VenueNext adds fan-safety incident reporting feature to stadium app platform

Stadium app vendor VenueNext said it will add a fan-safety incident reporting feature to its base application platform, giving stadiums and other large public venues a way to allow fans to report game-day incidents using their mobile devices.

By partnering with LiveSafe, a company with a suite of safety services based on the idea of “crowdsourced intelligence,” VenueNext will add a fan-safety feature to its app platform, launching the service first on the company’s flagship app for Levi’s Stadium, home of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers. According to a release from the companies, other VenueNext customers will be able to add the feature into their apps in the future.

While the idea of using fans, devices and apps to report problems inside stadiums is not a new one — remember CrowdOptic and its ideas to use triangulation to find problem areas in stadiums? — it’s one that will no doubt gain steam as more fans get used to the idea of stadium apps as service platforms. Baylor University, which uses a YinzCam game-day app, allows its fans to report network problems via the app. The power of such reporting tools is that they can precisely geo-locate a problem thanks to network positioning, and with device cameras they can also provide security or repair crews with a wealth of visual information, quickly.

The options in the LiveSafe feature for VenueNext show a long list of potential problems, ranging from cases of assault and abuse to accidents or traffic issues, or lost items. While the addition of such a platform is a good first step, it’s only as good as the stadium’s ability to respond to alerts and issues.

While the release claims that fans using the LiveSafe feature will be able to “interact with security officials through two-way communications,” there are no guarantees about whether such communications will be live, or asynchronous, or whether or not an alert will elicit a response. A VenueNext representative said “When security responds, the fan will also get the response instantly. The fan won’t get an automatic response to know that it was received unless someone in security manually responds.”

Anyone out there with experience using the app feature at Levi’s Stadium, please let us know if it works as advertised.