New Am Fam Field parking pay format is a mess on Opening Day.

Live look at the new parking format at Am Fam Field on Opening Day yesterday:

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING?? Wait…..we did.

I had honestly kind of forgotten about the new procedure until I saw this tweet around noon yesterday:

UH OH. This eventually lead to the official Brewer accounts having to post about some of their parking patrons having, ‘connectivity issues.’ Which, as a compelte sidenote, is one of the funnier lines ever uttered on the TV show, Parks and Rec:

So to reset, Am Fam Field was trying to implement a system this season where attendants would show you where to park, but then you’d be responsible to purchasing a parking pass on your phone. There’s an app apparently, or you can buy parking beforehand, or there are QR codes on light poles, etc.

Well what I don’t think the Brewer IT team accounted for was the fact that when there are a LOT of people all trying to access something in a small footprint, everybody’s phone doesn’t nescessarily work. My phone has this problem all of the time. I call it my phone’s ‘social anxiety.’ If I’m at a Brewer game, or a concert, or Lambeau, and I can’t get on the wi-fi, my data almost never works. Which means I can’t access the internet, apps, etc. So my guess is that 20,000 people were all trying to access this payment feature at around the same time and that meant that 80% of those people couldn’t get to it.

The end game? Parking was essentially free yesterday. Unless you were one of the lucky ones that could access the payment feature and did pay for your parking. “Lucky ones.” Anyway, it sounds like they’re going to go back to the original format until they get these kinks worked out. My guess is they need to expand their wi-fi parameters so that it extends from the stadium to all of the parking lots. What that all entails or how expensive it will be, I have no idea. But that feels like the simplest solution if they intend to push forward with the new method. If people can connect to free, reliable wi-fi, it will be much easier for them to buy a parking pass from the parking lot.

Semi-related: How about the Pat Murphy Brewers?? I guess in all of his analytics and metrics books, Craig Counsell never found a chapter about just winning every game! What if we do that, just win all of them? Feels pretty cut and dry!

PS: Uecker rightfully got a standing ovation yesterday:

Legend.