UPDATE 03/22/17 6:54 p.m.: Following the airing of the segment, the Golden 1 Center reached out to Capital Public Radio with a statement in response to the conversation with Sacramento News & Review's Dave Kempa about the arena's information-gathering through its app. Read the statement below.
"Golden 1 Center and the Sacramento Kings are committed to keeping customer information secure, while respecting the boundaries of privacy. We’re reached out to the Sacramento News and Review to correct the inaccurate assumptions and claims about how Golden 1 Center interacts with customer and guest data.
The Kings + Golden 1 Center app is 100 percent opt-in and requires users to grant permission for any data that a user may choose to share in order to receive a hyper-personalized experience. That is never stated in the article and both are facts were shared directly with the author. Omission of such important points along with the misrepresentations about the arena’s technology enhancements, data aggregation and guest profiles are extremely disappointing and intentionally misleading.”
The Golden 1 Center has provided world class entertainment in Sacramento over the past year, with the NCAA tournament in town this past weekend and hundreds of high profile concerts and events already.
However, some are raising concerns about the amount of data the state-of-the-art arena is collecting on its patrons and potentially selling to advertisers.
The stadium's app asks for access to users' GPS, Bluetooth and wifi-hotspots -- and in return it offers guidance on the best snack locations, nearest bathrooms and which Facebook friends are nearby.
Dave Kempa with the Sacramento News and Review says he was shocked to realize that when he'd left on the location services on his smartphone, the app had learned the location of his home.
Kempa investigated what information the Golden 1 Center is collecting about our interests, spending habits and our locations. He joins Capital Public Radio’s Insight with his findings.