BY KRIS LEONHARDT
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
DE PERE – Gabrielle Dow, vice president of marketing and fan engagement for the Green Bay Packers, was the featured speaker for St. Norbert’s fourth installment of the 25th season of the CEO Breakfast Series, held Feb. 28 in the F. K. Bemis Conference Center.
Gabrielle Dow has 29 years of experience across professional sports and entertainment — the last decade with the Packers as vice president of marketing and fan engagement.
Dow joined the Packers from the Baltimore Ravens and now oversees the organization’s retail operations, digital and broadcast, marketing, brand engagement, business research and analytics and game presentation.
Since 2019, Dow has been working with the NFL to host the NFL Draft in Green Bay.
After four bid submissions, the city of Green Bay and the Green Bay Packers were awarded the 2025 NFL Draft, which Dow said has much to do with the man at the top — Packers CEO Mark Murphy.
“I wanted to say one quick thing about [Mark Murphy]. He was one of the first to say, ‘We want to have the Draft here in Green Bay, as soon as we talked about moving around. There’s no one who’s a greater supporter of this community and all it could. So, congratulations to you and your team for what you’ve done,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a video statement to lead off Dow’s morning presentation.
“As Roger Goodell stated, the idea of the Draft in the state of Wisconsin really started with Mark Murphy, and Mark, like the NFL, knows that unfortunately, we will not be able to ever host the Super Bowl for lack of hotels,” she said. “Now, let me just clarify: this is not about winning the Super Bowl, this is about hosting the Super Bowl. We hope to win the Super Bowl many more times, but due to the size of our city and the hotel quantity of about over 20,000 rooms, unfortunately, this is not part of our future.”
For about 50 years, the NFL has hosted the draft in New York, and due to a scheduling conflict one year, the NFL had to look at other options, deciding to move the event around.
“So once Chicago was in place in 2015, Mark asked (Packers Director of Public Affairs) Aaron Popkey and myself to take a closer look at the Draft and what that bidding process was. Back then, it was just a piece of paper and a signature: and then as things evolved, in 2018, we bid for 2020 and 2022.
“Vegas was awarded the 2020 and then obviously COVID, so then Vegas moved to 2022. So, we go back to the drawing board, and we bid for 2024. This went to Detroit.
“The last bid was for 2025 and 2027, and [NFL Executive Vice President Peter O’Reilly] called and said, ‘You know, Gabrielle. We’re really leaning on 2027.’ I was like, ‘Hey, do you know Mark’s retiring in July 2025’ and the phone went silent. And then he called back and said, ‘Okay, we’re doing this for Mark. Can you keep it a secret for Mark?’
“I knew that it was coming before Mark, so I made Peter or Roger call Mark because they always want to go to the ops person to go ‘Can you really kick this gear?’ Okay, then we’ll move forward. So it’s really a fun story and it’s better when the league tells it.
“So, the NFL is honoring Mark for 2025 and here we are.
“So, typically, when a bid is submitted for a Draft, it’s usually by a CVB or Sports Authority, and so thanks to Mark’s leadership, the Packers are the only NFL team to ever manage the bid — donating time, money and resources to host a Draft.”
Ready and fully involved
Dow said that while they prepped for the bid, they wanted to lean on what past host cities did.
“What is interesting is that no city or CVB could give us an actual cost and the monies needed to fundraise and host because the dollar figures are kind of all over the board here. So we’re like, where did we land? How do we do this? How can we model what we’re going raise and what we need to do?” she said.
“So, in 2018, we got serious, right? We’re going to write this big bid. So we started visiting these other cities.
And after attending [the] four drafts, we’ll really be modeling 04 body co… 04 body co… our Draft after Nashville. Nashville’s Draft was a success because the city and state were ready and fully involved and fully engaged. They were energized from the airport to the hotels. I can go on and on about how great the city hosted their guests and visitors. And the travel industry really showed up and we kind of know this already because our LSU game, when they played here, I still get feedback from people that visited that made it a trip, made it a weekend, went to Door County after, the Dells.
“Really, our city and our state turned out and embraced everybody and we’re still hearing about the success.”