Veridas facial ticket feat at Estadio Mâs Monumental

Article posted by Coliseum, May 5^th, 2026

Image: Coliseum GSVA

Joe Scheschareg is holding a Sales Development role with the identity verification firm Veridas as he puts in, “Identity is the base of what we are and who we are. There are no two individuals in the world that have the same identity. Everybody is unique.”

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Scheschareg is associated with Sales Development with Veridas and for the past two years he has specialized in identity technology at the firm thus helping the stadiums and the sports organizations implement cutting-edge biometric solutions that enhance security, streamline access and elevate the fan experience.

In an animated conversation with ‘Coliseum’, Joe Scheschareg, Sales Development, Veridas, US, talks about one of Veridas’ largest and most successful use cases they had with the Argentine professional sports club – Club Atlético River Plate and their residence – the Estadio Mâs Monumental in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He stated, “We used the fans’ face as the ticket for getting into the Mâs Monumental Stadium because while attending a game the fans may forget their wallets, lose their ticket or maybe their phone is dead and they have to scan their tickets. And one’s face is one thing one cannot leave the house without. We at Veridas implemented about 280 to 300 terminals throughout the entire stadium making it the largest stadium in the world to have biometric entry at every access point in the venue.”

Veridas

Pamplona (Spain)-based Veridas solves the most urgent security issue one face today: Simplifying access for the legitimate users while blocking digital attacks and physical breaches. The core of their solution is a biometric algorithm that positively identifies people remotely or in person.

Club Atlético River Plate

The Club Atlético River Plate – more popularly known as River Plate – is an Argentine professional sports club based in the Nuñez neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is one of the leading and most successful professional club in Argentina.

Estadio Mâs Monumental

The 85,018-seat Estadio Mâs Monumental is an association football stadium in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Located in the Belgrano neighborhood it is the home of River Plate.

River Plate Project

Joe Scheschareg started the conversation by providing a background of the River Plate project – “The Estadio Mâs Monumental is the largest soccer stadium in South America and one of the largest worldwide. It has a capacity of about 85,000 fans. So, every fan that’s coming to the game has to enter through biometrics. This project took us about a year to complete and as you can imagine with a project of this scale we had to overcome many a challenges and obstacles along the way but with those challenges there were also a lot of lessons learned. And those lessons are very valuable to us as we move forward to the next project and the future projects that come.”

River ID

“River Plate offer memberships to their clubs. This membership gives one access to their digital portal which is called River ID and remote enrollment allows the fans to register and enroll from anywhere – whether that be from their couch at home, using a computer or a restaurant or a bar they attend prior to the game or even walking up to the stadium. Each fan is registered on the River ID with either an ID document or a passport and then from there Veridas performs the standard ID verification process which requires the user to take a picture of the front-back of their driver’s license as well as a selfie. To that process we check to make sure that the document is real and not fake and also compare the selfie with the image that is on the document. This ensures that the person who purchases the ticket is really who they say they are thus allowing the teams to know who is in their stadium and who is coming to their games. Once this process is complete your enrollment is then linked to your ticket and through integration for the ticketing system with the club and this is essentially where your face becomes your ticket.”

Project Challenges

Scheschareg further informed that their River Plate goal was to implement scalable, secure and frictionless access control system to the stadium but it came with its set of challenges – “We needed to manage access for above 85,000 people. This is a project at the scale that we have never worked on before. So, we had to figure out a way to get 85,000 people into the stadium securely and as quickly as possible. Secondly, we needed to transition from traditional ticketing to facial authentication without disrupting the matchday operations. When you look at how far the ticketing technologies came over the years – from physical tickets to digital and now face authentication – it is hard not to think how people have adapted to this type of technology over time. And this kind of leaves me into the next challenge here which is gaining trust and adoption from the fans to enroll. We eventually made the switch from physical to digital tickets.”

“Another challenge was we had to adapt to the existing operations that the River Plate were using at their stadium. This type of technology is to enhance the fan experience and eliminate the lines and queues for the people entering the stadium. So, we had to implement the same with the current infrastructure that is already there in the River Plate’s home. So, with those challenges obviously there were solutions. Veridas implemented the largest facial access control system in a soccer stadium worldwide. Veridas deployed a biometric authentication platform capable of verifying identity in less than one second and this was big for River Plate. If the fans get into the stadium quicker they will be able to spend more money once they get inside the venue and that really drives the revenue for the club and also for the stadium itself. We were enabling to promote pre-registration under 10 seconds and this initiative helped the River Plate shift to a fully digital fan experience and platform.”

Lessons Learned

He stated that they learnt from the River Plate project that user trust is key and communication and campaigns make the fans feel safe and excited – “Biometric technology is all about educating the people that it is a safe and easy technology to use. Infrastructure planning, anticipating the crowd behavior was huge. We wanted to make sure that the people of all ages were able to use this. A thing that Veridas takes very seriously is we always want to make sure we are compliant with the regulations that are in place. The user adoption grows with simplicity so offering the users and the fans to enroll remotely from their couch we were able to see the participation go way up and I think it is much easier for them to enroll from the couch rather than having to go to the facility and go to a window and talk to an employee face to face.”

Scheschareg pointed out that verified digital identity opens the door for deeper fan engagement, intelligence and future innovation.

Conclusion

Joe Scheschareg concluded by stating, “The best access system is the one you don’t even notice. We don’t want the fans to stop and have to think about how they are entering the stadium and want them to be able to walk right through and identity is important knowing exactly who is in your stadium, buying merchandise, interacting with the stadium at different stages is all data like I mentioned is important to these teams and really helps drive revenue. A face can give quick access, identity can give an unforgettable customer and fan experience. With access just the beginning the important thing is what happens beyond the turnstiles.”

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