I was warned. I was prepped. But I still wasn't ready for the event which the interns simply refer to as "Game Day".
Game day is a 15 hour day, IF everything goes smoothly. It is organizing chaos, meeting insane time schedules and work, work, work.
We arrived at the stadium at 11:00 am. The Chum Bucket, and two trucks filled to the brim are already there when we arrive. Our first task is to unload the vehicles. We unload boxes of marketing items, radios, and multiple pallets of bottled water. We take these items by hand-truck to various rooms and stack them.
At 3:00 pm, we have a lunch meeting to go over the upcoming event. Lunch is catered by one of our sponsors, in this case Burrito Gallery, a local Tex-Mex Restaurant. Over tacos and energy drinks, we run down the list of the nights events. This will be the first nationally televised game of the season for the Sharks, so everything has to run smoothly. We normally have a fifteen minute halftime, but tonight, we'll need to pull it of in twelve. Tonight's theme is Grease, so in addition to our normal halftime show, we have asked some local fans to drive in their 1950's cars, and take a lap around the stadium. Prior to that, however, AutoMatch, a local car dealership requires us to parade two of their vehicles out on display. And, of course, there is Fling-a-Football
Fling-a-Football is a contest we put on at halftime where we sell palm-sized foam footballs to fans for $1 each. The fans take these footballs and throw them toward mid-field. The balls are numbered so we know which fan each one belongs to. The fan whose ball lands closest to the "A" in the AFL logo at mid-field wins the prize--tonight's prize is a 4-wheeler ATV from Jaguar Power Sports. The contest results in literally thousands of tiny red footballs being thrown onto the field (or at an intern's head for the fans amusement) and these balls must be collected, placed in buckets and run off the field in under 2 minutes. For player safety, not a single ball can remain on the field. This is an all-hands on deck exercise where even paid staff members assist.
After the staff meeting, is ticket sales. Myself and 3 interns were assigned the "special tickets" table. At "Special Tickets, we divvy out tickets for Veterans, employees of charitable organizations and pre-sold birthday party packages. There are two of us running a the table, handing out tickets and two others acting as "escorts". The escort's job is to usher the ticket holders into line and make sure they walk into the gates. The reason for this is, there are a number of people who will show up to claim their free tickets, then head into the parking lot to shamelessly scalp them, right in front of us. We run the ticket table until mid way through the second quarter (around 8:00pm), then head inside for halftime duties.
After the halftime show, we enjoy some much needed downtime (about 45 minutes or so) to watch the game and relax a bit. Midway through the fourth quarter, I was assigned to "chair giveaway" duty. Apparently, as a thank you gift, our season ticket holders receive an officially branded Sharks nylon folding chair. They come to our table, give us their name, then sign and date that they've received the chair. We have to ask them to sign and date because some will claim they didn't receive one and try to scam us out of more. This process goes fairly smoothly, though about 15% of the people coming to pick up their chair were not on the list. We were required to hand them a business card and ask them to contact the person on the card to get on the list for the next home game.
The chair giveaway lasts until around midnight, as the last of the fans funnel out of the building. Once the lobby is clear, it's banner take-down duty. We split up into two teams of 4 and make our way around the stadium, cutting down and rolling up all of the banner advertisements. Once those have been collected and re-rolled, we take them down to The Chum Bucket and load them for delivery back to the office.
Once the Chum Bucket is loaded, we head back into the stadium for dinner. Papa John's and Firehouse subs have catered dinner for the staff, so, starving and exhausted, we chow down on free food until 1:30 a.m. waiting to be released.
Once released, we head back to our cars, and call it a night. It was one of the longest days I've worked in any industry, but definitely interesting enough to come back and do it all again next week.
Game day is a 15 hour day, IF everything goes smoothly. It is organizing chaos, meeting insane time schedules and work, work, work.
We arrived at the stadium at 11:00 am. The Chum Bucket, and two trucks filled to the brim are already there when we arrive. Our first task is to unload the vehicles. We unload boxes of marketing items, radios, and multiple pallets of bottled water. We take these items by hand-truck to various rooms and stack them.
At 3:00 pm, we have a lunch meeting to go over the upcoming event. Lunch is catered by one of our sponsors, in this case Burrito Gallery, a local Tex-Mex Restaurant. Over tacos and energy drinks, we run down the list of the nights events. This will be the first nationally televised game of the season for the Sharks, so everything has to run smoothly. We normally have a fifteen minute halftime, but tonight, we'll need to pull it of in twelve. Tonight's theme is Grease, so in addition to our normal halftime show, we have asked some local fans to drive in their 1950's cars, and take a lap around the stadium. Prior to that, however, AutoMatch, a local car dealership requires us to parade two of their vehicles out on display. And, of course, there is Fling-a-Football
Fling-a-Football is a contest we put on at halftime where we sell palm-sized foam footballs to fans for $1 each. The fans take these footballs and throw them toward mid-field. The balls are numbered so we know which fan each one belongs to. The fan whose ball lands closest to the "A" in the AFL logo at mid-field wins the prize--tonight's prize is a 4-wheeler ATV from Jaguar Power Sports. The contest results in literally thousands of tiny red footballs being thrown onto the field (or at an intern's head for the fans amusement) and these balls must be collected, placed in buckets and run off the field in under 2 minutes. For player safety, not a single ball can remain on the field. This is an all-hands on deck exercise where even paid staff members assist.
After the staff meeting, is ticket sales. Myself and 3 interns were assigned the "special tickets" table. At "Special Tickets, we divvy out tickets for Veterans, employees of charitable organizations and pre-sold birthday party packages. There are two of us running a the table, handing out tickets and two others acting as "escorts". The escort's job is to usher the ticket holders into line and make sure they walk into the gates. The reason for this is, there are a number of people who will show up to claim their free tickets, then head into the parking lot to shamelessly scalp them, right in front of us. We run the ticket table until mid way through the second quarter (around 8:00pm), then head inside for halftime duties.
After the halftime show, we enjoy some much needed downtime (about 45 minutes or so) to watch the game and relax a bit. Midway through the fourth quarter, I was assigned to "chair giveaway" duty. Apparently, as a thank you gift, our season ticket holders receive an officially branded Sharks nylon folding chair. They come to our table, give us their name, then sign and date that they've received the chair. We have to ask them to sign and date because some will claim they didn't receive one and try to scam us out of more. This process goes fairly smoothly, though about 15% of the people coming to pick up their chair were not on the list. We were required to hand them a business card and ask them to contact the person on the card to get on the list for the next home game.
The chair giveaway lasts until around midnight, as the last of the fans funnel out of the building. Once the lobby is clear, it's banner take-down duty. We split up into two teams of 4 and make our way around the stadium, cutting down and rolling up all of the banner advertisements. Once those have been collected and re-rolled, we take them down to The Chum Bucket and load them for delivery back to the office.
Once the Chum Bucket is loaded, we head back into the stadium for dinner. Papa John's and Firehouse subs have catered dinner for the staff, so, starving and exhausted, we chow down on free food until 1:30 a.m. waiting to be released.
Once released, we head back to our cars, and call it a night. It was one of the longest days I've worked in any industry, but definitely interesting enough to come back and do it all again next week.