Royal Oak-based WaitTime is expanding its business with Cisco as the global IT giant gears up to help sports arenas and entertainment venues reopen to the public amid the pandemic.
Cisco has formalized ties with the tech business by bringing WaitTime’s crowd control technology into its portfolio of business solutions and making it a “Cisco Validated Design,” the companies announced Wednesday.
The deal makes Cisco a reseller of the technology, which was developed in 2014 as a way to skip the beer line at stadiums but has taken on new meaning — and value — because of the pandemic, said Zachary Klima, CEO and owner of WaitTime and a 2016 Crain’s 40 under 40 honoree.
“We’re now their go-to crowd management solution across all their industries,” Klima told Crain’s. “Now that COVID hit, our solution is very well suited because of our crowd intelligence technology.”
Cisco did not buy WaitTime, but the deal brings it snugly under the tech giant’s wing and indicates a potential acquisition down the line.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Klima said as part of the agreement, Cisco takes a cut of sales of the WaitTime technology.
“Teaming up with WaitTime to help our sports and entertainment venue customers re-open their doors safely, is just one of the many exciting things we can accomplish together,” Bryan Bedford, head of sports partner go-to-market sales for Cisco, said in a news release. “Through continued innovation in our technologies, we look forward to providing safer, more engaging and immersive fan experiences with WaitTime.”
The two companies have worked together informally for the past three years. Through Cisco, WaitTime’s technology has been implemented at Sydney Cricket Ground in Sydney, Australia, T-Mobile Arena at Las Vegas and Levi’s Stadium in the San Francisco Bay Area.
WaitTime was first rolled out at the Palace of Auburn Hills in 2016, allowing fans to use a mobile app to find the shortest line for concessions or bathrooms during an event. Using artificial intelligence, sensors and algorithms, it displays live wait times around stadiums and on mobile apps.
Since the Palace closed in 2017, WaitTime has been out of the Detroit market, but according to Klima, that’s about to change with an expected surge in demand for crowd control technology. Cisco is now marketing WaitTime as a tool to monitor and enforce social distancing in venues ranging from sports stadiums and casinos to retail shops and college campuses.
Klima said it won’t be long before the technology is implemented at venues in Detroit and across the country.
“It’s going to be imminent. We just don’t know when,” he said.
The company is composed of 10 full-time employees and some 30 investors, including Michael Jordan’s son, Jeff. Klima is majority owner at just more than 20 percent.
Klima declined to say how much money the company has raised since May 2019, when it had raised $20 million. He declined to say whether the company is profitable or what its revenue was in 2020 but did say sales last year rose 20 percent from 2019.
The company is valued around $25 million, Klima said.
“COVID was a very good thing for us because it made our solution go from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘need to have,'” he said.
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