You know the feeling: you’re stranded in line at the arena/stadium/field waiting to get a beer and a hot dog while your team is out there kicking butt and taking names. It’s a waste of time that one NBA team is trying to prevent with a new system that takes photos of concession stand lines and directs fans to the shortest queue.

The Indiana Pacers are working with a startup called WaitTime to equip the arena with cameras capable of snapping 10 photos per second, Bloomberg Technology reports.

Through the magic of software, those photos are turned into information that’s posted on monitors throughout the venue, telling fans how long the wait will be at certain spots. They can also access the information through the Pacers’ mobile app.

It’s a win-win: fans stay fed, watered, and happy, and the Pacers get information about the customer experience that could translate into increased revenues: Oracle Corp. reported this year that about 40% of Americans have given up on waiting in lines and left without buying anything. If wait times were cut by half, fans would spend 42% more, the report found.

The Pacers will be able to find out in real time how long it takes for customers to receive an order and how many folks abandoned the line, and then use that information to redistribute concession workers or dispatch a food truck to the areas with longer lines.

“We already know our sales numbers per stand,” Pacers’ Chief Technology Officer Ed Frederici said. “Now we’ll know how long someone waits in line per stand, and how much attrition there is per stand. We’ll have a finer grain of detail to optimize the fan experience.”

NBA’s Pacers Have a Plan to Connect Fans to Beer, Burgers Faster [Bloomberg Technology]

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