Weekend Read

A general view of AmericanAirlines Arena during a recent Miami Heat game.

PHOTO: JASEN VINLOVE/REUTERS



The Miami Heat are about to become the first sports franchise to attempt a groundbreaking play: requiring some fans to show proof of vaccination in order to get into games.
It’s a decidedly low-tech operation, relying on paper cards distributed to the vaccinated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It will also, quite possibly, never be widely adopted.
Around 450 Heat fans who flash CDC cards on Thursday showing they are fully vaccinated will be able to enter through a separate gate to gain access to two special “vaccinated sections” in AmericanAirlines Arena. They will still be required to mask, but can sit closer together than the other 3,500 fans there—and know that they’re only around other vaccinated people.
The team says it’s a chance to test something that patrons want, expand attendance capacity, and boost the benefits of vaccination. “We’re eager to get more fans back in the building, and to incentivize vaccinations and get the word out that vaccinations can return us to normalcy,” said Matthew Jafarian, executive vice president of business strategy.

The operation requires checking 450 cards against names on government-issued identifications to ascertain the type of vaccine the holder got, and whether the fans got their required one or two doses more than two weeks ago.
“We are a business that has two decades dealing with verifying where people are sitting, if they’re in the right place. We’ve been dealing with fraudulent tickets, we’ve been checking people’s IDs for alcohol,” said Jafarian. He added: “But nobody’s done this before. And so we’re going to learn a lot.”
Madison Square Garden says that New York Knicks and Rangers fans will also now be allowed to attend by showing either proof of vaccination or of a recent negative test, after previously only accepting negative test results.
For test results, MSG has accepted results from fans displayed on a smartphone or a printout, directly from the healthcare provider that performed the test, that match the name on their identification. It has also started this week allowing results to be displayed on a New York State app, Excelsior, though that is in its infancy. At 10% capacity, a maximum of 2,000 people are coming for now.
Doubts about the process have seemingly deterred most other venues, who have indicated they would only consider implementing checks on tens of thousands of individual ticket holders if local authorities demand it and they have technology to handle it—something that’s also looking increasingly unlikely.
Instead, they’re watching vaccine rates in general, effectively trusting the odds will be in everyone’s favor.
“If we truly can get to the point of full vaccination late spring, then of course there will be changes in how many people can gather safely in an arena,” Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban wrote in an email. “As the protocols change in accordance with the data, we will be ready and able to expand our audiences to as many as we safely can.”
Angela de Cespedes, a litigation partner in Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr’s sports and entertainment practice group whose clients include sports franchises, said that setting up a system to confirm every patron’s vaccination status was far more complex and risky than any one venue would be willing to take on.
Distancing, masking, discouraging yelling and changing eating arrangements are all significantly easier adaptations to increase fan capacity as vaccination numbers generally grew, she said.
“Until we turn that corner when we feel more comfortable, and we have a system in place that makes sense, that’s logical, that works logistically on a wider scale, it’s just not going to be feasible,” she said. “I don’t see that getting implemented in any large-scale manner at all in 2021.”

Venue operators privately agree, citing concerns such as wading into the highly regulated area of health privacy, amid potentially shifting findings from medical research over how long vaccinations may be effective.
The Biden administration has repeatedly said that it won’t be creating a national registry of vaccinations, saying it is looking instead to the private sector.
Some operators had been eyeing Ticketmaster, and the possibility it would modify its platform to offer test and vaccination tracking and take the problem off venues’ hands. Given its dominant position in ticketing, that could effectively create a system that would be easy for venues to adopt, and local authorities to require.

A view of Madison Square Garden and the Empire State Building prior to a New York Knicks game.

PHOTO: ANGELA WEISS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Ticketmaster, however, is waiting for signals from authorities to move ahead—effectively keeping the idea going in circles.
“We’re looking to government leaders to guide us on what is necessary to bring back live events until vaccines are widely available and we are free to gather without restrictions,” the company said in a statement.

A person familiar with the company’s thinking said that increasingly, it seemed that it might not be worth it to ramp up a technological solution when demand might soon end.
Ticketmaster faced public blowback in November when it was reported to be working on a tool that could allow venues to confirm a ticket holder’s vaccine status or recent test results, and quickly sought to distance itself from the idea.
“We are not forcing anyone to do anything. Just exploring the ability to enhance our existing digital ticket capabilities to offer solutions for event organizers that could include testing and vaccine information with 3rd party health providers,” the statement said. It added: “There is absolutely no requirement from Ticketmaster mandating vaccines/testing for future events.”