Blink Identity: Walk straight into an event 

Liam Watson

Recently, we’ve seen QR codes become as prominent as ever with Covid-19 protocols in mind – particularly for checking in to venues. 

Blink Identity offers the latest solution for quick and easy access to events, as face recognition software can be used as a ticket – rather than having a physical or digital copy on hand. 

Backed by decades of experience, they have been developing identity systems for enterprises in high-risk environments. The biometric matching system has utilised military-grade technology to accurately identify people walking at a typical pace, adaptable to any lighting conditions. 

The basis of Blink Identity is simple – when a sports club or venue is partnered up with the company and has the camera software in place, visitors are required to enrol in the service by taking a ‘selfie’ photograph on their phone. 

Face recognition like a barcode

By taking a photograph in a matter of seconds, this leads to enormous time saved when the visitor has arrived to enter a stadium or venue, where this eliminates the risk of waiting in lines. Blink Identity collects an image of a person’s face to then be converted into a special unique code known as a mathematical template for identification purposes (like a barcode). Basic contact details involving full name and email address are used for a personalised greeting and if Blink Identity needs to contact the person respectively, with this information to ensure that a spectator can be identified at a venue and if any problems arise with the account. 

With a Blink Identity lane in operation, all the visitor needs to do is walk through and the sensor takes another photograph – to be converted into a template – which is then immediately deleted and is not saved on the sensor. This process is simply to compare the initial template (selfie) with the latest version from when the person enters a venue. 

The versatility and reliability of this technology has not only been tested with lighting conditions, but also to adjust for slight changes to a person’s appearance from one photo to the next. For instance, anyone wearing hats, glasses, colored contacts, head scarves or has a beard does not affect Blink Identity’s system. The vast majority of sunglasses, face paint schemes and sequins have also been proven to not change how the sensors operate. The system, which can identify identical twins better than the human eye, caters for any changes to a person’s appearance. In addition, customers wearing face masks are matched using periocular recognition. This is a special type of face matching that focuses on the area of the face around the eye. 

The Blink Identity Sensor

Likened to walking in like a red carpet, Blink Identity is virtually a replica with that same VIP-type feel for successful entry. Once inside the venue, the use of Blink Identity’s sensors can expand towards purchasing food and merchandise, where customer experience is advanced. For instance, if an ID check is required from a customer, a simple face recognition check can be completed, rather than sifting through pockets trying to find a driver’s license or similar.

The ease of this technology is not only positive for visitors, but for companies as well who hold events. Blink Identity integrates with standard frameworks and workflows to handle everything from implementation and enrollment to privacy compliance. By switching to Blink Identity’s system, it connects to existing ticketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), point of sale (POS), time & attendance and security systems. This will allow organisations to get a better insight of fan data, promoting increased revenues and analytics. 

As countries start to welcome back more fans on the other side of Covid-19 outbreaks, Blink Identity can help manage the reintroduction of these fans through seamless entry. It’s an extra piece of technology that can certainly speed up the process at popular crowded events.  

For everything you need to know about Blink Identity, you can find it here. 

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Football Victoria and VicHealth partner on anti-racism program as community sport data reveals systemic problem

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Football Victoria has partnered with the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation to roll out the Set The Standard initiative across the state’s football clubs, in a collaboration that signals a significant shift in how Australia’s most popular club-based sport is approaching racism and cultural exclusion at the grassroots level.

The partnership brings together the state’s peak football governing body and its primary health promotion agency around a shared finding that can no longer be treated as incidental. According to the 2025 report Enhancing the Capacity of Victorian Community Sport to Tackle Racism, 56 per cent of surveyed participants had experienced or witnessed racism in community sport. In a state where football draws participants from some of the most culturally diverse communities in the country, that figure represents a systemic failure the sport can no longer address through conduct policies alone.

Clubs that subscribe to the Set The Standard newsletter will be entered into a draw to win one of three $1,000 vouchers, available for equipment, facility improvements, events or other community initiatives. The incentive is designed to drive early engagement with a program whose ambitions extend well beyond a newsletter subscription.

What the Partnership Signals

Racism in sport has historically been treated as a conduct and governance issue, managed through complaints mechanisms that require incidents to be formally reported and tend to significantly undercount the actual prevalence of harm. VicHealth’s framing of racism as a public health problem repositions the entire conversation.

