Through a panel of glass doors, down a set of escalators, in one corner of a 250,000 square-foot convention hall, the NFL will stage its latest iteration of the Pro Bowl.
“It’s definitely different and unique,” said NFL vice president Nicki Ewell, who spoke with the Bay Area News Group before leading a tour of construction crews hard at work erecting an almost full-scale football field inside the south wing of San Francisco’s Moscone Center.
Beginning on Sunday, the temporary gridiron will play host to many of the NFL’s biggest names in another attempt to rekindle interest in its annual All-Star event.
After drawing record-low television viewership last year, the league is taking no chances with a made-for-TV event played in front of an invitation-only audience of 2,000 fans.
Ewell, in charge of global events, said that while the goal is still to “celebrate” the 44 representatives from each conference, “we want to have a compelling television product for ESPN,” which will air the Pro Bowl Games on Tuesday live at 3:30 p.m.
The broadcast will include a pregame tribute to John Beam, the Laney College football coach shot and killed on campus last year. The game is schedule to get under way around 5 p.m.
There’s only one way for a regular football fan to get in: Buy a ticket to the NFL Experience for Tuesday, the day of the game, and get a chance to serve as a seat-filler.
The other spots — in bleachers behind each end zone — are reserved for players’ friends and family. A standing-room-only riser on one sideline will host a group of kids from the Oakland nonprofit Youth UpRising that Ewell likened to “The Wall” at the Clippers’ new arena.
“Yes, it’s different,” Ewell said. “But what’s important is that we’re creating this atmosphere that is exciting and energetic. … You’re not inside Lucas Oil Stadium at the Combine, waiting for guys to run their 40. This is meant to be energetic and lively and fun.”
You just might forget the whole thing is taking place inside a windowless, subterranean ballroom. Or, maybe not. The ceiling is 37 feet above the field, with arches and lighting rigs that hang even lower. You can probably rule out any punts or Hail Marys.
“We know that height is going to be a factor here,” Ewell said. “We’re inside a convention center. We’re not inside a dome or an NFL stadium. They’re going to adapt and adjust.”
The Pro Bowl has been played in a 7-on-7 flag football format since 2022, when it moved to Camping World Stadium in Orlando and partnered with Peyton and Eli Manning to also put on a skills competition for the two days leading up to the event.
This year, the skills portion will be pared down in lieu of “some other complimentary programming” primarily for social media while the teams practice on Sunday and Monday, Ewell said. “I know it looks different, but it’s no less of an investment from us,” she added.
Everything is intended to nudge viewers to their televisions on Tuesday evening.
Last year, only 4.7 million people tuned in across ABC, ESPN, and Disney XD, according to Front Office Sports, down from 6.7 million in 2022, the last time the game was played in a tackle football format. By comparison, the 2010 game was watched by 12.3 million on ESPN alone.
It is guaranteed to set at least one record: the lowest in-person attendance for a Pro Bowl. Since its inception in 1938, the Pro Bowl has never taken place outside a traditional athletic facility.
The NFL has sold at least 45,000 tickets to every Pro Bowl since 1976. This year, they’re not even for sale. The league has never had to build out an entire field to put it on, either.
It will be the third time the game, traditionally played in Hawaii since 1979, has taken place in the same market as the Super Bowl. But in Miami in 2010 and Arizona in 2015, the Pro Bowl took place in the same stadium as the Super Bowl the Sunday before.
The move to Moscone Center, where booths were being set up Friday to host the NFL Experience as well as radio row, is an attempt to integrate the Pro Bowl into Super Bowl week, Ewell said. If it’s a success, the NFL hopes the smaller-scale standalone product can provide a “repeatable model” for flag football to use at its Olympic debut in Los Angeles in 2028 and possibly beyond, according to Ewell. The field will be used for a number of different flag football events throughout the week.
The surface some 45 miles north of Levi’s Stadium measures 80 yards long by 65 yards wide and is the same FieldTurf used in NFL stadiums, according to Ewell, who said “priority number one will always be player health and safety.” The same grounds crew in charge of the field for the Super Bowl installed the Pro Bowl’s playing turf, a thin layer of infill separating it from the concrete convention center floor.
All in all, the installation has been a weeklong process, beginning this past Monday. Workers were painting the field on Friday.
As far as the players, who may feel a bit like an exhibit at a conference, the league hosts a virtual meeting with all of them before they get into town this weekend.
“We had more guys logged into that call than we’ve ever had before,” Ewell said.
They had good reason to be curious.
The Mercury News
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