West Bromwich Albion FC

Intro

Since the summer of 2025, Championship club West Bromwich Albion and TEAMcard have been working in partnership to deliver an advanced access control solution at The Hawthorns.

Now at the end of their first full season, Jo Barr, Head of Ticketing at Albion, reflects on what the move to TEAMcard has meant for the club.

The Challenge

The club had been operating on a legacy access control system that was falling short in key areas, particularly around integration with the club's ticketing infrastructure and the flexibility available within the back office.

"The integration with our ticketing system works a lot better with TEAMcard. With our previous system things were quite complicated. With TEAMcard it's nice and simple."

Other systems on the market also required length, convoluted processes to achieve the same outcomes. A smarter, more intuitive solution was needed.

The Solution

Albion moved to TEAMcard ahead of the 2025/26 season, implementing TEAMcard's F7 fixed scanning units across the turnstiles at The Hawthorns and integrating with the club's existing ticketing platform.

"You can do a lot in TEAMcard that I didn't have access to before. You reach the same endpoints, but the processes are more simple, quicker and less convoluted- and the readers are so much better too."

The move coincided with the club transitioning to digital-only season tickets, meaning fans were adapting to two changes simultaneously. TEAMcard's intuitive hardware and on-screen guidance made it a seamless experience.

Onboarding & Migration

For any club switching access control provider, migration carries an element of risk. At Albion, that concern proved entirely unfounded.

"It was the simplest, most straightforward change of a system I've ever done. There were no issues, no training issues, no system issues. I've never known a system go in that easily, to be honest."

New team members got up to speed almost immediately, with the system's intuitiveness doing the heavy lifting.

Matchday Performance & FanExperience

The first matchday with a new system combined with a move to digital ticketing was a significant test. TEAMcard passed with flying colours.

"We watched supporters coming in and quite often heard them say 'oh, that's really nice.' We never had a single criticism."

Any minor operational issues were handled by ground staff without ever escalating - a mark of a system that simply gets on with the job.

"Ground staff and the IT team can sort out any issues themselves. I don't even hear about it. That's how you know it's not having any impact at all."

Data, Reporting & BackOffice

The TEAMcard back office has given Albion access to a richer data environment, with multiple departments now drawing on its reporting capabilities, including the club's Director of Events, Experience & Technology, who uses TEAMcard data to help analyse supporter spend across different areas of the ground.

Pre-event setup has also been transformed, with away fan barcodes - sometimes received just hours before kick-off - now uploaded in a matter of seconds.

"That still shocks me. It takes 30 seconds to upload two and a half thousand barcodes and you're ready to go. Pre-event checks take maybe five minutes. It just doesn't take a lot of time at all."

Support & Partnership

For Jo, the quality of the relationship with TEAMcard has been one of the most significant differences from previous experience with other providers.

"With other systems, match day support was often challenging. Sometimes support line calls would either ring out or take hours to get a response. With TEAMcard there's always someone on the other end of the phone who knows your staff, knows your venue and understands your problem."

TEAMcard's client services team is built with that in mind, staffed by people with direct professional sport experience so that the person helping a club has, wherever possible, dealt with the same challenges themselves.

"The relationship with the company is the most important part. You know that whoever you speak to understands your problem and that makes all the difference."

The Result

Now heading into their second season with TEAMcard, West Bromwich Albion are exploring the broader capability of the platform and actively contributing to its future development.

Jo concluded:

"Everything just works, and everything is so intuitive. I literally did not have a single issue - and I've never been able to say that about a system before."

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