{"id":688560,"date":"2026-01-19T11:52:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T11:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/688560\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T11:52:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T11:52:17","slug":"tennessee-titans-nissan-stadium-represents-huge-opportunity-for-checkout-free-stores-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/688560\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee Titans’ Nissan Stadium represents huge opportunity for checkout-free stores technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tennessee Titans raised sports industry eyebrows in early 2026 when they announced the new Nissan Stadium\u2019s concessions would be completely checkout-free. <\/p>\n

For people outside the venue operations or food and beverage worlds, it was an exotic bit of news, a novelty worth keeping an eye on. But the implications for the technology, its providers and the venues that might use checkout-free are bigger than eliminating beer lines in Nashville. <\/p>\n

The $2.2 billion Nissan Stadium will open in 2027 with 52 Amazon Just Walk Out stores, becoming the second fully checkout-free venue after the Clippers\u2019 Intuit Dome. It\u2019s the biggest referendum yet on whether the checkout-free store concept, which has endured a roller-coaster journey since first appearing in sports venues in 2019, can go mainstream. <\/p>\n

Unlike Intuit Dome, which was privately funded by Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and unconstrained by public accountability, Nissan Stadium was largely paid for with public money. Its 60,000 capacity is more than triple Intuit Dome\u2019s, but it will host one-fifth as many home dates and far fewer concerts. NFL stadium per-cap spending nearly doubles NBA arena per-caps, leaving less room for operational error. The financial and reputational risk is shared by Amazon, with Nissan Stadium representing the company\u2019s largest single-venue deployment. <\/p>\n

The Titans\u2019 decision offers a high-profile chance to confirm what some technologists and building operators already believe: Checkout-free concessions are the present and future for sports venues. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the next step and generation in how we distribute food and beverage to our fans,\u201d said Andrew McIntyre, Titans senior vice president of technology and innovation. \u201cIt\u2019s always about removing lines, removing pain points, getting people what they want as quickly as possible.\u201d <\/p>\n

Hundreds of checkout-free stores by Amazon, AiFi and Zippin, the tech\u2019s three main providers, opened across the U.S. and internationally during the last five years. Operators report higher throughput, increased order values, repeat usage, reduced queues and the ability to redistribute labor elsewhere. <\/p>\n

The technology, in which customers tap their payment to enter a camera-rigged store, grab their items, then exit, feels ascendant. Yet others in the industry still aren\u2019t fully convinced. They cite issues ranging from wonky \u2014 data reporting can be slow, a critical issue in busy arenas \u2014 to obvious \u2014 the stores require a construction project, making them slower and more expensive to complete than other sports venue commerce technologies. <\/p>\n

And most sports fans still don\u2019t see the stores in their daily lives. Self-checkout kiosks, in contrast, are found everywhere from grocery stores and gas stations to McDonald\u2019s and Walmart. Humans are taught, essentially from birth, to pay at the end of a transaction, so checkout-free stores can require not only education, but gradual brain rewiring.<\/p>\n

Deployments mostly have been incremental, often looking like Charlotte\u2019s recently renovated Spectrum Center, which expanded from two Amazon Just Walk Out stores to four. That slow rate of change puts extra importance on the coming spate of stadiums and arenas, which represent rare opportunities to take bigger leaps forward. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m amazed \u2014 really, truly surprised \u2014 that every venue doesn\u2019t have 10, 20 or 30 of these. Because they crush it, 50, 60, 70% lift on per-caps in those locations,\u201d said veteran sports industry executive Gary Jacobus, who was Zippin\u2019s senior vice president of business development from 2020 to 2022. \u201cThe adoption, it\u2019s there, but it\u2019s slower than I thought it\u2019d be.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"A full-stadium, 52-store Amazon Just Walk Out deployment should help the Tennessee Titans keep Nissan Stadium’s concourses clearer during games and concerts. Tennessee Titans\/Manica Pivotal years <\/p>\n

