Large entertainment venues, like the Australian Turf Club (ATC), face significant challenges in managing security due to the high volume of foot traffic and operational complexity. To enhance safety and streamline operations, these venues are increasingly adopting facial recognition technology.
This technology aids in quickly identifying individuals, whether they are security threats or authorized personnel, across different sectors, including sports arenas and corporate buildings. The trend shows significant market growth, with expected quadrupling by 2026, as reported by Global Market Insights.
Facial Recognition in Action
The ATC confronted difficulties in effectively identifying and managing individuals involved in evictions over their expansive property. The challenge was compounded by theft and fraud in large crowds, making it nearly impossible for security personnel to manually track all potential threats. In response, ATC integrated facial recognition to better detect and respond to these risks, allowing them to maintain safety across multiple racecourses.
Data Protection and User-Friendliness
With over 500 staff, ATC must comply with rigorous data protection regulations
With over 500 staff, including 300 security officers, ATC must comply with rigorous data protection regulations. They required technology that not only facilitated real-time surveillance but also offered retrospective video analysis for post-event inquiries, particularly on high-traffic days.
A significant consideration was the user-friendliness of the system, as highlighted by Gary Colston, Head of Security and Access at ATC, who stated, “We needed something that was user-friendly. If it’s too complicated, [security teams] won’t use it and it becomes a waste of money.”
Integrating Biometrics-Based Technology
The introduction of Oosto OnWatch elevated ATC's security operations by enabling real-time watchlist alerting to preemptively recognize and block entry to banned individuals. This system allowed the security teams to monitor persons of interest seamlessly, receive instant alerts on any device, and circumvent manual image comparisons, thereby improving operational efficiency.
Enhancing Forensic Capabilities
The implementation of Oosto’s solution has substantially improved ATC’s ability to address compliance risks and enhance the visitor experience. The rapid search capability of OnWatch in analyzing historical footage aids in achieving a comprehensive understanding of security incidents, bolstering proactive detection and investigative operations.
Strengthening Entry Point Security
Besides addressing general safety, Oosto has helped secure authorized entry points at the club, safeguarding employees and patrons. Mr. Colston recounted a specific incident where the facial recognition system was instrumental in swiftly identifying a suspect involved in an altercation, ensuring prompt action to maintain venue safety.
By embracing Oosto’s advanced facial recognition technology, forward-thinking venues like the ATC can enhance client service, ensure security, and adapt to an evolving marketplace. This strategic move not only optimizes security operations but also positions these venues ahead of potential threats while fostering a safer environment for all.
Large entertainment venues offer opportunities for memorable experiences enjoyed by many attendees. With such breadth and scope of operations comes great operational complexity in managing a massive amount of foot traffic which exponentially increases risks for the safety and security of patrons.
Increasingly, entertainment operators are looking to technology to help solve some of the most pressing challenges in managing these environments in real-time.
Facial recognition technologies
Facial recognition technologies among sports venues, casinos, and corporate buildings are increasing because of their ability to quickly and accurately recognize people — whether they are bad actors (e.g., felons, hooligans) or authorized personnel. This capability is increasingly being leveraged across a broad range of use cases from watchlist alerting, access control, and forensic investigations. It’s not surprising that the market is facing explosive growth and is expected to quadruple by 2026, according to Global Market Insights.
Challenges for the racecourse included issues with identifying and managing evictions of bad actors across multiple entries and exits throughout the massive property. Theft and fraud are rampant in such large crowds, and it is humanly impossible to monitor everyone at all times. Security personnel needed to identify bad actors who had caused trouble on one property and to be able to recognize them again at another time, and in another one of the ATC racecourses.
Maintaining data protection
Coupled with a challenging and evolving risk landscape, more than 500 staff, including up to 300 security officers (and over 2000 casual staff) needed to be accounted for and kept safe on 120 major race days.
