Booth Empire deployed a dual AI photo booth activation for TNA Wrestlingās Border Brawl on Sunday, May 25, 2025 at the Niagara Falls Convention Centre, 6815 Stanley Avenue in Niagara Falls. The activation was contracted through TNA Wrestling and sponsored by Zone TV (Zone-ify), with two AI booths running side by side in the Exhibit Hall prefunction area. Across the event, the dual-booth setup processed and printed 120 AI images and collected email addresses for the sponsoring organization.
The Border Brawl Brief
The Border Brawl brief had a dual-client structure that shaped every decision. TNA Wrestling was the contracting client; Zone TV / Zone-ify sponsored the activation and helped coordinate. The activation had to do two things at once: give fans a personalized souvenir of the event, and collect email addresses for the sponsorās lead-capture program. Those two objectives are not naturally in tension, but they do require the experience to be built deliberately so that fan engagement and sponsor value both land.
The Canadian-versus-American framing of Border Brawl itself shaped the AI concepts. Rather than offering a single generic wrestling transformation, the experience was structured around the eventās actual identity, which gave the AI output a reason to exist that fans could engage with immediately.
Two Booths, Four Wrestling Concepts
The final setup ran two AI booths side by side, each turning fans into wrestling characters through one of four selectable AI concepts:
- Canadian male wrestler
- Canadian female wrestler
- American male wrestler
- American female wrestler
The four-concept structure did real work. It gave guests a meaningful choice that tied directly to the eventās Border Brawl theme, and the male-female split made sure every fan could see themselves in a transformation that matched them. The Canadian-versus-American framing turned the AI pick into part of the experience rather than a setup step, which is a meaningfully better activation than a single generic wrestling transformation.
The AI experience handled one person at a time, transforming each guest into a fully styled wrestling character. For groups that wanted a photo together, the activation also offered a standard branded photograph printed using the same equipment, against a custom Border Brawl wrestling-ring background. That dual-path setup meant no group was forced to split up to participate, which kept throughput moving and every type of fan had an option.
The Full Activation Package
This was a multi-output activation built for both fan engagement and sponsor value, not a single-output booth drop:
- Custom wrestling-themed AI treatment with four selectable concepts
- Branded Zone-ify / TNA overlay on every output
- 6x4 four-photo white-frame print layout for physical prints
- A customized microsite for digital delivery
- Branded email-delivery templates for the digital delivery path
- Physical photo printing on-site, in addition to digital delivery
- Email-address collection for the sponsor
- Regular group-photo option for non-AI captures
- Custom Border Brawl wrestling-ring background for standard photos
The creative execution pulled from assets TNA supplied directly. TNA provided an initial concept reference (BB_photobooth_concept.png) and later delivered the final backdrop as āBorder Brawl backdrop no text.jpgā for use on the standard group-photo path. That asset flow meant the final output was built on TNAās actual creative rather than a Booth Empire approximation of the Border Brawl look.
Sponsor Value: Email Collection and Analytics
Zone TVās sponsorship was justified by lead capture, not just brand visibility. The activation was built to collect email addresses from guests as part of the experience, which is what turned the activation from a fan engagement moment into a measurable sponsorship asset.
This is the model that makes sponsor-funded activations work at live entertainment events. The sponsor gets a defined, post-event deliverable - collected email addresses, total-photo analytics, sharing data, impression data, and an Excel-download option through the Snappic reporting portal - rather than relying on impressions and hoped-for brand recall. For sponsors evaluating whether to renew, that reported data package is what closes the loop.
On-Site Execution at Niagara Falls Convention Centre
Load-in began after 9:00 a.m. on Sunday, with both booths positioned in the Exhibit Hall prefunction area of the Niagara Falls Convention Centre. Prefunction placement is high-traffic space by design: itās where fans naturally gather before the show, where they wait for doors, and where they circulate during breaks. The booths lived in the flow of the event rather than in a side room fans had to find.
The venue supplied Wi-Fi and power, which is a non-trivial detail for a dual AI booth deployment. AI pipelines are bandwidth- and processing-sensitive, and running two simultaneous AI generation streams on top of physical printing requires stable connectivity. Venue-supplied infrastructure removed a common single point of failure.
The activation also had a defined teardown constraint: it needed to be removed before the end of the show so the space could be converted for a meet-and-greet. That put hard timing on load-out and made clean coordination with the venue critical, because missing the conversion window would have impacted a separate part of the event.
Activation by the Numbers
- 120 AI images processed and printed
- 2 AI booths running side by side
- 4 wrestling concepts (Canadian and American, male and female)
- Exhibit Hall prefunction placement at Niagara Falls Convention Centre
- Load-in after 9:00 a.m. Sunday, teardown before meet-and-greet conversion
- Email-address collection built into the experience for the sponsor
Post-Event Reporting
After the event, Booth Empire supplied both TNA and Zone TV with a complete reporting package: collected email addresses, total-photo analytics, sharing data, impression data, and an Excel-download option through the Snappic reporting portal. That dual-client reporting structure matters because it let both the contracting client and the sponsor evaluate the activation against their own objectives without anyone having to chase down data after the fact.
Jeremy Schneider reported back after the event that it āseemed to go off pretty wellā - the kind of understated post-event signal that, paired with the delivered analytics package, tells you the activation hit its objectives on both the fan experience and the sponsor value sides.
AI Photo Booths for Sports and Live Entertainment
Live entertainment activations live or die on whether the experience feels native to the event. The Border Brawl deployment worked because the AI concepts were built around the eventās actual Canadian-versus-American framing, not a generic wrestling transformation, and because the sponsor value was built into the experience rather than layered on top of it.
Booth Empire builds AI photo booth activations for wrestling events, sports broadcasts, and live entertainment across Canada and the United States. Every AI concept is custom-built around the brand and the audience, and dual-booth deployments are scoped to the venue and the expected traffic. Tell us about your live event, see more Niagara activations, or browse the full case study library.
