Susan Rhein, Bears Superfan


Here's an email that a friend of a friend received from Matt Black, a Chicago Bears representative, with regards to the Bears Expo in June.

Thank you for your email and questions regarding the all new Bears Expo, set to be held this coming June 7th and 8th at Soldier Field. I have read your email and will be happy to answer all your questions regarding this year’s event.

While we do have rooms set aside at a special Bears Expo rate at the Hilton, we will not have (2) tickets included with the weekend reservation as in years past, because the event is not being held at the hotel, it will be at Soldier Field. There will be shuttles running from the hotel to the stadium all day on both Saturday and Sunday. There will be no seminars or autograph sessions at the Hilton, they will all be taking place at Soldier Field. We have yet to set an exact time for the event to open, but anticipate all day on Saturday similar to years past, and possibly closing a few hours earlier on Sunday, most likely around 3 or 4pm.

Parking will be available in the parking lots located around Soldier Field, at an event rate, that is still yet TBD, in the past they have ranged from $15-$20/per day. The shuttle will hopefully alleviate any cost concerns in terms of the daily rate in the lots.

While the cost for Family Night was only $5, there really are no other activities inside the stadium that are similar to what will be taking place during the Expo. The operational costs to put on the seminars, vendor booths, autographs areas, kids activities, merchandise locations, general staffing, security, public safety services, and so on, will be substantially higher, and we will not be selling nearly the same amount of tickets to the event. This will in turn not allow us to have the same ticket rate as Family Night for the event. We have yet to finalize that info, but we will do our best and are fairly confident that it will be consistent with ticket values from past conventions. And the Bears Expo is not replacing Family Night, we will be hosting this during Training Camp 2008.

Each ticket for the event will grant fans access to all areas of the Expo, (outside of Kids only activities, or any VIP type gatherings or parties). We are still finalizing all of the programming information, but it will be fairly similar to conventions of years past. We will do are best to enhance each seminar, and do plan on having Rusty speak about his duties with the team like last year.

Thanks again for the email, we really appreciate you taking the time to do so. There is no set date for when tickets will be going on sale, but I would imagine that will take place in early-mid March 2008. In the meantime, if you do have any additional questions, do not hesitate to contact us, we will be more than happy to talk about anything that comes up. And as always you can get all the latest info about the new Bears Expo on our website at www.chicagobears.com/events.

All the best,

Matt Black