00:00Lions training camp. It's right around the corner and people know it. They were waiting around at 10 a.m.
00:06yesterday trying to snag a few spots for Lions training camp only to be met with disaster.
00:13Heather, you shared a story of Colin trying to do this. I bumped into someone at the gym who said
00:17they spent five hours still didn't get tickets.
00:21Five hours just like in a waiting room. Yeah.
00:24Wow. It sounds like it was chaos. I always talk to Colin on my drive home. So we get out
00:29at 10, you know, I'm on the road and I always just give him a call.
00:32What are you doing? It's always the same. It's a pointless phone call. What are you doing? I'm driving home.
00:36What are you doing? I'm working. Whatever. I still do it. It's just what we do.
00:39I do the same thing. It's usually a pretty quick conversation, but just hello, good morning. And he was like,
00:44oh my gosh, this is crazy. He's been talking about this day, right?
00:49Like I got, he had it like marked out his calendar the day he can get training camp tickets. And
00:53he said he had everything set up to go, you know, so he can log in right at 10 a
00:58.m.
00:58And he said, basically, as soon as it was 10 a.m., everything crashed. He was like, I got into
01:03one, because you can like pick the days, which days you want to try to get the tickets for, right?
01:07So he had already mapped out which days would work with his work schedule, yada, yada. He's like, I had
01:12gotten in line and everything crashed. I got one line and then I was like number 8,000. And then
01:17he was able to get back to the original line. And he was like, I thought, I thought this was
01:22going to be it because he was like number 300 and something. But even that, so everybody can get four
01:28tickets for free.
01:29Okay. But they only give away. Yeah, not everyone. Well, whoever can get that, you get four tickets. And most
01:36people aren't going to say, I only want two. They're going to take the four and give them to buddies
01:39or use all four.
01:41And they only give away so many tickets per day. So you can kind of figure out if you're number
01:468,000, you're not going to get, you're not going to get tickets.
01:49So you try to pick a different day, but then you guys, then you can't get in. And it sounds
01:52like, I mean, I was, didn't experience it, but from what he was saying, he was like, he was like,
01:56it was chaos. Nothing worked. Everything was crashing.
01:58Error, error, error, error, error, error. This isn't the first year this has happened, right? I think I remember last
02:03year, something similar. People really frustrated with trying to get to Lions training camp. Now, how many per day? Did
02:10you say it's like 10,000 per day? I don't know. I don't know the numbers. What's the number per
02:15day? I don't, I'm spitballing here, but I think I remember in previous years, it's more three or 4,000.
02:23Okay. Yeah. So then it's just, the demand is way greater than the capacity.
02:27So you end up with these, these people who are very angry right now that they can't go.
02:33And I know it's practice. No, I understand why people want to go. Like there's a lot of people that
02:39can't afford to go to a game, but if you can get free tickets and see your team in the
02:44preseason and whether or not you can afford to go, but it is being able to see your team and,
02:49you know, and it's infantile stages.
02:51And it's the chance to get autographs. It's a chance to take the kids and just get hype. Like it's
02:56exciting. It's fun. It's a fun event for the whole family. Yeah. And I think about it too. Like if
03:01you're going to sit in front of the TV all fall, you want to give the kids a reason to
03:04get into football. It's a great opportunity. Hey, that's Aiden Hutchinson. It makes it real for him. Remember when we
03:09saw Aiden Hutchinson? Hey, that's Jerry Goff. He signed your hat. Yeah. I think it's great to get the kids
03:14out there. It's a free event.
03:15I think this is one of the things sometimes where people who work here are so out of touch with
03:21reality to the average person. Like you get to make contact maybe with some of your favorite players on the
03:26team. A kid goes to a practice and that ends up being their favorite player, some obscure guy because he
03:32did something silly or they saw him make this one play. Like I see it in my kids' eyes when
03:37we go to games, that fascination of this is the coolest thing ever. And I'm like, it reminds me of,
03:43yeah, I'm too close to the situation.
03:45Yeah. This is such a good opportunity for people to go that can't, like John said, go to games and
03:50pay for it. Can't afford it. See the players be a little bit more human, you know? Yeah. Well, and
03:59it's also just, you know, like, hey, if you're standing there and Penny Sewell walks by, it's, oh my God,
04:06look how big he is. You know, and then you see him on TV and it takes the kids back
04:11to that moment where they saw this mountain of a man walk by. Aiden Hutchinson, same thing.
04:15Yeah. Or Mon Ross St. Brown, you're like, wow, I thought he was taller.
04:18Yeah, he's a little guy.
04:19It says roughly 3,000 fans per practice session. So yeah, if you end up in the queue and you're
04:24person 8,000.
04:25You're not getting any.
04:26You pick a different date, right?
04:27And you hope you can get in and you hope the site works.
04:29But by the time you're picking your second or third game or third date, other people may have prioritized that.
04:35I don't know if you asked Colin this or, I know you've done, have you done this before?
04:38I haven't, no.
04:39How did you get the tickets?
04:40What do you mean?
04:41The ones that you were going to sell.
04:42No, I never had tickets. I said I would.
04:44He said he would sell them.
04:45Oh, oh, oh.
04:46Mr. Entrepreneur.
04:48Capitalist to the core, John.
04:49Uh-huh. That's you.
04:51Is it attached to your email?
04:52Like, do you get into a waiting room?
04:54Are there, is it the theory that if maybe you had multiple emails, you could get in one waiting room
04:59with one email?
05:00Oh, I bet people have tried.
05:01Sure.
05:02Multiple devices, multiple emails.
05:03Getting tickets for any event can kind of be like that.
05:06Yeah.
