Stadium Tech Report interviews George Baker Sr., CEO of ParkHub, an innovative and disrupting firm in the field of stadium parking operations. Listen in as George talks about the company’s recent $100 million funding round, and what the future holds for parking and associated stadium payment operations.
While there are still many venues where you still need to pay cash to park your car, thanks to innovators like ParkHub CEO George Baker Sr., those places are becoming fewer and farther between. Baker, who founded ParkHub in 2010 in part to bring digital innovation to the venue parking market, has built the company into something much more than its original pay-for-parking app.
ParkHub now powers the back end of hundreds of venue parking operations, and has expanded into adjacent fields like national parks and campgrounds. Listen in as we talk to George Baker about the company’s recent $100 million funding round, which according to George will help enable the next level of innovation in venue parking and associated payments processing.
Trying to make parking experiences better
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We open our conversation with George by asking about the ParkHub genesis story — how did it come to be? Baker explains that after working for different parking operations in the Dallas area, he wanted to build a way to improve the experience of handing cash to someone wearing an apron to something that made more sense and a better experience both for people who needed to park their cars at events, and for the venues hosting the events.
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“Parking is the first and last impression a fan has at an event,” Baker notes, and as such it should have more of an emphasis than perhaps it still does at large venues. Baker goes on to talk about how ParkHub eventually switched from an initial consumer-facing app to becoming a B2B supplier, building the backend systems for venues to connect parking and other associated payments like seat upgrades, VIP experiences and merchandise.
“Our goal is to remove all the friction in transactions,” Baker said.
Able to take a longer view
Founded in 2010, ParkHub had gone through a series of funding rounds that enabled the company to grow. But as Baker explains, each round created a sort of short-term focus that had the company trying to fulfill the terms of each round. As he explains the new funding round, Baker said its prime benefit is giving ParkHub the freedom to focus on the long term, with a war chest that can enable potential acquisitions.
Acquisitions, he said, are already an integral part of ParkHub’s strategy. Listen as Baker tells about the company’s purchase of an entity called Campfire, which was built to digitize reservations and payments for campground spaces. The investment paid off during the pandemic, because while many sports and entertainment venues were closed to fans, usage of campgrounds at parks boomed.
At the end of our talk, Baker took out the crystal ball and looked into the future of parking and payments operations, where he foresaw the ability for cars to park themselves, or for cars to be serviced while fans attended events. He looks at innovators like Disney and thinks venues can learn from their commitment to making the game-day experience a better one, helped by technology.
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