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Tropicana Field (home of MLB's Tampa Bay Rays) to be 1st cash-free stadium in North America

RBH

RBH

Official ERA expert on Third Party Football
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Nov 2, 2017
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The next time Tampa Bay Rays fans head to a home game, don't bother bringing cash.

The Rays announced they will be turning Tropicana Field into a cash-free zone. It will be the first sports venue in the country to do so. They said they will accept the following payment forms: Major credit cards, Rays gift cards, mobile payments such as Apple Pay, and season-ticket holders' Rays Cards. Fans without electronic forms of payment can exchange cash at all retail locations and through roaming gift-card vendors in $10 and $20 increments. Parking operations at the Trop were cash-free in 2018 and will continue to be.

Tests led by E15, a tech firm, showed that switching to a no-cash policy will cut transaction times in half, allowing "faster moving lines and increased fan satisfaction," the team said in a press release.

"Throughout our testing last season at Tropicana Field, we saw that fans quickly adapted to cash-free environments and loved the resulting benefits to the game-day experience," Jaime Faulkner, CEO of E15, said in statement. "By offering fans a variety of forms of electronic payment, coupled with the ability to exchange cash for gift cards, we can ensure that fans are having frictionless experiences and getting back to enjoy the game."
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http://www.fox13news.com/news/local-news/tropicana-field-is-going-cashless-this-baseball-season

While many people own credit or debit cards in 2019, the move will impact plenty of fans who prefer to use cash or do not have a credit card. The solution isn't as simple as telling certain fans to "get with the times," either.

History might ultimately look at the Rays as being ahead of the curve on this — it's a progressive idea for our modern times, for sure — but it's also fair to wonder if it's practical for the Rays and their community.

The move could have a major impact on young baseball fans who are old enough to attend games on their own, but too young to own a credit card.

The move also has implications for lower-income Rays fans. Seven percent of Americans don't have checking accounts often due to the fees associated with maintaining those accounts, according to a 2016 article by The Atlantic.

Combine that with the team's decision to remove seating from the upper deck of Tropicana Field earlier in the offseason, and it has become significantly more difficult for those fans to attend Rays games.
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https://sports.yahoo.com/report-ray...etely-cashless-tropicana-field-190041662.html



It's kinda puzzling that the Rays are emphasizing quicker transaction times and faster moving lines as a reason for this move when the team has ranked nearly dead last in attendance in MLB for years and years.

http://www.espn.com/mlb/attendance/_/year/2018



This along with their decision to eliminate all upper deck seating from Tropicana Field (i.e. the cheapest tickets)........can't help but think that their attendance is going to fall even further.

The Tampa Bay Rays, who ranked next to last in the majors in attendance last season, are eliminating all seating in the upper deck for 2019 in an effort to create a more "intimate" experience for fans at Tropicana Field.

The Rays on Friday said they would add a premium seating section in the lower level but would no longer seat fans in the upper deck, which would reduce capacity at the stadium by more than 5,000 seats to approximately 25,000 to 26,000.

That would be about 10,000 seats smaller than capacity at any other stadium in the major leagues.
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http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/...nate-upper-deck-seating-reduce-capacity-25000
 
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