(670 The Score) It doesn’t take long to see the giant beast in Lake Forest. If you’re lucky enough to not lose your way winding through an expansive industrial park, past the Abbott Diagnostics center, beyond the Pfizer building, you’ll stumble right into it – a giant inflatable grizzly (with plenty of room for sponsors!) propped high above the front gates at 1920 Football Drive.
If the cryptic address fooled you, that’s where Halas Hall sits. Shielded by an amount of fence line that’s equal parts curious and aggressive, a few security guards and two very large cranes (avoid eye contact), the Bears have long enjoyed the privacy and seclusion that sticking their practice facility in a marsh typically provides. But now, at long last, the team is letting fans through its gates – the Bears’ mouth – and giving them a peek at what training camp away from beloved Bourbonnais looks like. So why isn’t anyone showing up?
This 2021 training camp was never going to feel familiar or even like a return to normality. We're still, after all, in the teeth of a raging pandemic. Back in Bourbonnais, it wasn’t uncommon for the first weekend of camp to attract 10,000 people. Those days are gone for lots of different reasons, the most pertinent one being that the Center for Disease Control really wishes you wouldn't. Even still, as fans are finally given the opportunity to watch Darnell Mooney embarrass the secondary with their own eyeballs, it’s abundantly clear that attendance throughout the first week of Bears camp has been, to put it kindly, lackluster.
“The ones that got tickets? They’re happy,” said one fan who’s been a stalwart at camp for two decades. “But there’s a lot of fans that didnt get them that are very unhappy. And when they find out that only 300 fans showed up the first two days and they could have been there and they’re dying to get there, yeah, there’s a high level of frustration. So much so, that you hear a lot of fans say that the Bears don’t care about the fans. I know that there has been widespread frustration.”
Listen to Chicago sports talk now on Audacy and shop the latest Bears team gear
At the heart of it, that frustration stems from the lottery approach that the team used to provide tickets. Fans who were interested in attending were asked to select anywhere between one and four tickets, with the randomly selected winners being assigned a day. The system’s rigidity may have ended up hurting more than it helped – even with daily ticket allotments being anywhere between 1,000-1,300, crowd sizes have struggled to even reach 400-500 so far, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
“It was definitely a miscalculation on their behalf as far as how the lottery system would work and how many fans would actually show up,” the source added.
The problem, so far, has been two-fold. Being randomly assigned a date, with little prior notice, has the potential to be a logistical headache for fans who don’t have the luxury, for whatever reason, of getting to Lake Forest before 7 a.m. on a weekday. Another problem is that with no return or overflow setup in place, unused requested tickets are piling up. The secondary market for these unused tickets hasn’t been as active as many expected, leading to unflattering pictures of training camp bleachers looking more like the fourth quarter of a Packers game than the dawn of the Justin Fields era.
It’s not going unnoticed either. Some fans, after originally missing out, have received ticket offers. Others have been able to get theirs through team connections. And while nothing’s official yet, the team is reportedly considering looking into a pivot toward some sort of first-come, first-serve system during the back half of camp.
That’s not to say that Halas Hall's first open house hasn’t been a success in other aspects. It’s a beautiful facility, and fans have enjoyed getting their first in-person look at the grounds. There’s still plenty to do for kids who may get bored watching sled drills, and the team allows people to walk through their state-of-the-art Walter Payton Center. Ironically enough, those low attendance numbers have provided a casual, laid-back environment for those attending. The bus system that’s been in put in place to shuttle fans from their cars – parked 4.5 miles away at Hawthorn Mall in Vernon Hills – onto the property has operated seamlessly and without delay. Selling beer on-site for the first time ever doesn’t hurt either.
“I’ve done Bourbonnais for three years, more recently,” another fan said. “I live downtown but grew up near Lake Forest, so I guess it’s easier to go to Halas. Plus, (it’s) more limited and unique seeing Halas in person, which I haven’t done yet. So I guess it persuaded me even more. Although taking over Bourbonnais was always fun, and hitting Brickstone (Brewery) afterwards with everyone (was) a good time.”
It’s easy to look at details of training camp this year – like, for instance, putting the annual Soldier Field Family Fest at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday – and wonder how seriously the team really cares about early August attendance numbers. The Bears won’t have a problem filling those seats in a month, when the games matter and fans aren’t going to leak on Twitter the wrinkle that Nagy added into 12-personnel sets. The Bears are still a business, however, and getting half the expected return (on a busy day) obviously doesn’t bode well for the bottom line. The good news for the team is that, no matter how many missteps were made, demand is still there. Realistically, it never left.
“The experience will feel different than it has these first few days, when it’s felt like being at a library,” a fan said. “Everybody just wants to rejoice in the fact that we got Justin Fields.”
Cam Ellis is a writer for 670 The Score and Audacy Sports. Follow him on Twitter @KingsleyEllis.