NFL Training Camps Have Become Marketing Bonanza

National Football League training camps used to be about 50 overweight men running sprints, while a few picnicking fans watched from a hillside.

Today, preseason workouts can draw 7,000 fans a day, with some willing to spend $7.50 for a tour of the team’s locker room and $2 for a soda.

Summer camp is now part of most NFL teams’ overall strategy to increase revenue and give sponsors additional exposure.

“It’s like a rib festival,” said Len Komoroski, the Philadelphia Eagles vice president of sales and marketing. “You have free admission, free music, you can buy ribs, there are interactive games and people have fun.”

Komoroski said football took a cue from baseball’s spring training where thousands of people go to watch workouts, creating competition between cities to host a major league team.

The difference, he said, is that with football training camp, “You don’t have to buy a ticket to the workout, or pay for parking, or fly to the training camp site, or get a hotel room. The Eagles can be a one-day trip that costs nothing.”

And teams are making money.

NFL executives said that well-managed camps like the Eagles’ in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and the Dallas Cowboys’ in Wichita Falls, Texas, with corporate sponsorship and hospitality tents, can earn $1 million in revenue, including about $250,000 in merchandise sales.

The Green Bay Packers, which have fewer corporate banners and hospitality tents in camp than the Eagles or Cowboys, make up part of the difference by charging fans $7.50 for a guided tour of the stadium, locker rooms and luxury suites.

In Minnesota, where the team’s new ownership is struggling to sell out its preseason games, the Vikings are packaging a ticket to the Aug. 15 exhibition game against the Kansas City Chiefs with a pass to the Vikings’ Fantasy Football Expo and Family Day, with ESPN’s Chris Mortensen as the keynote speaker, for $29.95.

And in Bethlehem, considered the benchmark in camp entertainment, fans must pass through a gauntlet of corporate sponsors and NFL merchandise on their way to the field.

Fans enter through a walkway where everything from $225 Eagles helmets to $14 Eagles dog chains are for sale, then they pass through the sponsors, one of which is a local automobile dealership that lined up cars for fans to look at on the way out.

Cheerleaders and a team mascot work the crowd, meeting fans and smiling for pictures.

On adjacent fields, interns throw passes to children running crossing routes in front of a cardboard cutout of an Eagles player, and smaller children practice field goals with a miniature goal post.

Not all clubs have made summer camp a fan event. The New Orleans Saints practice in near obscurity at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, because it’s cooler than Louisiana and is a less distracting environment for the players.

Saints in Wisconsin

Greg Suit, the Saints’ senior vice president of marketing and administration, said if the team held its preseason closer to home, he’d beef up the marketing and merchandising effort, too.

“The time, expense and effort to get people in Wisconsin excited about the New Orleans Saints is not going to turn up at the turnstile in the Superdome at the other end of the Mississippi River, 1,800 miles away,” Suit said.

The Saints’ vice president said every team in the league is trying to increase revenue, and if the fans feel they are getting good value for the dollar, all the better.

“You may not be impressed with going in the locker room, but ask a guy from the middle of some bean field in Kenosha (Wisconsin) if he wants to see the Packers’ locker room, and he’ll go ape.”

Although the Saints have traded potentially higher revenue for a cooler location, the trend is to stay near home and expand the camp experience beyond just practice.

In Green Bay, the Packers charge adults $7.50 and children $5 for the “Packers Experience,” where children can crawl through a giant inflatable Swiss cheese, hit blocking dummies, throw the ball through a hoop--18 activities and a perfect way to fill up the afternoon between the morning and afternoon workouts.

Jeff Cieply, the Packers’ director of marketing, said 75,000 fans attended the “Packers Experience” last season, and that the tram tour of the stadium sold out, requiring the team to buy a second tram this year to keep up with demand. The Packers now offer two tours every hour.

Ken Bishop, a retired school teacher, was at Philadelphia Eagles camp on Wednesday, and said he couldn’t believe how times have changed.

Bishop was taking summer courses at Western Maryland College in 1963. Baltimore Colts coach Don Shula and quarterback Johnny Unitas were rooming in the adjacent dorm room.

“The players were more accessible and the camp was less commercialized, you could really hob-nob with the players,” said Bishop. “One of the guys had a son who was having a birthday. And Johnny Unitas heard about it and showed up at the party to say hello and wish the boy a happy birthday.”

Fans are making NFL camps the low-budget vacation of choice. Families can pack a lunch, park for free and there are plenty of fields for kids to run off their energy.

“I think the cost of going to a major league sporting event today makes it tough on families,” Cieply said. “This is our way to offer a family an alternative that’s affordable.”