As anyone who’s anyone in the industry knows, SKIDATA provides full-service solutions for arenas, trade shows and amusement parks. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that at the 2010 Football World Cup in South Africa, the company’s years of experience and expertise in people access and parking management will be on public display. SKIDATA has equipped six of ten World Cup arenas with intelligent access technology that will be supported by SKIDATA professionals throughout the tournament.

SKIDATA has years of experience as a system partner for large-scale events such as UEFA, FIFA or the Red Bull Air Race. And SKIDATA will be part of the party at the kick-off of World Cup 2010.

As a champion among access management providers (pun intended), SKIDATA was commissioned to equip six World Cup arenas with a total of 326,000 seats: Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium (Port Elizabeth), Moses Mabhida Stadium (Durban), Mbombela Stadium (Nelspruit), Ellis Park Stadium (Johannesburg), Royal Bafokeng Stadium (Rustenburg) and Loftus Versfeld Stadium (Pretoria).

This state-of-the-art technology from Austria will provide up to two million people at some 2/3 of the matches with fast and secure access to the action. To do so, the company claims it had to successfully meet the demands and requirements of promoters, fans and operators. And this is the world cup, so you know those demands are going to be tough to meet.

The basis for SKIDATA’s access management solution in South Africa is SKIDATA handshake technology. The software solution is used with SKIDATA access scanners as well as third-party turnstiles such as full-length gates. This combination will provide ticket holders with convenient and secure access, and will provide important user data at the push of a button while supporting flexible access management.

Ticket holders will be directed at the turnstiles in the arena to the best entry for them.

Urs Grimm, SKIDATA executive board member, states: “SKIDATA handshake provides valuable services before and after the matches. On each match day, the full access management system will be tested via handshake long before the starting whistle blows. During match play, handshake enables operators to control issues. For example, the direction of rotation of a gate can be changed or access for certain blocks can be shifted to other entrances. After the match, valuable access data is available immediately.”

SKIDATA also provides clients with infrastructure in the form of databases and secure servers for scheduling and presales as well as billing, after sales marketing and reporting.

The SKIDATA team has already collected valuable experience from its arena projects in Angola. For the World Cup 2010, the company’s experts say they are well-prepared and have taken into account the country, climate (more important than you would think!) and culture to make sure it all runs smoothly. Because without turnstiles that work perfectly, the access system and match are not a sure thing. And no-one wants that!