#eventtech #liveevents venueoperation sport sportbusiness mobilepayment #stadiumtech #revenueoperation 12/17/25 2:15 PM Matteo Lombardi 4 min read
It's minute 45. Your team just scored. You want a beer to celebrate. The queue has 40 people. You have 15 minutes before the second half starts.
Do the math. You're not getting that beer.
This happens at every stadium, every match, thousands of times per game. And it's costing Italian venues €665,000 per season—just at halftime.
Let's Do Some Stadium Math
Twenty-five thousand fans. Fifteen-minute break. Average spend of €5 per transaction—one beer, one panino, nothing fancy.
If 60% of fans bought something during halftime, that's 15,000 transactions × €5 = €75,000 in revenue. In one break.
Reality? 8,000 transactions × €5 = €40,000.
Gap: €35,000. Every match.
Multiply by 19 home matches in a season: €665,000 that never hits the books. And we're only counting halftime—not pre-match, not post-goal celebrations, not final whistle.
It's not a demand problem. Ninety-four percent of fans want to buy F&B during a live event (Oracle, 2019). The problem is they physically can't.
Why The System Breaks
My co-founder Giacomo is a Genoa season ticket holder. I've covered Serie A matches, ATP tournaments, and more music festivals than my liver would recommend. Between us, we've lived this scene hundreds of times: endless queues, fans giving up halfway through, staff drowning under pressure.
That's why we started PickEat. But this isn't about staff quality—they're working their asses off. The system itself is broken.
Look at the timeline of a traditional stadium beer purchase:
- Fan leaves their seat → 1-2 minutes navigating the stand
- Sees the queue, evaluates if it's worth it → 2 minutes of mental calculus
- Waits in line → 8-12 minutes, sometimes longer
- Orders, pays, waits for prep → 3-5 minutes
- Fights back to their seat → another 2 minutes
Total: 16-23 minutes. For a beer.
If halftime lasts 15 minutes, fans choose: miss the end of the first half, or miss the start of the second. Forty-five percent don't even try (SeatServe Stadium Analysis).
The 10-minute psychological threshold is real. Beyond that, fans perceive the wait as "too long" and walk away. The beer isn't worth the hassle.
What Actually Works
Oracle surveyed thousands of fans in 2019. The finding that stuck: 59% of fans would spend more if wait times were cut in half. Not "might consider." Would spend.
This is repressed demand, not theory.
In NFL stadiums running automated checkout systems (Mashgin), median transaction time dropped to under 15 seconds. Not minutes—seconds. Result? One stadium hit $88 million in concession sales in a single season.
Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta tried something radical: they cut prices by 50%. Sounds counterintuitive, right? Yet they generated 30% more transactions and 20% more items per transaction. Why? They removed the psychological barrier: "This beer isn't worth waiting 15 minutes for."
We see the same psychology at Italian venues. A Serie B stadium we work with cut queue times from 12 minutes to under 3. Didn't touch prices. Result? Average spend per fan went from €4.50 to €12. Same barrier removal, different approach.
It's not magic. It's behavioral economics applied to hot dogs.
Mobile Ordering Isn't the Future—It's Right Now
The concept is simple: remove the fan from the physical queue.
Let them order from their seat. Skip the useless wait entirely. Get a notification when the order's ready. Pickup in 30 seconds.
Fan saves time. Stadium processes more orders. Staff know exactly what to prepare and when, so they're not guessing during the rush.
What surprised us: it's not the technology that matters. It's what happens to purchasing behavior when you remove the friction.
The Numbers We're Seeing
PickEat processes orders at dozens of live events across Italy. The data is consistent, repeatable, and honestly surprising.
Average transaction at a traditional stand: €5
Average transaction via mobile ordering: €18
That's 3.6 times higher.
Same venue. Same products. Same prices. The only difference is the process.
When fans order from their phones:
- They see the full menu, not just what's legible on the board above the cashier's head
- They take 60 seconds to decide without feeling rushed by the people behind them
- They add "another beer for my friend" without re-entering the queue
- They don't have the panic of missing kickoff
Time from app open to checkout? 60 seconds average.
Max wait time after ordering? 5 minutes—seated comfortably.
Same psychology as Mercedes-Benz Stadium, applied to the process instead of the price.
The Real Issue
Italian stadiums don't have a supply problem. They have a distribution problem.
Demand exists. Inventory exists. Staff exist. But the physical system of queues and registers cannot connect supply and demand in a 15-minute window.
Mobile ordering isn't futuristic. It's been reality in the US for years. In Italy, it's arriving.
The question is: how long can venues afford to leave €35,000 on the table every match?
Because the fan who gives up on the halftime beer isn't just missing a drink. They're missing part of the experience. And the stadium is losing revenue, loyalty, and repeat business.
The numbers are clear. The problem is quantified. The solution is tested and working.
Want to calculate how much revenue your venue is losing during halftime? We built a tool that shows exactly what inefficient queues cost you—and what you could gain. Try it: assessment.pickeat.it
