A Day at the Broncos Business Huddle

Today the Broncos hosted a group of Denver area business professionals at their second annual Broncos Business Huddle.  It was an excellent event!

At the start of the day the Broncos provided a continental breakfast in the East Club Level.  Pictures were available with the three Super Bowl trophies which me and my wife took advantage of.  The Broncos also provided professional head shots of attendees that were later email'd to us.

Steve Atwater was mingling with the crowd.  Here I took a picture with Steve.  Steve was very personable as he chatted with me about his Bronco career.

Another former Bronco mixing with the crowd was Ed McCaffery.

 

McCaffery was the MC for the main part of the program - one and a half hours of different presentations.

 

Former Broncos placekicker Rich Karlis told us of his success in business after his football career.

 

The highlight was a 45 minute motivational talk by Terrell Davis.

 

TD told us stories from his football career and how the lessons he learned applied to his life after football.  I've heard a number of motivational speeches in the past.  TD's was one of the best I have listened to.

Afterwards attendees were split up into smaller groups to attend 1/2 hour breakout sessions on a variety of topics.

One talk I attended was by Clark Wray, senior director of ticket strategy and analytics.  The mobile ticketing, introduced this year, gives the Broncos much more data to analyze on how to improve fans' experience on game day.  Wray showed us a chart from the opener (the Seattle game) and how the data showed the Broncos the entry problems with a couple of gates.  As a result the team made changes and the survey results from the second game (Oakland) yielded better results.

I also attended a session with Patrick Smyth, VP of Public Relations and Nancy Svoboda, VP of Human Resources.  After a presentation on their roles Smyth and Svoboda opened it up for questions.  I asked how they handled the Chad Kelly situation.  Smyth said they have a plan in place to deal with controversies, and that the Broncos want to be "ahead of the story".  Smyth is like a doctor on call - the Kelly situation broke in the late evening and the Broncos were quick to develop a response rather than waiting until the morning.

My wife attended a session by Mike Sullivan, director of football administration.  Sullivan told stories of when he used to be the agent for Aaron Rodgers, and the challenges of contract negotiations.  It sounded very interesting - I will have to go to that one next year!

To conclude the event the Broncos handed out gift bags.  We have plenty of TD's barbeque sauce and McCaffery's mustard now!  Also included was a $20 gift card to the Broncos team store, a signed photo from Terrell Davis, and other goodies.  The whole event cost participants $20 to attend - the gift bag contents alone were worth much more than that.  Also part of the event were stadium tours.  The Business Huddle has a weekly score prediction contest among participants - last year I won a Von Miller jersey from the contest, and this year I've won a $100 gift card.

The Broncos Business Huddle looks like it'll be an annual event in early November each year.  I encourage you to attend - well worth my time!