A French first at Stade Gaston Gerard

Dijon FCO have become the first club in France to replace traditional season tickets with connected merchandise, handing supporters scarves embedded with contactless technology to enter the stadium.

Footage shared by the club on Friday showed fans filing into the 15,500-capacity Stade Gaston Gerard for the club's opening home fixture of the 2026-27 season — a 1-0 defeat to Pau FC — by holding their scarves up to the ticket scanners.

“Les écharpes connectées, un moyen rapide et privilégié de rentrer au stade,” the club wrote alongside the video, describing the connected scarves as a fast and privileged way to get into the ground.

How the scarf works

Dijon said near-field communication (NFC) chips had been integrated into the red, club-branded scarves. NFC is a short-range wireless technology that connects devices from centimetres away and is already widely used for contactless payments.

“This innovation is part of the club’s desire to modernize the fan experience while strengthening the visual identity of the Dijon stands,” the club said.

The chip sits underneath a small brown embroidered patch showing the Dijon symbol of an owl. Supporters scan the brown patch to pass through the turnstiles, and the club said scarf entry would be the “preferred” means of access this season, allowing “quick and easy access.”

Upon buying a season ticket, supporters received a QR code by email that let them collect their assigned scarf and pair it with an online subscriber account linked to cashless payments inside the stadium.

A multi-purpose symbol

The initiative was launched with Weezevent, a ticketing and events technology company whose CEO and co-founder, Pierre-Henri Deballon, is also president of Dijon. Deballon described the scarves as “a symbol of belonging and pride for fans, a ticket to get through the security checkpoints” and “a wallet for buying drinks at the concession stands and beer walls.”

Not the first in the world

While the move is a first in France, it is not unique globally. Bundesliga side FC Koln trialled a scarf-based entry system in 2022 for a pre-season match against AC Milan, while Swiss club FC St Gallen have since adopted the same idea on a permanent basis. Those precedents are explored in a separate report on the wider spread of NFC fan merchandise.