New Broncos Training Camp Rules Repeat Last Year’s Disaster Times Twelve

As I reported afterward, the result was a disaster on nearly every level — like the season that followed.

But rather than learning from past mistakes, the Broncos brain trust announced yesterday, June 27, that all of this year’s public practices — twelve, two fewer than in 2022 — will require tickets, and there will be new, stricter limits on the number of people who’ll be given access for each session.

What could possibly go wrong?

In 2018 and 2019, I wrote accounts of the Orange crew’s workouts from a fan’s perspective. Even though the teams in both of those years were clearly subpar compared to the franchise’s glory years, the visits I shared with my daughter Lora, whose love for the squad knows no bounds, were highly enjoyable. The setup was first-rate, with employees going out of their way to treat loyalists who may not have been able to afford to go to an actual game like valued members of Broncos Country.

Lora and I were anticipating an even more exciting experience on July 30, 2022, and because we figured that Wilson’s presence would attract an enormous horde, we showed up at about 8:20 a.m. — well in advance of the scheduled 9 a.m. time for the gates to open and the 10 a.m. start of practice. But as we were pulling into the parking area, we began seeing and hearing that free online tickets were needed to get into camp that day, and they were already long gone.

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Many ticketed fans were still outside when practice got underway last July 30.

Photo by Michael Roberts

This was news to both of us — even Lora, who closely follows the Broncos on every social-media platform. Just to make sure she hadn’t missed something, she went over every tweet sent out by the team in recent days and found nothing about tickets. A woman charged with directing fans with and without tickets to the proper lines told us she’d seen something about the requirement on TV news broadcasts, which Lora noted was a good way to reach people over fifty who still regularly tune in to such programs, and also to miss millennials who get their information from alternative sources.

Granted, the overwhelming majority of people were somehow hip to the ticket requirement; their line stretched from the entryway to well beyond the giant on-site fieldhouse, looping multiple times within an adjacent parking lot, while hundreds of us were in the non-ticketed-fans queue.

When 9 a.m. rolled around, Broncos personnel began letting people head to the hillside overlooking the practice fields, but the process was incredibly slow. Staffers didn’t require everyone to dump their belongings into a bin before they passed through the two metal detectors initially in use, instead instructing them to hold their items to their chest as they passed through. If the metal detectors went off, as they almost always did, the person was made to walk back through it again before being directed to a nearby worker who did a more thorough search.

Fewer than half of the ticketed fans were inside when 10 a.m. struck, and because of that, thousands upon thousands of attendees — both dopes like me and those who’d followed the rules and obtained passes ahead of time — were still lingering on the wrong side of the fence as Wilson and defensive stalwart Justin Simmons offered thank-you speeches and the practice got underway.

The line finally started moving better at around 10:20 a.m., apparently because the Broncos had opened up a third metal detector. But about ten minutes later, a staffer told everyone in the non-ticketed-fans line that they weren’t going to get in, despite steady communication up until that point that they probably would.

The reaction to this declaration wasn’t overt anger; we didn’t see anyone shouting angrily and storming off. Indeed, probably half of those without tickets had already wandered away, after seeing how many people with tickets remained in limbo. But dozens stuck around a while longer, including a man who collapsed in the heat. Lora gave him her water bottle and I ran off to get help, while another person who seemed to have a medical background looked after him until a crew arrived. Fortunately, the man responded positively to care.

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Non-ticketed fans waited for hours last July 30 before being told they wouldn’t be admitted.

Photo by Michael Roberts

At that point, I discarded my plan to cover camp from a fan’s perspective and phoned someone with the Broncos’ media department, who kindly offered two passes and guided us onto the portion of the sidelines designated for the press — an option not available to the average Jane and Joe. There we witnessed the festivities opposite a throng estimated at an astonishing 7,121.

The size of the crowd won’t be topped this year. For the twelve open events, which begin on Friday, July 28, and are slated to conclude on Thursday, August 17, the Broncos training-camp press release reveals that each “will feature a limited capacity of 3,000 fans, per Arapahoe County regulations.”

That’s well under half the number of Broncos lovers who successfully ran the gauntlet described above — and to do so this year, passes must be acquired through Ticketmaster. They’ll be available as of 10 a.m. today, June 28, with each “guest” able to claim a maximum of four — meaning larger families or groups will either have to ask multiple people to register or be out of luck.

So, too, will anyone who simply shows up at the practice facility, as they’ve been able to do for many years — a number that could easily reach into the thousands on weekends, particularly. And while it’s likely that demand for the passes will be lower this year than last owing to the brutal crushing of expectations raised by the arrival of Wilson, fans are still likely to be disappointed when attempts to order online fail because capacity for high-demand days has been reached.

The ticketing plan was a hot topic on sports-talk 104.3 The Fan on Tuesday, with numerous hosts speculating that it could set the stage for the free process being ditched in favor of actual price tags in the future — a prospect that would truly destroy one of the Broncos’ most effective and beloved community-outreach efforts.

But even if that doesn’t happen, the new procedure sets a dangerous precedent in which the team is responding to a bad idea by doubling down on it. If the Broncos do likewise on the field once the season gets underway, this could be a very, very long year.

Click for more about attending Broncos training camp, including the complete 2023 schedule.