Self-checkout technology\u2019s journey to widespread adoption, which took decades following its 1986 invention, offers a caution to anyone ready to write off checkout-free. Riding in part on an idea cemented by self-checkout \u2014 that a customer\u2019s shopping experience doesn\u2019t need to involve another human \u2014 checkout-free is already showing large-scale promise less than a decade into its existence. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re having a lot of discussions about 10-, 15-, 20-store launches in some of the existing venues, which highlights the demand,\u201d said Dan Gallery, president of Gallery, which builds stores for the checkout-free providers. \u201cThe naysayers used to say, \u2018Hey, what are fans going to do, it\u2019s too expensive, we don\u2019t understand it \u2026\u2019 I think all those naysayers and the skeptics have been proven wrong in many ways.\u201d <\/p>\n

The question with checkout-free is whether the three main companies involved can survive long enough for the tech to reach mainstream adoption. They each have clear and potentially fatal issues. <\/p>\n

Zippin, the early front-runner, is cash-flow positive, according to its CEO Krishna Motukuri, but has fallen back and likely needs investment soon to remain competitive. Its momentum was rocked by major layoffs in 2023. Last year, its two biggest sports venue deployments, at Empower Field at Mile High and Allegiant Stadium, were converted to Amazon Just Walk Out and AiFi. <\/p>\n

Like Zippin, AiFi, which was responsible for Intuit Dome\u2019s groundbreaking checkout-free concessions setup, is a true startup with all the inherent risk that carries. Despite adding stores at Allegiant Stadium and SoFi Stadium in the last year, many in the industry worry that the company has been stretched too thin by the Intuit Dome undertaking. <\/p>\n

And then there is Amazon Just Walk Out, whose biggest threat has been its own parent company. <\/p>\n

Just Walk Out represents a fraction of Amazon\u2019s overall $600 billion-plus revenue and was pulled out of the company\u2019s grocery stores in 2024 because the tech was hugely expensive in larger stores and wasn\u2019t well received by shoppers. That very public blow to Just Walk Out sent a confusing mixed message to the sports world about Amazon\u2019s long-term intentions for the technology. <\/p>\n

Yet, as important as the Titans\u2019 checkout-free choice is for the technology\u2019s future, it said something just as noteworthy: This is Amazon\u2019s game to lose. <\/p>\n

\u201cBy its nature, Amazon is a very large, well-funded, successful organization we know is going to be around for the long haul,\u201d McIntyre said. <\/p>\n

Between Amazon\u2019s emergence and a potential winnowing of the tech providers; checkout-free\u2019s continued growth and adoption; and a raft of new multibillion-dollar venues on the horizon, the next few years will be pivotal for checkout-free and its providers. <\/p>\n

\u201cBy the end of 2028, 2029,\u201d said Adam Haker, Retailcloud vice president of sales, sports and entertainment, \u201cwe\u2019ll have a really good understanding if there is going to be the same three players,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Checkout-free\u2019s beginning <\/p>\n

The pace of technological advancement is so disorienting that it\u2019s easy to forget checkout-free stores have only been in sports venues since 2019, when Sacramento\u2019s Golden 1 Center opened a Zippin store. <\/p>\n

Amazon Just Walk Out\u2019s unfortunately-timed pro sports debut came next, in March 2020 at United Center and TD Garden. More store deployments followed in the wake of the pandemic, aided by the later-disproven theory that touchless technologies could prevent the spread of COVID. <\/p>\n

AiFi, backed by its investor, Verizon, deployed its first store at Ford Field in 2022. The company\u2019s flexibility in allowing venue clients to purchase their own cameras for use in the AiFi store setup reduced costs and was well received.<\/p>\n

Zippin was the clear early leader. An Empower Field at Mile High store deployment led to a 42% increase in transactions during peak periods of the 2021 Broncos season, and the venue registered the highest transaction rate per attendee of any sports venue in Aramark\u2019s portfolio. <\/p>\n

At its peak, Zippin had 150 stores across multiple industries, including 90 in sports venues. It helped push the technology forward by expanding beyond selling packaged snacks and drinks to serving hot food, and bringing down the cost and time required to deploy stores. <\/p>\n

The stores range from low five figures to a couple of hundred thousand dollars, depending on the size and shape, cost of construction and the provider. Motukuri said that by late 2025, capital expenditure installation and deployment costs for Zippin stores were one-fifth of what they were in 2021, while the company\u2019s software as a service fees have dropped in unison with cloud computing costs. <\/p>\n

