Major League Baseball (MLB), a professional sports baseball organization in North America, reported on the recent testing by the Oakland Athletics club from Oakland of a contactless ticketing system using Apple devices that support NFC's short-range wireless data transfer technology. Spectators got access to the stadium, using for payment smartphones iPhone or smart-clock Apple Watch.

The pilot project, covering six home games of the club, was launched on September 22 after the release of iOS 11. As informs resource TechCrunch, for the first time at event of professional sports the contactless payment of tickets in payment service Apple Pay.

However, the Apple Pay decision itself was not used to pay for tickets, the program simply used NFC technology, usually used to simplify the repayment of existing incentives, such as coupons or a loan provided by the store. So this was the first time such use of Apple's devices.

The entrance system to the stadium served by Tickets. com, a subsidiary of MLBAM, functions similarly to bar code readers, such as at airline terminals. Instead of reading a barcode or QR code, the software version uses Apple's NFC technology to send client authentication data to the ticket sales terminal.

It is noted that replacing barcodes for NFC applications is not only safer. The technology used in the iPhone and Apple Watch is much more reliable than optical solutions.