Before the first whistle, there is another contest: thousands of drivers, a limited number of spaces and an attendant trying to keep the line moving. The ticket may be digital. The bottleneck is stubbornly physical. Somewhere between buying a parking pass and lowering the car window, a promise made online has to become permission to enter.
- ParkHub moved from consumer reservations to parking tools for businesses.
- Its 2024 combination with UK JustPark brought booking and gate operations together.
- The next expansion adds everyday parking software and people who run event-day lots.
That handoff explains JustPark, the company formerly known as ParkHub. It connects reservations, payments, pass validation and reporting. Its buyers include sports venues, universities, councils and commercial operators; its other audience is the driver who would rather spend the evening anywhere except a parking queue.
The detour that became the business
George Baker founded ParkHub in Dallas in 2010. His first product faced consumers: reserve parking before leaving home. Dallas’s sporting calendar supplied demand. But Baker saw another opening. In 2014, he partnered with Ticketmaster, letting the ticketing company handle advance sales while ParkHub supplied the hardware that authenticated parking passes.
The change was a choice about where to stand in the transaction. A reservation could bring a driver to the lot. The attendant still needed to recognize it, accept other payments and account for the spaces. Baker moved toward the business customer controlling that entrance.
Across the Atlantic, Anthony Eskinazi had founded the UK business in 2006, originally as ParkatmyHouse. That platform matched drivers with spare parking capacity, including residential driveways. Two companies had approached the same errand from different directions: one through discovery, the other through operations.
What happens after you click “book”
Today, JustPark’s product names describe the route. Reservations helps drivers find and pre-book spaces. EventPass sells parking for individual events; SeasonPass covers a season or multiple events; CompPass distributes complimentary access to staff and VIPs. Prime, the rugged handheld, validates passes and takes payments at the entrance. Suite gives managers operational oversight.
Conceptual workflow; product availability and integrations vary by site.
Insights gathers information from parking equipment, payment providers and apps. Its current US offering includes an AI assistant and occupancy forecasting. On-Demand handles payment at participating locations through app, web or phone options. For drivers, those distinctions mean checking whether they are reserving ahead or paying for a session after arrival.
There are plenty of alternatives. SpotHero sells parking reservations; ParkMobile offers mobile payment and reservations; YourParkingSpace matches drivers with UK and Irish capacity. JustPark’s particular proposition is the connection between these tasks and the attendant’s equipment. A venue can buy more of the chain from one provider.
“We’ve always believed parking is unnecessarily complicated.”
Jeff Shanahan / April 2025
The cash drawer was setting the price
Consider Momentous Sports Center, a Southern California tournament venue with 22 indoor courts. Its problems were ordinary: customers wanted card payments, cash created discrepancies, managers lacked information, and slow entry backed traffic onto public streets. Prime and prepaid EventPass addressed several of those problems together.
Cards also removed an unobtrusive constraint: prices no longer needed to be round numbers to make cash handling easy. In JustPark’s June 2024 case study, cash’s share fell from 63% in the first six months to 24% in the last six months. Reported revenue rose 26.2% year over year in April and May, alongside higher average ticket prices.
The useful lesson is narrower than a sales pitch: change the payment workflow, then reconsider the rules it imposed on pricing and staffing. The reported increase is a customer example, not a controlled experiment separating software from price changes.
A billion dollars passes through
ParkHub raised a $13 million Series B in 2019. LLR Partners backed it in 2022; trade reporting put that transaction at approximately $100 million, including shareholder liquidity. FTV Capital led another growth investment alongside the 2024 JustPark combination. ParkHub adopted the JustPark brand in April 2025.
The UK business also faced pandemic-induced revenue losses. The company’s account of Mary Corrie’s 2024 promotion credits her financial leadership during that period. This history calls for a distinction: Baker’s earlier pivot followed an opportunity at the gate; the pandemic brought an external shock to parking demand.
The economic engine combines software subscriptions and payment monetization. The marketplace also charges booking-related fees. Listing a private space is free, but listing price, owner proceeds and the driver’s checkout total are different figures. JustPark’s May 2026 owner guidance describes owner and driver fees plus a 3% withdrawal transaction fee.
Company-reported, March 2026. Money booked through the platform, not JustPark’s revenue.
Buying the UK platform also meant combining teams across an ocean. CEO Jeff Shanahan described a Portugal offsite, annual technology hackathons and travel between offices. A shared logo was the easy part; product and engineering teams needed working relationships.
The gate still needs a plan
Prime supports offline operation, but the trade-offs matter. JustPark’s support documentation says live data pauses, transactions wait to synchronize and inventory counts lag. Card payments may subsequently be declined. Duplicate barcodes scanned in different lots may escape rejection. A manager needs a fallback procedure as much as a device.
Recent acquisitions acknowledge another practical constraint. Oobeo, acquired in August 2025, adds valet, permits and everyday payments. BigParking, acquired in March 2026, adds over 120 UK locations and on-site expertise through Event Support Team. Selling access and managing arrivals remain different skills.
Cornwall Council offers a quieter example. Its 2018 mobile-payment project grew into staff billing, a resident Wallet and consolidated parking data by 2026. Start with one expensive nuisance, make the handoffs visible, then expand where customers already need help. That is a habit another business can copy. The parking gate happens to make the results unusually easy to see.