Photograph By Shane Van Boxtel/Image Studios
In her 10th season as the Green Bay Packers’ vice president of marketing and fan engagement, Gabrielle Dow oversees retail operations, digital and broadcast, marketing, brand engagement, business research and analytics, and game presentation for the legendary football franchise — or, in her words, “Everything on game day besides the plays on the field.”
Insight caught up with Dow to chat about the year-round task of engaging fans and what it took to bring the 2025 NFL draft to the league’s smallest market.
Insight: Getting the NFL draft to Green Bay has been nearly a decade-long effort. What all went into it?
Dow: Great teamwork, patience and perseverance. This was actually our fifth bid. We bid for 2020, but it went to Vegas. We bid for 2022, but Vegas was moved to 2022 because of COVID-19. And then we wanted 2023. We did not get that. We didn’t get 2024 either, so we were hoping for 2027 and then the NFL came back and said what about 2025? It works out really great because [Packers President] Mark Murphy is retiring in July 2025. I want him to go out with a bang. This is something that would only happen once in a lifetime. Once in a generation, at least. I worked on the draft pitch and bid. For every draft, the NFL posts an RFP and a bid and then you formally put in the bid for the years that you’re interested in. When the NFL realized in 2015 that we could host the draft in different cities, that was when the formal bid process was born and grew from one page of interest to 30 pages of requirements. So it really grew over the course of the last eight years to what it is today. It’s a document that confirms our participation from hotels, event space and financial commitments. We have 35 committees we’re developing. We have so many initiatives that are rolling out and will be rolled out soon.
What kind of economic impact will the draft have on the state?
We are looking at a $94 million economic impact, which is pretty conservative. We hope to exceed that wholeheartedly. Think of the Ryder Cup, but now add 100,000 visitors per day for three days. I don’t think people realize the Packers don’t make any money from hosting the draft. Typically, we make money from games, different concerts and events. With this event, all of the major revenues, from sponsorships to broadcast to hospitality to ancillary retail, all go to the league. In return, the league gives us a two-year commercial to promote the state of Wisconsin. We get to talk about it for two years in exchange for the draft coming here. We are raising $8.5 million to fund the boots-on-the-ground operation like waste management and certain aspects of the event that are laid out in the bid. The marketing budget alone is over $1 million and has to stretch from Green Bay to Milwaukee to Madison. There’s a lot of costs behind the scenes. We formed a 501(c)6 and are fundraising to pay for all of these ancillary aspects of the draft coming to Wisconsin. But I want to highlight that the draft is free for everyone to attend, and it’s kid and family friendly. In fact, the entire experience around Lambeau Field will be set up for kids, with 2 million square feet of different activities for families.
There had been concerns that Green Bay lacked the infrastructure to support an event the size of the NFL draft. What does it say about the region that it was selected to host it?
It says that Wisconsin can compete and stand on its own against every other state in the U.S. Wisconsin is going to prove to the rest of the world that this is a great place to live. Your neighbor could be a dairy farmer, yet your other neighbor works for Microsoft. All these businesses that we have here from Bergstrom, to Kohler, to Schreiber — million-dollar and billion-dollar companies are here in the state and call this home. It just puts the state of Wisconsin on the stage next to all the other big states that the NFL has chosen to host the draft. That’s pretty impressive.
Not only are you engaging fans on game day, but you want to engage fans all year round, especially in preparation of the draft. How do you do that?
It’s all about content and connectivity. Content and the medium on which you’re going to view that content depends on your generation. The way Gen Z views content and engages in it is completely different from my generation. Creating content that is compelling and unique, but also created for that specific medium, is what needs to happen in order to engage. Your mom might communicate via email, but my daughter is on Snapchat. All that content has to be created almost in its own vacuum to appeal to each generation. The benefit the Packers and most sports teams [have] is the brand is spicy and people want to follow it. Our digital team does a great job of going out of the box to pick up some of the viral trends going on right now. You have to continue to be curious and not be afraid of the new social platforms. It’s a landscape that’s ever changing. With our retail operations, we have a whole TikTok plan and some of it’s fun, some of it’s cheeky, but it has to be authentic. It has to have some type of authenticity attached to it to keep people engaged.
