AAMI Park to implement facial recognition technology to improve match day safety

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AAMI Park Security at Victory games
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Melbourne Victory have announced that AAMI Park will be implementing facial recognition technology as part of its security monitoring and surveillance system at the venue ahead of the 2023/24 A-Leagues season.

The goal from the A-Leagues is to introduce several tools to AAMI Park in order to create a safe and enjoyable experience for all attendees, guests, players and staff.

The technology may be used to identify individuals who have been banned by Football Australia, the Australian Professional Leagues, competing clubs as well as persons who pose a threat to the safety, security, or integrity of the event, venue, or precinct.

No Australian football fan has forgotten about the disgraceful riots and actions of the ‘OSM’ Victory supporters at last years’ Melbourne derby – that evening at AAMI Park played a part in the swift decision to introduce this technology for safety purposes.

The technology works similarly to a QR Code like we saw during COVID-19 protocols where the system collects an image of a person’s face that is then converted into a special unique code known as a mathematical template for identification purposes (like a barcode).

Melbourne Victory Managing Director Caroline Carnegie explained what the technology means for future Victory games at AAMI Park.

“We have had an enormous amount of feedback from our members and fans around Stadium security measures and how we can ensure a safe environment for everyone to enjoy our games. As a Club, we are pleased that AAMI Park will have improved security measures in place this season,” Carnegie said in the press release.

“We are extremely excited for the season ahead and look forward to our members and fans supporting our boys and girls in blue and creating an atmosphere that rivals what we witnessed during the recent Women’s World Cup. We want an atmosphere that is representative of everything we love about football and that enables us all to represent our Club together.”

Melbourne Victory are preparing for another big season in both A-Leagues competitions, recently crushing the Women’s team membership records and consistently being a top-three club membership wise in the men’s competition.

This makes it extremely important that the club fixes the glaring safety issue at home games to prepare for this season and try to create a really attractive experience to increase crowd numbers at AAMI Park which have been down over 30% since the 19/20 season pre-Covid.

This technology has already been tried and tested in the Brazilian league at Allianz Parque, home of football club Palmeiras, with great success in its infancy.

The São Paulo Public Security Secretariat (SSP) revealed that the facial recognition technology helped arrest 28 criminals in the first four matches at the stadium, with 253 missing people identified and 146,793 tickets verified by the new tool since they brought it in mid-May 2023.

Initially, the facial recognition technology was brought in with an effort to speed up access to the stadium and also combat ticket touting, however clearly the statistics show that it has a lot of power combatting potential criminals which seems to be who the A-Leagues are targeting.

This move to implement facial recognition to improve fan and staff safety can only be seen as a huge positive and a rare proactive decision made by the A-Leagues.

The importance and magnitude of this move cannot be understated either as it also has the gleaming potential to transform the way we get into future A-Leagues events, how we buy food and merchandise, and the overall fan experience in the stadium.

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Victory unites with Roasting Warehouse in culture-led partnership

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Image credit: Melbourne Victory

The Melbourne-based anf family-owned business will join the Victory family, uniting two institutions which represent the city’s culture and identity.

A partnership with local roots

As the newest partner of Melbourne Victory, Roasting Warehouse joins forces with a vital part of the city’s sporting landscape.

The club’s Managing Director, Caroline Carnegie, outlined why the partnership bears so much value to both parties.

“We are excited to collaborate with Roasting Warehouse, a community-oriented destination for high-quality coffee, proud of its foundations in Melbourne,” said Carnegie via official media release.

“Football and coffee sit at the epicentre of Melbourne’s culture. The two go hand-in-hand, consistently at the centre of the conversation that stirs Melburnians, which is no different to the conversation sport and Melbourne Victory stir in the State.”

Indeed, this is a partnership which combines the identity, passions and culture of an entire city, therefore giving it the foundations required for long-term, mutual success.

Representing the best of Melbourne

Both Victory and Roasting Warehouse are hugely successful in their respective industries. They are institutions with community-oriented philosphies, who pride themselves on craft and quality.

“We’re incredibly proud to partner with Melbourne Victory, a club that represents the heart, passion, and ambition of Melbourne,” revealed Roasting Warehouse Head of Brand, Alexander Paraskevopoulos.

“As a Melbourne-founded, family-run business, supporting a team that means so much to the local community feels very natural for us.”

Furthermore, through their high-quality blends, Roasting Warehouse will look to prepare Victory’s players and staff for high performances on the pitch as the seasons nears completion.

But this is about far more than just fueling athletes.

This is a partnership which embodies and unites two of Melbourne’s greatest strengths and cultural markers – a connection forged from the city’s very own DNA.

 

For more information about Roasting Warehouse, click here.

Football NSW supports Female Coaches CPD as Women’s Football Surges

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Football NSW has used the platform of the AFC Women’s Asian Cup to deliver a targeted professional development workshop for female coaches, bringing together scholarship recipients for an evening of structured learning and direct engagement with elite women’s football.

Held at ACPE last month, the session was open to female coaches who received C or B Diploma scholarships through Football NSW in 2025. Coaching accreditation carries a financial cost that disproportionately affects women, who are less likely to have their development subsidised by clubs or associations operating in underfunded community football environments. Scholarship access changes that equation at the point where many women exit the pathway.

Facilitated by Football NSW Coach Development Coordinator Bronwyn Kiceec, the workshop focused on goal scoring trends from the tournament’s group stage, with coaches analysing attacking patterns and exploring how those insights could translate into their own environments. The group then attended the quarter-final between South Korea and Uzbekistan at Stadium Australia.

The structure of the evening mattered as much as its content. Female coaches in community football rarely have access to elite competition environments as a professional resource. The gap between the level at which most women coach and the level at which the game is analysed and discussed tends to reinforce itself. Placing scholarship recipients inside a major tournament, as participants rather than spectators, closes that gap in a way that a classroom session cannot.

Female coaches remain significantly underrepresented across all levels of the game in Australia. The pipeline that will change that depends not only on accreditation access but on the professional networks, peer relationships and exposure to elite environments that male coaches have historically taken for granted.

The workshop forms part of Football NSW’s ongoing commitment to developing female coaches through scholarships and structured learning opportunities.

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