Minor details, such as using different types of gates that didn\u2019t require drilling into a concourse floor, or ditching shelf sensors, also reduced overall costs, as did creative store layouts and formats. Many stores shrank to a mere 125 to 150 square feet, yet produced $8,000 to $10,000 in sales revenue per game. The time needed for return on investment, while varying by store, also shrank.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d say the tech was very raw, nowhere near where it is today,\u201d said Jamie Slotterback, Aramark Sports + Entertainment vice president of strategy and customer experience design. \u201cAnd taking the risk and understanding the costs associated with that was a giant leap for us.\u201d <\/p>\n

Concessionaires and teams were making those initial leaps with the startups due to Amazon\u2019s intractability. Amazon required sports clients to operate within its tech environment, played hardball with data, was inflexible on hardware and didn\u2019t integrate with sports clients\u2019 other tech partners \u2014 including, most crucially, loyalty providers, leaving season-ticket members unable to use their concessions perks. The inflexibility contributed to Amazon losing the Intuit Dome job, which was taken over by AiFi in late 2022. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn the sports tech world, especially in the venue space, if you don\u2019t have those integrations with loyalty, stored value, mobile wallet partners, you\u2019re kind of wasting your time,\u201d said Haker, who was with payments provider SpotOn before joining Retailcloud. <\/p>\n

\"\"Aramark leaned in early on drink-focused stores at Oracle Park. Aramark Sports + Entertainment A rough patch <\/p>\n

Amazon dominates American e-commerce to such an extent that it\u2019s rarely forced to play well with others. But the startup competitors\u2019 nimbleness forced it to shift gears<\/a>. That began in 2022 with Just Walk Out\u2019s move from the company\u2019s physical retail unit (which included Whole Foods and Amazon Go stores) to Amazon Web Services\u2019 umbrella. AWS, which produced more than half of Amazon\u2019s 2024 operating income ($39.8 billion), was an ideal lucrative third-party licensed business for Just Walk Out to imitate. <\/p>\n

Amazon created 24\/7 Just Walk Out monitoring and offered hardware upgrades at no cost, important with a constantly developing technology. It\u2019s notable that in 2026, the Titans picked Amazon in part because of its willingness to integrate with other key tech providers. <\/p>\n

\u201cOriginally, Amazon was more black box,\u201d said McIntyre. \u201cThey\u2019ve come back around and said, \u2018We know there are other strong technology providers in this market that we need to work with, not against, to really drive that fan experience.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

While the pandemic helped spark checkout-free\u2019s sports business, the resulting inflation hit venue operators\u2019 capital expenditure budgets in 2022, cooling growth. Motukuri said Zippin projected a \u201cbig increase in scale\u201d headed into that year, but it didn\u2019t materialize and the company made significant staffing cuts, laying off 30% of its staff. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge is when you\u2019re in a startup mode, your investors expect explosive growth, where in four years you\u2019re 10 times your investment,\u201d said Jacobus, \u201cand it\u2019s not growing as fast as some startups.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zippin lacked the strategic and capital support of Verizon, one of sports\u2019 most pervasive sponsors, or Amazon Web Services that could have opened doors to potential clients or enabled bundling of services and lower pricing. <\/p>\n

Around the same time, self-checkout emerged as a cheaper and quicker way to get similar throughput and labor benefits. Self-checkout was more familiar to customers, without the perceived friction of tapping payment to enter a store. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn our view, the fan experience hasn\u2019t significantly improved compared to a well-designed grab-and-go market,\u201d said Food Service Matters\u2019 Mike Plutino, a sports venue food and beverage industry consultant, who nonetheless is an ardent advocate of the various types of modern food and beverage markets. <\/p>\n

As original issues were solved, new ones came to the fore, such as the technology\u2019s lag in data reporting and reconciliation, which drove CFOs zany and made life harder for venue operators. <\/p>\n

Even Amazon wasn\u2019t immune to the turbulence. Just Walk Out\u2019s issues stemmed from its own company\u2019s decisions, namely the removal of the technology from Amazon\u2019s grocery stores in April 2024. That was a tough story for the company to spin: why sports venue operators should believe in Just Walk Out when Amazon seemed not to. <\/p>\n

