Rabat – The Premier League is funding a major expansion of live facial recognition technology around top-flight football matches in London, with the Metropolitan Police receiving approximately $4.6 million to test the system.
Documents published by London’s Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) confirm that the Premier League is providing £3.42 million through Cheshire Constabulary for trials of Live Facial Recognition (LFR) on Premier League matchdays. The funding was approved under Section 93 of the Police Act 1996, which allows police authorities to accept donations and sponsorship.
The 1996 law authorizes the funding arrangement; it does not itself create the legal basis for facial recognition. Each deployment must separately comply with Metropolitan Police policy and be assessed for legality, necessity and proportionality.
According to the Met, cameras monitor a defined area and compare the faces of people passing through it with a police watchlist. That list can include individuals wanted for serious offenses and people subject to football banning orders.
MOPAC said the project is designed to determine whether the technology can make football policing safer and more efficient, including by identifying high-risk individuals before they enter stadiums. The initiative also targets suspects wanted in connection with violence against women and girls and other serious crimes.
Images without matches deleted immediately
The Metropolitan Police says biometric data belonging to people who do not generate an alert is deleted automatically and immediately.
Watchlists are also deleted no later than 24 hours after a deployment, while data connected to an alert is generally removed within 31 days unless there is a lawful reason to retain it.
Supporters must also be informed about LFR deployments, while each use at a Premier League match requires authorization from an officer of at least superintendent rank. Police must consider the impact on the rights and freedoms of people passing through the recognition zone before approving deployment.
The football project forms part of a wider Premier League investment in policing technology. Reports have placed the broader partnership at up to $13.5 million, covering not only facial recognition in London but other technologies such as drones in the West Midlands and AI-based crowd modeling in Merseyside.
Facial recognition remains controversial in Britain. Civil liberties organizations including Liberty and Big Brother Watch have raised concerns about privacy, mass surveillance and potential misidentification.
The Metropolitan Police argues the technology can help locate serious offenders more efficiently. A High Court ruling in April rejected a legal challenge to the force’s use of LFR, finding that existing Metropolitan Police policies contained sufficient safeguards.
The Premier League-funded trials will now be evaluated to determine whether similar technology could eventually be used more widely at football matches and other major public events across Britain.
