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Deflated wallet? No worries! Two ATM companies are making sure Super Bowl fans have easy access to cash

Fans can score all the cash they need for beer, brats and bobbleheads at 90 mobile ATMs scattered throughout official Super Bowl locales hosting pre-, post- and game-time events.

January 29, 2015 by Suzanne Cluckey — Owner, Suzanne Cluckey Communications

Super Bowl ticketholders who punted on a trip to the ATM before flying to Phoenix needn't worry about being sidelined from the festivities by a wallet as flat as a Patriots game ball.

Thanks to Eclipse Cash Systems and Genmega, fans can score all the cash they need for beer, brats and bobbleheads at ATMs scattered throughout official Super Bowl locales hosting pre-, post-, and game-time events.

Eclipse is operating a mobile fleet of Genmega ATMs at three officially designated venues in the weeklong run-up to Super Bowl XLIX.

Thirty-two Genmega units are installed at University Stadium, the venue for this Sunday's Patriots-Seahawks matchup; Eclipse supplied 24 units for last Sunday's Pro Bowl contest.

Eclipse is also providing 15 Genmega ATMs for the NFL Experience and the NFL Fan Gallery, which run simultaneously at the Phoenix Convention Center, Jan. 24–Feb.1.

And finally, the Chandler, Arizona-based independent service organization is supplying 10 ATMs through the week for Fan Fest Scottsdale and ESPN Zone, a gatherings that combine food, entertainment and retail shopping at Scottsdale Fashion Square, an upscale outdoor mall. Eclipse CEO Derek Smith said the remainder are placed for other sponsored events.

Large temporary installations of ATMs are not unusual for Eclipse, which itself deploys machines for some 300 events each year nationwide, and jobs out even more to affiliated franchises around the U.S.

Neither is this year's installation the first Super Bowl experience for Eclipse. The company is now in its eighth year of providing cash to fans, Smith said. And it's the second time Eclipse has outfitted University of Phoenix Stadium — the first being 2008, not long after the facility was built.

However Super Bowl XLIX is the largest to date; the previous record-holder being the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota, with a total of 65 machines.

This extensive experience with mobile installations helps Eclipse project cash demand for the special events it supports, Smith said in an interview with ATM Marketplace. "We've done [the Super Bowl] before and we've done many other large events, so it's basically from past knowledge and the history of what the event has done in the past."

Providing any sort of payment support for an event with the broad scope and high visibility of the Super Bowl, which will draw an estimated 100,000 visitors to the Phoenix area, and an additional 160 million viewers in 180 countries to their TV sets, is no run-of-the-mill task. And any breakdown of that support is sure to be magnified to colossal proportions.

Indeed, Visa found out just how colossal during the 2012 London Summer Olympics, when its vaunted "cashless Olympics" POS system crashed during a standing-room-only football match at Wembley Stadium and 90,000 fans discovered that the card network had pulled the plug on all of the stadium's ATMs as part of its sponsorship agreement.

"Flawless execution is imperative for a sporting event as large as the Super Bowl," said Smith in a press release. "That is why we only use Genmega ATMs at the Super Bowl and the hundreds of other events we service throughout the United States. Genmega has a time-tested history of developing products we can count on to remain fully operational under the most demanding of conditions."

One of those products will be the new Genmega Onyx W wall-mount unit, which will make its debut at University of Phoenix stadium on Super Bowl Sunday.

"Literally, we just got our first container of machines, and the very first machines were sent to Derek for this event," said Genmega Vice President of Sales Wes Dunn.

He described the Onyx W as a small, wall-mounted ATM with 1,000-note capacity, intended for installation in secure locations. "It uses many of the same components as our lobby machine, but has a much smaller form factor, and lighter weight at just over 100 pounds," Dunn said. "It does have secure vault on the inside with a digital lock."

The Onyx wall-mount has already outsold its original supply, Dunn said, "So we're rushing to bring more in as soon as possible."

Eclipse designed a custom enclosure for its Onyx wall-mount units in order to take advantage of the machine's compact size, which makes it ideal for many temporary installations that call for the deployment of multiple machines within a short period of time. 

"We're excited to be the first independent ATM deployer to showcase Genmega's new wall-mounted ATM," Smith said. "We specifically chose the Onyx W for the Super Bowl festivities because of its compact size. The small size allows us to provide NFL fans with convenient ATM access in places where space is at a premium — like the University of Phoenix Stadium."

graphic courtesy NFL

About Suzanne Cluckey

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Suzanne’s editorial career has spanned three decades and encompassed all B2B and B2C communications formats. Her award-winning work has appeared in trade and consumer media in the United States and internationally.