice-creams directly out to fans and accept payments right there and then.

If mobile or in-seat ordering isn’t an option, placing self-service kiosks or checkouts near to hospitality or merchandising outlets can give customers another way to fast-track their orders or purchases.

4. Include control terminals in your stadium

Having a control terminal like SumUp Kiosk can significantly change the experience of your customers. At any time they can order, reorder, pay on their own, and collect their order at the bar.

For you, it’s a big win as well:

  • Complete in-house ordering and payment

  • Understand your sales and consumers better with in-depth reporting

  • Improve consumer journeys with detailed and accurate sales information

  • Save money on front-of-house servers: Kiosk can reduce FOH labour costs by 30%

  • Upsell more: 51% of people buy more during an interaction with a Kiosk

  • Serve consumers faster and reduce queues

  • Reduce wastage with accurate ordering and no human error

5. Look for an all-in-one solution

In making ordering and paying easy for fans, stadiums are able to entice fans to purchase food and beverages inside their own venues and boost profit margins while providing a superior fan experience. Opting for a POS solution that does both, with the mobile ordering integrated seamlessly into the system, staff can serve all of its functions with ease and shoot through orders quicker and easier than ever before while monitoring stock, accessing valuable insights and keeping queues to a bare minimum. Providing a frictionless service and upping turnaround makes the initial investment a worthy upgrade. Discover Point of Sale Pro by SumUp and kit out your stadium or venue with scalable POS technology that makes every day easier.

Discover SumUp POS

Mathis Jean-Gilles