Kick-off at Selhurst Park for the London derby game between Crystal Palace and West Ham was delayed by 15 minutes when turnstile technology failed before kick-off leaving thousands queuing outside and delay of 15 minutes.
Crystal Palace were one of the early adopters of moving away from paper tickets as they embraced QR codes and then NFC on Smartphones before many others.
Software company Fortress GB lists Crystal Palace and West Ham, among many others, on their website as providers of the technology that drives the electronic ticket solution football clubs use.
BT Sport showed drone footage of thousands stuck outside the ground and empty stands as the original 12.30 pm kick-off approach. 6foot2 understands the technical failure only affected home fans in the Holmsalde end.
With the same technology used by most football clubs, including the London Stadium, these technical glitches where fans are locked out of the stadium could become the norm and cause chaos.
With limited fallback systems in place, it is almost impossible for stewards to check supporters’ mobile phones for manual entry to the grounds and the London Stadium would be one of the worst hit with a capacity of 62,500 if a similar failure occurred,
How about some proof reading! “…an early adopter of paper tickets…”.