Big games. Incredible atmospheres. Thousands of fans. Sports events are just plain fun. But one of their logistical necessities can really put a damper on the game day energy. Like water and oil, huge sporting occasions and parking cars simply don’t seem to mix.
However, this could be changing. Not only was Sunday’s Super Bowl 50 a huge win for the Broncos, but also for ParkHub, a company looking to make car parking efficient for event organizers and fans alike.
ParkHub was produced and developed by Dallas-based Dialexa, a product innovations company. For last Sunday’s Super Bowl, it joined up with Verifone to maximize the efficiency of stadium parking, enabling the fast processing of people and their cars.
Their technology uses PRIME, a mobile point-of-sale platform that was integrated through Verifone’s handheld units. For the staff outside the stadium, this technology helped validate pre-purchased and reserved parking spaces by scanning barcodes. The system also records cash and card transactions, sending all this information remotely to a cloud-based platform to be accessed by the event’s operators.
As well as event staff, there is hope that they will begin to help an increasing number of fans. PRIME also monitors available spaces and traffic flow within car parks, and quickly communicates this information via the internet to another cloud system, where it can be viewed online by customers.
Although ParkHub’s system is already present in 7 venues worldwide, there can’t be many more high profile events than the Super Bowl. 75,000 fans made their way to Levi’s Stadium, including 580 limos, 392 buses and over 7,000 vehicles in total. While those who got tickets may seem like the lucky few, that’s still a lot of people to park. At its peak, one vehicle was being processed by ParkHub’s technology every two seconds on Super Bowl Sunday.
Drama on the field is essential, but drama in the parking lot is not. ParkHub has certainly passed the big Super Bowl audition, but it still has a long way to go everywhere else. However, with collaboration from companies like Verifone, they must be confident.
