Madison Square Garden’s surveillance system banned this fan over his T-shirt design

A concert on Monday night at New York’s Radio City Music Hall was a special occasion for Frank Miller: his parents’ wedding anniversary. He didn’t end up seeing the show — and before he could even get past security, he was informed that he was in fact banned for life from the venue and all other properties owned by Madison Square Garden (MSG).

After scanning his ticket and promptly being pulled aside by security, Miller was told by staff that he was barred from the MSG properties for an incident at the Garden in 2021. But Miller says he hasn’t been to the venue in nearly a decade.

“They hand me a piece of paper letting me know that I’ve been added to a ban list,” Miller says. “There’s a trespass notice if I ever show up on any MSG property ever again,” which includes venues like Radio City, the Beacon Theatre, the Sphere, and the Chicago Theatre.

He was baffled at first. Then it dawned on him: this was probably about a T-shirt he designed years ago. MSG Entertainment won’t say what happened with Miller or how he was picked out of the crowd, but he suspects he was identified via controversial facial recognition systems that the company deploys at its venues.

In 2017, 1990s New York Knicks star Charles Oakley was forcibly removed from his seat near Knicks owner and Madison Square Garden CEO James Dolan. The high-profile incident later spiraled into an ongoing legal battle. For Miller, Oakley was an “integral” part of the ’90s Knicks, he says. With his background in graphic design, he made a shirt in the style of the old team logo that read, “Ban Dolan” — a reference to the infamous scuffle.

A few years later, in 2021, a friend of Miller’s wore a Ban Dolan shirt to a Knicks game and was kicked out and banned from future events. That incident spawned ESPN segments and news articles and validated what many fans saw as a pettiness on Dolan and MSG’s part for going after individual fans who criticized team ownership.

But this week, Miller wasn’t wearing a Ban Dolan shirt; he wasn’t even at a Knicks game. His friend who was kicked out for the shirt tagged him in social media posts as the designer when it happened, but Miller, who lives in Seattle, hadn’t attended an event in New York in years.

Miller says that after he scanned his digital ticket, but before he went through security, a person working at Radio City stopped the line, pulled him aside, and asked him for his ID to verify who he was. They then walked him to another entrance of the building, where five or more staff members stood with him as he was told he was not allowed to return.

He’s not sure how exactly MSG connected him to the shirt or a 2021 incident during an event he wasn’t at. Miller told The Verge that until the concert, he had never actually purchased tickets to MSG events — they were either gifts from other people, or he got them through work.

“I’ve been reading articles about this facial recognition stuff that Dolan [and] MSG properties use, but I hadn’t been in or around the Garden outside of Penn Station to take New Jersey Transit [to] Newark Airport in almost 20 years now,” Miller says. A friend who was present made sure his parents enjoyed the show while Miller hung out at a bar nearby. He did not get a refund for his ticket, he says.

“I just found it comical, until I was told that my mom was crying [in the lobby],” Miller says of the experience. “I was like, ‘Oh man, I ruined their anniversary with my shit talk on the internet. Memes are powerful, and so is the surveillance state.” Miller and his parents also had tickets to a Knicks game the following night; his parents went without him, with a family friend in his place. Miller dropped his parents off from across the street.

MSG Entertainment did not respond to The Verge’s questions about whether facial recognition was used to identify Miller.

“Frank Miller Jr. made threats against an MSG executive on social media and produced and sold merchandise that was offensive in nature,” Mikyl Cordova, executive vice president of communications and marketing for the company, said in an emailed statement. “His behavior was disrespectful and disruptive and in violation of our code of conduct.”

Keeping close watch on patrons is nothing new for MSG. In 2022, a New Jersey attorney was denied entry to Radio City Music Hall during a Girl Scout troop trip. Her infraction was being on an “attorney exclusion list” full of people who work at firms that are suing MSG. The attorney was identified using facial recognition technology at the venue.

Miller says he was told at Radio City that he could appeal the ban if he wanted to but said it’s not a priority for him. He hopes his experience can help others who find themselves in a similar situation, where they’re unexpectedly denied entry at an expensive event based on data about them that has been collected by the company.

“It’s something that we all have to be aware of — the panopticon,” Miller says. “We’re [being] surveilled at all times, and it’s always framed as a safety thing, when rarely is that the case. It’s more of a deterrent and a fear tactic to try to keep people in line.”

Update March 28th: Added comment from MSG Entertainment spokesperson Mikyl Cordova.