When did race photo outfits start requiring selfies to find your own race pics?

What photo company is this? I get emails all the time and they always ask for either name or bib number. I have never seen one where entering your bib number will not get you the pics.

Outside.com / FinisherPix has the photo packages for the recent Air Force Marathon, and requires a selfie to even see all the photos. I was a little weirded out by that; it makes more sense to search by bib number.

Yeah, I'm sure it's a lot easier/cheaper for the race companies to use photo recognition software to match pics versus paying a bunch of people in India $0.50/hr to look at the pics and enter the peoples bib numbers.

I just went to the website and it asked for name or bib number. I entered a random number (I did not run the race) and I got all 12 photos for that person. Not sure what you are doing wrong.

Let me clarify. If you follow the link from the email, it takes you to a page where you MUST upload a selfie, with no option to enter a bib or name. If you go to the FinisherPix website and try to find the event and then enter name and/or bib number, it appears to go to a page where there SHOULD be photos but there are no photos and instead the requirement to upload a selfie is there.

This has now happened for both a marathon run this weekend AND another race run six weeks ago. Can't be just me.

Maybe if they already have a pic of you to check against, they don't need the selfie.

London Marathon doing this now, too. Figured it's probably from their sponsor, TCS, which means it's probably coming to NYCM, as well.

Also, not to get too tin foil hatty - wait a sec, I'm on LRC MB, let's get all the tin foil hats! - FinisherPix is part of Outside Inc, whose CEO is Robin Thurston, cofounder of MapMyRun and all that, so clearly he knows a thing or two about hoovering up endurance athletes' personal data.

It seems like it would be easier for software to recognize a number in a photo than to recognize a face. Personally, I wouldn't email them a photo. I would think a lot of people would feel the same way and they would lose money.

It seems like the only reason you should need to upload a photo is to see if your face appears in any photos that your bib does not. You know, because the 100+ photos of your bib are not enough for some people.

how are these companies even able to make a profit? They charge an insane amount for a digital pic. Racing for 20 years, I have never once even considered ever buying a pic from them. are there really people out there who pay for this stuff?

Race photos are a racket. Rarely do I have any good ones! I don't understand the advance purchase discounts. Who wants to pay for pictures they haven't seen? Many of my local races offer free pics which is nice.

This is probably why they jumped at the chance to "partner" with the AI companies. They probably make a s**t ton more money by selling a handful of selfies for data exploitation than they usually make for each race as a whole. AI might be the best prospect for survival.

Unless there's a much bigger market / interest in race pics than LRC MB lurkers want to admit.

Possibly to prevent people other than the actual athlete to have access to the proofs(?) Could be a privacy issue(?)

Anytime you upload a selfie to some company like this you are helping to train the AI for improved facial recognition. Don’t do it.

They are basically good for investigating amateur road race cheating and course cutters