Cincinnati Bengals upbeat about winning local fans’ loyalties due to training camp shift – NFL News
The Cincinnati Bengals are organising training camp at their Paul Brown stadium for the first time and the entire town is abuzz with excitement.
It will be a rare opportunity for the local fans to watch their favourite players while training at the camp, starting this weekend.
The team has allowed free-of-charge entry to its facility throughout training camp and has offered to make temporary seating arrangements for the visiting fans.
Recently, the team has taken some other steps that will facilitate the local supporters further. One of them is the permission of re-entry to smokers on proving their IDs. This is expected to help the Bengals attract more people to the stadium, likely solving
their home-game selling issue.
Mike Brown, the team’s owner, said of the facility change:
"It's new and different for us, but not for most teams in the league. We have better facilities here than we could find anywhere else. Training camp anymore has dwindled down to just three weeks. We used to leave for training camp after the July 4 holiday
and come back after Labour Day weekend. Three weeks - it seems we no sooner get there and it's time to come back.”
He added:
"I think it's good for that reason and most of all, we can reach out to our fans. They don't have to drive far, they can watch us downtown."
The team had a serious problem in selling their home games up to the stadium capacity last year. At the end, they had to offer incentives such as free refreshments to attract more people to the ground.
With training camp moved to their home ground, the management expects this problem is solved once and for all. Also, the league has offered to relax their blackout rules threshold up to 85 percent sale of tickets.
The owner, however, said they will not reduce the threshold and will stick to the previously prevailed 100 percent tickets sale blackout rules.
He hopes the team performs even better this year. The Bengals were lucky to have made it to the playoffs through last wildcard due to development of an unexpected favourable situation on the league’s points-table last season. It did not benefit the team
much as they ruined the opportunity by losing to the playoffs minnows - the Houston Texans - in the first round.
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