For many Gators fans, game days rarely begin with kickoff. They begin with finding a place to park.
Starting Sept. 5 with a faceoff against the Florida Atlantic University Owls, the Gators will begin to host opponents at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium for the 2026-27 football season. With this, fans will once again combat the challenges of game-day parking.
Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, the largest stadium in Florida, has a capacity of nearly 90,000 people. Fans, students, alumni, families and more swarm The Swamp, driving parking demand even higher.
For students, parking can already be a hassle during the offseason. Mopeds, electric scooters and the RTS bus system have become popular ways for students who live off campus to get to class and around campus.
With thousands more people pouring into Gainesville on Saturdays to watch the Gators play, the demand for parking skyrockets.
Some apartment complexes force residents to relocate their vehicles so they can sell spots; UF bars students with parking passes from certain on-campus garages to prioritize parking for alumni or season ticket holders, who pay in advance; and Gainesville residents resort to selling spots in their own backyards.
Ben Dunmyer is a rising senior at UF. He and his two roommates rent a house near campus, where they sell spots during major campus events, including football games. It was the former residents of the house who suggested they take advantage of their space.
“The people before us actually left a note, and they said it’s probably in our best interest to sell parking,” Dunmyer said.
Even without the heads-up, he said they likely would have gotten involved anyway, with most of their neighbors doing the same.
“Sometimes my neighbors will start off higher than we will, so in order to just get a little bit of traffic in our yard, we’ll go a little bit below them,” he said. “But we have significantly more spots than them, so it doesn’t really matter anyway.”
Depending on the car, Dunmyer and his roommates can fit 20 to 25 cars in their lot. They stand in their front yard with a whiteboard, and as prices change, they update the board.
In May, they sold around 10 spots for the Morgan Wallen concerts. They set their initial price at $50 and went up or down depending on how many people purchased, he said.
Gainesville traffic on game days and during major events only adds more stress for visitors or new students unfamiliar with the area.
“It’s super hard when you include the fact that a lot of people going to the games are from out of town,” said Trevor Regli, a UF finance junior. “They don't know how to navigate Gainesville or around the stadium.”
In January, the city of Gainesville converted many streets around UF’s main campus to one-ways. Parts of University Avenue are also closed on game days to keep pedestrians safe.
One wrong turn on a busy day can dramatically affect a driver’s arrival time, Regli said. It’s also hard to compare lot prices while driving safely on the roads.
“It’s super disorganized because by the time you end up finding a spot and getting [to] where you are, you’re probably going to be late to the game,” Regli said.
Regli co-founded an app called Parkey. Launched earlier this year, it allows students to compare the prices of lots and reserve a spot ahead of events like football games. The goal, Regli said, is to open up parking and make it cheaper.
The app has already served users for two events: the Spring Orange & Blue game and the Morgan Wallen concerts.
Users on Parkey can also list their own pay-to-park event spots in the app, Regli said, so they no longer need to stand in their yards holding signs. Even if users are out of town, they can still put their lots to use, he added.
“It’s really beneficial because it opens up so much parking,” Regli said. “Right now, you have limited parking. You have the really visible homes right in front of the stadium and then in close proximity … and then you have the stadium parking, which is either sold out or completely unaffordable.”
Regli’s app isn’t the first time students have worked on a solution to Gainesville’s parking nightmare. Perch surfaced in 2023 to provide a similar service.
Some car-owning students even resort to using services like Uber and Lyft to avoid the hassle altogether.
Jose Majano, a 19-year-old UF political science and economics sophomore, lived on campus his freshman year. To get to the games, he would pick up friends and bring them to campus.
UF would close certain garages to sell the parking spots, kicking students out and forcing them to relocate their cars, he said.
“I understood it, but it was way too inconvenient, especially [given] the fact we pay for the parking passes,” Majano said.
This year, Majano plans to Uber to games and forgo the hassle and headache of Gainesville’s game-day parking.
Contact Nicole Scura at nscura@alligator.org. Follow her on X @NicoleScuraa.
Nicole Scura is a third-year journalism student in her second semester at The Alligator. She is currently a sports enterprise reporter and previously served as a hockey reporter. In her free time, she enjoys figure skating, traveling and watching football (Go Bucs!).