The uncertainty continued through 2024, when a handful of key executives involved were assigned new roles or left the company, including Dilip Kumar, the co-creator of Just Walk Out technology, who previously led the division but left in the spring of 2024, and Jon Jenkins, who had direct oversight of the Just Walk Out group and left that October to become CTO for Lime, the scooter company. <\/p>\n

The tumultuous year left the sports world with questions about Amazon\u2019s long-term Just Walk Out strategy. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see it,\u201d said a source. \u201cThey got out of the bigger stores completely. What\u2019s in it for them?\u201d <\/p>\n

Built to last? <\/p>\n

Intuit Dome opened in August 2024, showing off more than 40 checkout-free concessions and retail stores spanning more than 100,000-plus square feet and integrated with biometric access systems. It was a crowning moment for AiFi, the overachieving startup that based its employees at an L.A. crash pad while they built the arena\u2019s novel food and beverage system. And it was a signature moment for an industry in need of a milestone. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a very, massive inbound,\u201d after the arena opened, AiFi\u2019s CEO J.D. Falc\u00e3o said. \u201c[Intuit Dome] was one of the best things that could have happened for AiFi and the sports business.\u201d <\/p>\n

AiFi has turned its Intuit Dome deployment into growth at other marquee venues, including at SoFi Stadium, where it has four stores, and Allegiant Stadium, where food and beverage provider Oak View Group converted 10 former Zippin stores. <\/p>\n

But while Intuit Dome generated conversation and curiosity, it doesn\u2019t appear to be opening the checkout-free floodgates in the way many thought it could. The cost and Clippers\/Steve Ballmer-specific nature of the tech \u2014 like other aspects of the impressive building, including its video board \u2014 make it almost irreplicable. <\/p>\n

More typical is Spectrum Center, the 20-year-old, city-owned home of the Charlotte Hornets, which completed a $245 million renovation in October. Donna Julian, executive vice president and chief venues officer for Hornets Sports & Entertainment, experimented with a Zippin stand on the main concourse but opted for Just Walk Out, which lifted transaction volume 25%. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have them everywhere,\u201d she said. \u201cEvery fan\u2019s journey is different.\u201d <\/p>\n

It was a deployment that\u2019s more emblematic of the industry\u2019s step-by-step progress. Is that pace of growth enough to sustain all three companies? <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a question most pertinent for Zippin. Its CEO, Motukuri, said remaining cash-flow positive had been \u201ca major focus,\u201d since its 2022 spate of layoffs, and it continued to add stores in 2025 at Petco Park, NRG Stadium and Capital One Arena. That\u2019s despite only raising $35 million in its entire history, with its last funding raise three years ago. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to pace our fundraising with the growth we were seeing. And it helped us a lot, because otherwise we would have been gone by now,\u201d Motukuri said. \u201cWe will add more resources; no doubt about it.\u201d <\/p>\n

But the investing environment is much more conservative in 2026 than when the three companies were first generating interest in 2021, said Retailcloud President and CTO Rupak Anto. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s an existential issue for the two startups because checkout-free is an expensive business. CNBC reported that in just 2019 and 2020, Amazon spent a billion dollars on Just Walk Out research and development. Checkout-free tech startup Grabango was launched in 2016 by the founder of the Pandora music service but went out of business in 2023 despite raising close to $100 million, while Standard AI has raised $266 million but couldn\u2019t establish a checkout-free store business and pivoted toward solving other retail problems. Neither company got into sports venues. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2025, [venture capitalists], family offices, private equity firms, they are looking at how sustainable the tech is, how much investment is required, whether the company is profitable or has a path to profitability,\u201d said Anto. There \u201care a lot of other factors, not just burning the cash. Burning the cash was a cool thing at one point in time. I don\u2019t think it is anymore.\u201d <\/p>\n

Most industry observers believe the market cannot sustain AiFi, Amazon and Zippin indefinitely, though they hope at least two remain. <\/p>\n

\u201cIs there a day that there is consolidation?\u201d Jacobus said. \u201cI would think so.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"AiFi launched new stores at SoFi Stadium ahead of the 2025 NFL season. Hollywood Park Pulling away <\/p>\n

Each company has stores in other verticals, including airports, hospitals, convention centers and university settings, but clearly needs more to solidify its business. <\/p>\n

