The show starts in five minutes and you’re still stuck in line, hot dog in hand, haven’t even paid yet. Spark Arena reckons it’s fixed that.

The venue has overhauled its food and drink setup, and the headline change for gig-goers is less time queuing and more time actually watching the show.

New food outlets are rolling out across the venue, dumplings, beef and chicken burgers, hot dogs, salads, pitched as fresher and more locally sourced than typical arena food.

The bigger shift is behind the scenes: Spark Arena has installed Mashgin, AI-powered self-checkout scanners that scan your order instantly instead of waiting at a till. It’s the first arena in the country to get the tech, and only the third venue in NZ overall after Cardrona and The Remarkables, but with more scanners than either.

It builds on the Spark Arena app from earlier this year, which already handles tickets and event info in one place.

GM Mark Gosling framed it as part of a bigger push, the venue was recently ranked in the top 20 arenas in the world by IQ Magazine and Pollstar, and says the upgrades are meant to keep the whole night feeling as premium as the shows themselves.

Whether it actually holds up when 12,000 people hit the concourse at once is the real test, but if it does, that five-minutes-to-showtime panic might finally be a thing of the past.

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Published by Stephen

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