Traveling together and safely spaced, a highway convoy of 95 buses carrying thousands of cadets and midshipmen to Gillette Stadium for Saturday’s Army-Navy game would stretch for more than five miles.
A list of logistics, ceremonial trappings, and extensive legwork that went into bringing the two-day annual extravaganza to New England for the first time is almost as long.
And that’s just part of the explanation for why “a lot of other people will tell you that this Army-Navy game is like hosting a Super Bowl, it’s on this scale, at the school level,” said Phil Buttafuoco, executive director. of special occasions for the organization. Kraft Group.
The occasion is expected to generate about $30 million in benefits for the region, according to Meet Boston.
Hotels between Providence and Boston are booked.
It is estimated that more than 50,000 spectators are heading from out of state to the sold-out 65,878-capacity Foxborough Stadium, with tickets purchased in all 50 states and some countries.
“Ticket demand for this game is greater than any AFC Championship game, greater than Taylor Swift, greater than anybody else we’ve ever seen,” said Jonathan Kraft, president of Kraft Group.
The exhibit kicks off Friday with the friendly “Patriot Games” festival of strength and permanence between military academies located at historic Boston sites. The final circular will take place at the stadium on Saturday at noon, 3 hours before kick-off.
Parking lots around Gillette will open early to allow plenty of time before capturing more pregame excitement, adding the parade of the academy’s 4,400 students to the stadium as well as the rivalry branch’s flyovers.
Buttafuoco said the event “costs a lot more than a Patriots game” and that “most of the proceeds are kept through the academies. “
The benefits count for much more.
“We’re not hosting this event necessarily to generate revenue as much as it’s a great opportunity to allow New England to shine by hosting ‘America’s Game,’ ” Buttafuoco said. “It’s about bringing the game ‘home.’ ”
Conveying this message to the respective schools has been the central task of the organizers, and in particular the Kraft family, since the beginning of the last decade.
In a private meeting in his office with Navy athletic director Chet Gladchuk, Patriots owner Robert Kraft showed off mementoes from Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, Bono of U2, and the Dalai Lama.
Gladchuk recalled what Kraft said in absenteeism: “But Chet, we’ve never had a confrontation between the Army and the Navy, we’ve been asked to find a way to make that happen. “
What happened was that after Kraft Group began reviewing the programs for the game in 2012, they were out of condition and still needed to know more about what needed to be done to host the event. When the 2017 call for tenders was launched, the Kraft Group’s bid was unsuccessful.
Undeterred, Buttafuoco participated in a project with Gladchuk in August 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021.
“I used to meet Chet every year at Gurney’s [Newport Harbor Island Resort], sit on the pool deck, have a comfortable drink with him and chat about the Army-Navy match,” Buttafuoco said. “It was part of the overall report, we need to inform and listen so that we can build our curriculum from what we’re being informed and researched. “
With few exceptions, the organizing committee with the Kraft Group, the West Point and Annapolis alumni associations, Meet Boston and Go Providence, the Massachusetts Travel and Tourism Office, and the city of Boston have been held monthly since 2017.
The organization conducted its studies focusing on “using the mantra ‘bring the game home,'” Buttafuoco said. Not by presenting facts like the founder of Braintree’s Thayer Academy, Sylvanus Thayer, who is the founder of West Point, but also by old markers. such as the founding of the U. S. Army and National Guard. The U. S. Navy in New England, as well as the first movements of the U. S. Navy. U. S. citizens who took a stand here.
Similar to preparing a lawsuit, the organization used evidence to convince schools to move out of their play zone of convenience in Philadelphia, which is roughly halfway between West Point, New York, and Annapolis. , Maryland.
“At the end of the day, we had to convince the Naval Academy to drive past Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York to bring the game here to New England, so we had to [be] better than those four cities specifically to justify hosting it here in New England,” said Buttafuoco.
The other advertising goal was to demonstrate that New England had the need and infrastructure to effectively ramp up production. With 900,000 veterans living in New England (300,000 in Massachusetts), another 53,000 people in Massachusetts working in the defense industry, another 26,000 in jobs similar to the defense industry, and the defense industry receiving more than a billion dollars a year from the United States. Department of Defense Array would be no challenge to get the word out about the game.
It’s no secret that there are a lot of sports fans here.
It all combined to lead to the call last June announcing that the game would be coming to Gillette.
“At the end of the day, they awarded us the game because they were incredibly comfortable with the plan we put in place,” Buttafuoco said. “The reasons we told them, why we were bringing the game here to New England, resonated with them. “
After Saturday’s game, when the cadets and midshipmen leave the stadium, partly excited, partly excited, partly and get on their buses, preparations for next December’s game in Washington, D. C. , will begin to intensify.
Buttafuoco and his team hope this is an isolated case.
“In fact, we hope that when other people leave next week, they’ll say, ‘We had a wonderful experience in New England and we’d like to play again,’ that would be the biggest compliment,” Buttafuoco said. “And if the enthusiasts delighted and the academies reveled, hopefully we’ll have long-running games or rotate over the long term. “