It’s down to seven.
The amount of NFL teams that will hit the road for training camp as the NFL’s Centennial season gets rolling.
This year the Houston Texans will stay home after a few seasons travelling to The Greenbriar in West Virginia, and the Minnesota Vikings will be spending their second year at the new TCO Performance Center in suburban Minneapolis after the previous 50 years in Mankato.
The Rams and Raiders are also readying moves to new facilities in the next few years (in LA and Las Vegas), while some like the Dallas Cowboys still leaving Jerryworld for their usual stop in Oxnard, California. Buffalo, Carolina, the Bears, and the Chiefs will continue their college-based road shows, but keeping disruption down by staying in market, vs. the past when going out of town meant less distractions, is now the norm as teams look for competitive advantage and new streams of revenue.
In 2000, only five NFL teams stayed in their own practice facility for the rigors of preseason training camp, but the investments in training facilities and selling the naming rights, the cost associated with travel, and the ability to showcase their players and their brand in front of hometown fans who don’t need to travel hundreds, if not thousands of miles, to see their favorite players early on, the idea of staying home seems like one that is smarter and smarter for both the on and off field growth of an NFL team.
It makes great business sense. Teams are all about year-round routine, and keeping players and staff together in a first class environment that the team has invested millions in helps strengthen ties to the community and to each other. Even with the best of college facilities and the ability to physically transport thousands of pounds of equipment, the experience is still not 100 percent the same. The idea of “getting away” to focus on training camp in an era where social media rules, and players are not used to such isolation is quickly passing by…no one can really hide any more, and the creature comforts the teams take to make their facilities best in show make staying home more of a natural these days than ever before.
Then there’s the off-field question of ROI. Teams are doing everything possible to hold on to and cultivate brand and fan relationships in times that are still somewhat challenging for the discretionary dollar. Moving a team hundreds of miles away, which limits access and in some ways keeps the team a bit out of mind of the consumer and the team’s core brands, can slow growth and affinity with the team at a time when access is probably greater than at any other time of the year. Granted most major media will travel wherever a team trains, but keeping the team closer to home does ensure even more consistent coverage, which re-building teams like the New York Jets covet. On the brand side, a company like Atlantic Health Care, like Quest Diagnostics, has spent a good amount of money associating itself with the Jets brand, and to have a far off college facility in the press vs. their name during the preseason is a bit of a disconnect. Other brands also love more activation with the team and its thousands of fans who go to training camp so staying local gives them a much better opportunity to grow the partnership in a time when access is so key to a relationship.
Yes there is some perceived value to getting away for the three weeks. It may help grow the team brand away from its core and it certainly puts dollars back into the small town where the teams go. However for the long run, from a business and player development standpoint, the trend of not travelling for training camp is a growing one, and one which more teams are going to consider and use.
There is no place like home, especially with the billion dollar investment of an NFL team.