Moreover, with an ever-changing set of regulatory requirements, ATC needs to comply with a strict set of regulations in order to maintain the integrity of operations while maintaining data protection. Finally, ATC needed security technology that would enable real-time monitoring as well as the ability to analyse video footage retrospectively for post-event investigations to track behaviors - especially during high-traffic times.
Essential security tool
And the final requirement? A solution that needed to be user-friendly as the head of security knew all too well that if a system were too complicated, it wouldn’t get used and would be money not well spent.
The human eye alone is imperfect, and most facial recognition solutions underperform in real-world conditions (i.e. when there are crowds, facemasks, and POIs looking directly at the camera). This is even more challenging when the cameras are positioned on ceilings or high on walls, which makes facial recognition even more challenging (especially if the lighting is less than ideal). That’s why facial recognition technology is an essential security tool for entertainment venues and gaming operations.
Video analytics software
The Australian Turf Club and its systems integrator, Quorum Systems, turned to Oosto to take their venue’s enterprise security systems to a new level and solve their existing challenges.
“Positioned at key entry points, our passive cameras were turned into smart cameras with Oosto’s video analytics software nearly instantly,” said Gary Colston, Head of Security and Access at Australian Turf Club. “We didn’t have to invest in a bunch of brand new cameras or a massive amount of servers and things like that. It was easy for us to implement it on our system.” Moreover, said Mr. Colston, “We needed something that was user-friendly. If it’s too complicated, [security teams] won’t use it and it becomes a waste of money.”
Biometrics-based technology
Once The Australian Turf Club implemented Oosto OnWatch real-time watchlist alerting to recognize potential security threats, the solution delivered vast efficiencies in operations by ensuring that evicted and banned patrons were immediately refused entry, while security teams were able to better track persons of interest throughout the venue without disruption.
Since OnWatch can identify a person of interest through both face and attribute recognition in real-time or in historical footage, security personnel can receive alerts instantly on any device, without having to rely solely on memory or manual comparison of images between systems. With the world’s pioneer-edge biometrics-based technology in use, ATC was empowered to identify individuals a lot quicker than traditional methods allowed and manage their operations more efficiently and safely.
Addressing compliance risks
Oosto OnWatch quickly and accurately recognized persons of interest for security teams – from VIPs to banned players – to help improve the player experience, address compliance risks, and make ATC ultimately a safer, more enjoyable destination for patrons and a safer place to work for employees.
"Positioned at key entry points, our passive cameras were turned into smart cameras with Oosto’s video analytics software nearly instantly. We didn’t have to invest in a bunch of brand new cameras or a massive amount of servers and things like that. It was easy for us to implement it on our system. We needed something that was user-friendly. If it’s too complicated, [security teams] won’t use it and it becomes a waste of money," said Gary Colston, Head of Security and Access at Australian Turf Club.
Context of a security incident
Since working closely with the ATC and Quorum to implement Oosto’s OnWatch solution, ATC has significantly improved in the rate of detection, finding individuals, and being more proactive than reactive with potential threats.
The ability to search backward in video footage at a rapid speed to find POIs’ locations historically has been a welcome tool and a key point of differentiation for ATC; Oosto’s technology has dramatically improved ATC’s ability to perform forensic investigations and understand the full context of a security incident or crime scene.
Forward-thinking venues
Oosto’s cutting-edge technology is also in use at the Club to help protect guarded points of entry for authorized employees. According to Mr. Colston, this proved especially beneficial recently: “One of our staff members was assaulted and we were able to obtain a photo of the person we thought had done it and run them through the facial rec system here and we were able to locate him at the event at the time and have that person banned.”
Oosto’s Vision AI technology is helping entertainment destinations like the Australian Turf Club stay focused on the fundamentals of strong client service while remaining resilient as the marketplace continues to shift. As forward-thinking venues look to stay competitive, grow revenues, solve business challenges, gain greater operational efficiencies and ensure safer, more secure spaces, they look to Oosto - and then never look back.