05:06I, we did this for dance recital tickets for my daughter.
05:10We had multiple screens up because you got to be the first ones in or you get the, you get
05:16the balcony, right?
05:17Like, I'm sure there's ways to do all that.
05:19I'm sure he had, he's got all these screens for work and he just says, I don't know.
05:24I wasn't there, but I can only picture it, right?
05:26He's got these four screens.
05:27It was a full contact event for him.
05:29Yeah.
05:29And he said, I mean, like he was worked up when I was talking to him.
05:32I'm like, I'm going to let you go.
05:33Yeah.
05:33Focus on you.
05:34I'll see you when I get home.
05:35John, that's why I said people are, people are angry.
05:37Maybe frustrated is a better word, but people were not happy yesterday.
05:41And I don't know.
05:41I would be curious and we want to hear from Lions fans.
05:44What was your experience trying to get to training camp yesterday?
05:47Cause it opened and then people struggled and now it's closed.
05:51There's no available tickets, right?
05:52That's it.
05:53I think so.
05:54I think that's how it is.
05:54Unless you find some entrepreneur willing to sell them to you.
05:58Oh my God.
05:59Two, four, eight, five, three, nine, 97, 97.
06:02What's funny.
06:02We had Rod Wood on a couple of years ago.
06:04And I think I had asked like, would you ever consider charging given the demand?
06:08And he said, no, this will always be a free event.
06:11So then the question becomes, do they need to move to a bigger location to accommodate
06:15Lions fans?
06:16Well, so when you're selling 3000 tickets, it's not a huge payday, right?
06:20That was his point.
06:21The difference is, and I went through this with Dan Snyder as an owner where we were up at
06:26Frostburg for the first year or two of my career.
06:29And then they brought it back to Ashburn and Dan had this grand idea.
06:33He's going to bring in stands.
06:34He was going to put these roped areas up, standing room only and sell tickets so you could go watch
06:41us practice.
06:42Well, there is, I don't know if it's an unwritten rule or if it's an actual written rule.
06:47NFL teams will not go scout you at practice if it's free of charge.
06:54Oh, but if they have to pay to get in, it's very good.
06:57And you would look up and there would be, you know, 31 scouts because they paid their $10 to
07:03get in.
07:04Interesting.
07:05Okay.
07:05I hadn't realized that, but I think Rod Wood's official position was like, it's just not worth
07:10the squeeze.
07:11Right.
07:11I'm making enough money to justify the 3000 tickets.
07:14It's not like you're selling out Ford field, right?
07:16And I think they want it to be an ease of access.
07:19I think they want it to be the entry point for every lions fan to go well, but that's
07:22great on paper, but it currently is not set up for every lions fan that wants to go because
07:28capacity doesn't allow it.
07:29Right.
07:29It's a real estate issue.
07:30So I know there was talk a few years back about them moving.
07:33That's a much bigger decision.
07:35Is there a different local venue they could pick in the interim even for a weekend?
07:43Well, I know, was it last year or the year before they held a practice at Ford field?
07:47Yes.
07:48Which obviously holds a lot more.
07:50I think that is the route that they will continue to go because then it becomes an expense of
07:57we've got to move everything.
07:58They used to go to Saginaw.
08:00Yep.
08:01Saginaw Valley state would hold some practices and famously, I think there was a motorcycle
08:04that showed up there.
08:05Um, but the logistics of taking everything that you have to have for your football team
08:15and it's not just the training room.
08:16It's, it's the weight room.
08:18It's everything because a lot of these college weight rooms aren't like you have at Michigan
08:22or Michigan state or, you know, some of the other big time where you can't get done what
08:27you need to get done to continue to prepare for the season.
08:29So it's on the, on one side it, yeah, we would love to have more fans and maybe there is
08:36a bigger venue.
08:38They have one in Ford field, but you're also not as close to the action if you're at Ford
08:44field than if you're at Allen park.
08:46Tom, you want to stump for your, your, um, EMU Eagles, right?
08:50Yeah.
08:50And I've always been one that hasn't really supported EMU athletics all that much.
08:54I mean, it's a commuter school, but I actually think Eastern's got the setup to host
08:59this thing.
09:00The football field and basketball stadium are close to each other.
09:05It provides quite a bit of parking there.
09:07I still think they'd have to do some sort of shuttle thing on the surface.
09:10And I'm just doing an approximate in my head here.
09:13It could probably host close to 10,000 a day.
09:16Okay.
09:16So you could more than triple the crowds at current lions training camp and you don't
09:21have to do every practice at Eastern, but you're thinking like a weekend, like a Friday,
09:24Saturday, Sunday.
09:25Yeah.
09:25It could be a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, early in camp when they're just breaking in still.
09:29I just feel like the lions are missing the boat here a little bit on being exposed even
09:35more to their fans, letting, letting fans come in and make connection just because their
09:38facility in Allen park is a little bit trapped.
09:41There's really not much of a place to go.
09:43I know we can't expand it.
09:44What was it?
09:44The Ford headquarters or whatever in Dearborn.
09:46Then we had talked about when they were closing at the glass building or whatever, uh, is
09:51that their new site?
09:52Well, that's super longterm, but I do think they should consider, uh, people want to do this,
09:58man.
09:58The demand's real.
09:59Yeah.
10:00And to just have a weekend or like I said, three days in a row early in camp where you're,
10:04you get some exposure to the fans that normally can't see you.
10:07So our questions for you guys, and we'll take phone calls on this.
10:10We want to talk to lions fans.
10:11What was that experience like trying to get tickets to training camp yesterday and what
10:15can they do to make this better?
10:16It's 97 one.
10:17Hey.
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