In August 2016, the prefecture of Rome announced that for AS Roma’s home match against Udinese, fans going through the turnstiles at Stadio Olimpico would be filmed by cameras as part of a system equipped with biometric recognition capabilities. In the name of public safety and in an effort to identify fans known for violence, the data that could be recorded included the distance of the eyes, the length of the nose and the thickness of the lips.
This measure was introduced months after police, AS Roma and crosstown rival SS Lazio agreed to improve the stadium experience after a study showed that 7.5 percent of fans claimed that they did not feel safe. The main group that didn’t want measures taken sat in the Curva Sud section of Stadio Olimpico, although the main protest of the ultras wasn’t the facial recognition. It was the city’s erecting of plexiglass security barriers in the Curva Sud area — a move that AS Roma officials including co-owner Jim Pallotta didn’t support.
The barriers have since been removed, but the security subject remains a touchy one, as Pallotta had to recognize after discussing facial recognition technology at Leaders Meet Innovation in London last week.
“So we’re spending an awful lot of time on what type of security? What’s the facial recognition stuff that we’re going to use?” said Pallotta, whose team received approval last month to build a new venue in Stadio della Roma. “Three years from now, it’s going to be substantially different than it is today, so that’s the type of stuff that we’re dealing with with all the vendors.”
“You know how a Lazio-Roma game can be,” Pallotta told the crowd, smiling. “Or an Inter…well, they don’t fight as much in the north. But you know in the south if it’s Napoli and Roma and stuff like that, I mean the security issues are really significant there, and so there’s the rationale for the facial recognition there.
“About a year and a half ago, we went to the police, and I sat down with the police captain, and I said, ‘I don’t understand why you’re not arresting these people.’ And they said, ‘Well, let me show you why.’ And they pull out this notebook of all people that they know have committed something, and it’s all fuzzy pictures of them. So a simple thing back then was just, ‘Can we get high-definition cameras in?’ And we actually bought them ourselves for the stadium even though we don’t own it just so we can now start seeing who’s causing issues.”
Facial recognition technology is also being planned for the tech-savvy team’s new stadium and being linked to the ticketing in order to make sure that those who actually bought tickets are the ones attending games.
“I give away my Boston Celtics tickets to friends all the time,” Pallotta, also a Celtics co-owner, said according to Silicon UK. “In Italy you just can’t do that.”
AS Roma owner Jim Pallotta tells #MeetInnovation that facial recognition tech will be integrated into security and ticketing system at new Stadio Della Roma pic.twitter.com/bBm9JFkFcv
— Eoin Connolly (@eoinfconnolly) January 11, 2018
The comments about arrests apparently didn’t go over well with some fans who have grown weary of security measures and oppose the team’s move to a new stadium. According to Football Italia one banner displayed the message, “Pallotta spy, go away.”
Pallotta fired back, releasing a statement in Italian regarding how the comments about fan experience were “deliberately misinterpreted” by the media. He explained that the meeting with police came over the course of a year and a half as he asked them to reconsider the security barriers in the Curva Sud that were “unfair” to law-abiding fans.
That’s where the facial recognition technology comes into play, as Pallotta emphasized that technology could be used to identify those responsible for crimes rather than having an entire seating section of fans punished.