Experiences of racism are associated with measurable negative health outcomes including anxiety, depression and social withdrawal. When community sport, which governments and health agencies actively promote as a vehicle for physical and mental wellbeing, becomes a source of those same harms, the public health cost is direct and quantifiable.

Resources, not Rhetoric

For Football Victoria, the partnership brings something the governing body cannot provide on its own. VicHealth’s credibility, resources and public health framework give the initiative a foundation that a sporting organisation working alone would struggle to establish. Set The Standard offers clubs practical tools and guidance built around progress rather than perfection, which reflects a realistic understanding of how cultural change works inside volunteer-run community organisations.

The $1,000 vouchers are not a side note. Most community clubs operate on tight margins, depend on volunteer administrators and are already stretched managing growing participation demands. Finding room to invest in cultural development programs on top of everything else is difficult. Providing tangible resources directly addresses that constraint at the point where clubs are most likely to disengage.

The program also arrives at a consequential moment. Football in Victoria is absorbing significant participation growth following the AFC Women’s Asian Cup and sustained increases in junior registrations, bringing new communities into the game in large numbers. The 2025 data suggests the environments those communities are entering are not consistently safe or welcoming. Participation growth and cultural safety work need to move together. A sport that grows larger without becoming more inclusive has not actually improved the experience of the people playing it.

The Man Who Built a Women’s Football Program from Nothing is now an Award-Winning Gender Equity Leader

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Image Credit: Football Victoria

Eight years ago, Spring Hills Football Club did not have a girls’ team. Today it has one of the most recognised women’s programs in Melbourne’s west, a senior NPLW side, and a head coach who has just been named Gender Equity Leader of the Year at the Melton City Council Volunteer Achievement Awards.

Tom Markovski, Spring Hills’ NPLW Head Coach, received the award at a ceremony coinciding with National Volunteer Week, recognised for his community leadership, promotion of gender equality and commitment to advancing the status of women and people of all genders in sport. The recognition comes from outside the football community entirely, awarded by a local council celebrating volunteers across every sector of civic life in one of Melbourne’s fastest-growing regions.

Building from scratch

When Markovski arrived at Spring Hills, women’s football at the club did not exist. His first act was to champion the establishment of the club’s first all-girls team, a process that required persuading a club culture built around men’s football that the investment was worth making.

Women’s football in community clubs has historically struggled to access the same facilities, scheduling priority, coaching resources and institutional support as the men’s game. Clubs have been slow to invest in programs whose return is less immediately visible than a senior men’s premiership, and in a growing outer-suburban community like Melton, where volunteer capacity is finite and demand across every program is high, the case for building something new always has to compete with the urgency of maintaining what already exists.

Markovski made the case anyway, and kept making it across eight years of coaching senior and junior NPL teams while simultaneously building the structural foundations of a women’s program designed to outlast any individual’s involvement. The club’s first all-girls team became multiple junior girls teams. Those junior teams created the pipeline for a senior women’s side. The senior women’s side created visible pathways for younger players to see where the game could take them within their own club.

The outcome is a program that Spring Hills now holds up as central to its identity rather than supplementary to it. The club has become a leader in female participation in Melbourne’s west, and recently made history within the NPLW Victoria structure by fielding junior teams coached entirely by female coaches, a milestone that reflects the depth of the program Markovski helped build.

What the Award Recognises

The Melton City Council’s decision to name Markovski its Gender Equity Leader of the Year places his work in a frame that extends beyond football. Melton is one of the fastest-growing local government areas in Australia, a diverse and rapidly expanding community where the institutions that bring people together, like schools, councils, sporting clubs, carry an outsized responsibility for social cohesion.

Mayor Cr. Lara Carli, speaking at the awards ceremony, reflected on the role volunteers play in communities like Melton’s. “Volunteering creates friendships, strengthens communities and builds a sense of belonging,” she said. “It helps people feel connected, supported and valued, and those things are more important than ever in a growing and diverse community like ours.”

For the girls now playing football at Spring Hills who were not playing anywhere eight years ago, Markovski’s contribution is not abstract. It is the specific and concrete fact of having somewhere to play, someone to coach them, and a pathway that leads somewhere.

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