Based on back-of-the-napkin math, Jacobus thinks it\u2019s likely these companies are generating lower eight-figure annual revenue. As one sports venue tech executive told SBJ, \u201cSports is a natural entry place, but the last place you want to land.\u201d That\u2019s a problem for checkout-free companies, because their business has been concentrated in sports and hasn\u2019t penetrated daily life yet. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the existential crisis for these companies,\u201d the sports venue tech executive added. \u201cThe sports market is not big enough.\u201d <\/p>\n

That makes the current sports venue building boom an almost existential pursuit, especially for AiFi and Zippin. New NFL stadiums coming in Cleveland; Washington, D.C.; Denver; and Kansas City, Kansas, as well as the A\u2019s baseball stadium in Las Vegas, and new arenas in Oklahoma City, Philadelphia and San Antonio, constitute, conservatively, $20 billion worth of investment. Each represents an opportunity for a 40- to 60-store, fully checkout-free venue. <\/p>\n

New stadium deployments are the most cost efficient for teams, venues and concessionaires because the same contractors building the venue can construct the store shells. While it has gotten easier to deploy checkout-free stores during the last five or six years, many in the industry think it could be much easier still. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe party that\u2019s going to win is the one that can truly make this a product,\u201d said the source who has worked with all three companies. \u201cRight now, it\u2019s a technology solution with construction and design and all this other stuff. I think the person that wins brings it together in one product.\u201d <\/p>\n

It\u2019s another idea that points toward Amazon domination: It is innately capable of productizing checkout-free technology and making a store kit another item sold on Amazon.com. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at those three parties, you have two horses leading it, Amazon and AiFi, and Zippin dropping off,\u201d said the person who\u2019s worked with each of the checkout-free providers. \u201cYou have the behemoth in Amazon, who is really starting to listen to clients, really driving down the simplification, and at that point, with that amount of capital backing them, it\u2019s hard to beat.\u201d <\/p>\n

That proved true in Nashville. <\/p>\n

The Titans put 12 checkout-free stores \u2014 a combination of AiFi and Zippin \u2014 in their existing Nissan Stadium to test the tech and help fans build familiarity. Zippin fell by the wayside during the Titans\u2019 RFP process, owing to the smaller size of its current store deployments, which left AiFi and Amazon as the remaining contenders. <\/p>\n

AiFi had the only full sports venue deployment on its r\u00e9sum\u00e9, but Amazon\u2019s overall strength proved more important for the Titans as they pondered the risk of becoming the largest sports venue to take its concessions\u2019 physical footprint completely checkout-free. <\/p>\n

If Intuit Dome was the moon landing for checkout-free stores, proving that an entirely checkout-free sports venue could work, then a successful new Nissan Stadium deployment will take the technology and the companies providing it one giant step closer to mainstream. <\/p>\n

\u201cI really think this is about whether we\u2019ve crossed from the pilot phase, trying it out, into a fully scalable solution set for sports and entertainment,\u201d said Gallery. <\/p>\n

Market share breakdownApproximate totals of sports venue checkout-free stores<\/p>\n

Amazon Just Walk Out: 142<\/p>\n

AiFi: 133<\/p>\n

Zippin: 55<\/p>\n

Source: SBJ Research<\/p>\n

Vendor filesAiFi Year founded: 2016 Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif. Top executive: CEO Jo\u00e3o Diogo Falc\u00e3o Employees: 101-205 Fundraising\/investment: $87.1MAmazon Just Walk Out Year founded: 2013 Headquarters: Seattle Top executive: VP of Just Walk Out, AWS Rajiv Chopra Employees: N\/A Fundraising\/investment: part of publicly traded Amazon Zippin Year founded: 2018 Headquarters: Remote Top executive: CEO Krishna Motukuri Employees: 100 Fundraising\/investment: $35 million <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tennessee Titans raised sports industry eyebrows in early 2026 when they announced the new Nissan Stadium\u2019s concessions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2061],"tags":[46742,7,6,8875,19490,11245,526,394,2411,527],"class_list":["post-688560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennessee-titans","tag-clippers","tag-football","tag-nfl","tag-nissan-stadium","tag-portfolio","tag-print","tag-tennessee","tag-tennessee-titans","tag-tennesseetitans","tag-titans"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115921628238397714","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}