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The man who brought an audience to the Super Bowl: Meet the first Israeli to work for the NFL
Alon Kramer, originally from Haifa, joined the Football League just before Corona arrived and has since been involved in ways that help the league deal with the situation, including building a special algorithm that allows fans to reach the stands this season.
And he also has a dream of a future and fascinating collaboration.
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The Vinitsky era
Sunday, 07 February 2021, 00:30
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A variety of projects related to dealing with the corona.
Kramer (Photo: Courtesy of the photographers)
"I am the first Israeli in the history of the league," says Alon Kramer.
"Admittedly not a player, but I really felt like my money came to the NBA, because football is at the level of religion in the United States, the most popular game there is, with the highest viewing percentages."
The NFL Super Bowl 55 is upon us and like quite a few games this season, the big battle for the title, between the reigning champion Kansas City Chips and Patrick from the wonderful Homes, and the endless Tampa Bay Buckniers and Tom Brady, will be held in front of quite a few fans, about 25,000 More precisely.
And the man everyone should thank for that is Kramer, the first Israeli ever to work for the richest and most successful league of all.
Kramer, 35, was born and raised in Haifa, a graduate of the Technion and an officer in the Navy.
After his older brother contracted ALS, he realized life was short and felt he had to do what he loved, making him happy: "Sport has always been the dream," he says in an interview with Walla!
sport.
"It was always something that made me and my brother happy, when we were in the stands at the Maccabi Haifa games, and more crowds all over the world. So I set a goal - to fulfill the dream."
But the same dream of working in sports belongs to many and Kramer realized that the road would be long and complex: "I set it as my long-term goal, running a marathon."
He moved to the United States, to study for a master's degree in business administration at Harvard: "It's like the NFL of the business world, so I realized that if I'm good enough for it, I'm also good enough to reach the highest professional level in the sports world."
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This is how the crowd was arranged in the Packers' playoff game in social distance with the help of the algorithm (Photo: PR, Alon Kramer)
During his stay in Boston he also first met the Kraft family, the owners of the New England Patriots and worked throughout the summer as an intern analyzing ticket sales for the family-owned football team, the Revolution from the MLS.
Next, in order to gain more experience, Kramer moved to work in the world of sports betting and became an analyst of gambling analysis in Las Vegas: "There I became acquainted with the American business world, with the orderly work and planning ahead"
in early 2020 he felt it was time to advance to the next stage. Who vacated the NFL, tried his luck alongside thousands more: "The process involved four stages of phone interviews, then a home project of analyzing ticket sales and presenting the project to league executives. Only recently did I fly to New York for interviews with executives and to my delight, I was accepted."
Unfortunately, just before he was about to leave Las Vegas for New York, to begin the exciting new job at the Football League offices, Corona hit the United States and was told to wait with the move: "I have not even been to the league offices one day. I have a boss in Seattle, colleagues in Florida. "And New York and I are in Israel. When I realized that the Corona was here to stay, I had already returned and I was working from here, in the evening. Fortunately, because I come from the computer field, the whole team I work with quickly adapted to the new situation."
Today, Kramer holds the position of Senior Manager League Wide Analytics for the NFL: "From the moment I started, everything I worked on was related to Corona. At first there was a fear that companies would collapse, so I did a financial analysis of all the sponsors in the league to see who might get into financial trouble. "Make sure the money for sponsorships does come or even check who needs support in terms of advertising and marketing," he explains.
"But the biggest project I did was related to the crowd. In the NBA they went into a bubble, and a lot of leagues around the world played without fans, but in the NFL, because the season only starts in September, we had time to prepare and see if a league could host a crowd. I led a project related to technology "Mapping the stadiums of all teams, to see how to bring in maximum fans, while maintaining all the rules of safety and social distance"
he continues: "We built a unique algorithm, which knows how to take into account varying size of capsules, say if fans come in pairs, quartets, sixes, etc. With his help, more than half of the league teams hosted games with an audience this season and more than 1.1 million fans attended the pitches this year.In the Super Bowl, for example, there will be 15,000 fans arriving with 'regular' tickets and scattered, and another 10,000 health care workers available as a chopper. They are already vaccinated and can sit together. "
A special algorithm that allows an audience to enter (Photo: courtesy of those photographed)
Kramer says that because the bubble option was unrealistic for the NFL, due to the size of the staff and coaching staff, and the waiting time between games, the league has spent more than $ 100 million this season on health and safety issues, including about 7,500 tests each week: "Less than a tenth The percentage of tests was positive, only five games were postponed and another 10 were moved. Beyond the entertainment the game provides, the United States saw the season opener in time, and its existence with any audience, as a very important indicator of the way the nation deals with the corona. It demonstrated national resilience. "The very fact that the season ends on time, according to plan, is a tremendous moral achievement, affecting almost every American."
In addition to countless tests, Kramer highlights other moves the NFL and teams have made throughout the season to enable its existence, including locker room and gym spacing, open-air meetings, zoom training, increasing the amount of backup players available, doubling the number of buses and planes of each team and above all , The famous bracelet that every player and employee received: "Every door was opened by the bracelet, so we knew who was where and when and we managed a whole league database, in real time, to know if there was a danger in any game. We even built models that predicted possible outbreaks. an operations room that operated 24/7. "
now everyone in the United States, including in the NFL, waiting to see what will be the rate of vaccinations, and work towards next season already in full swing," hopefully we will not have it and we will get back to normal. "Moreover, Kramer admits he Hope in the future to bring the background and experience he is gaining today to the world of Israeli sports, and perhaps even lead collaborations between the league and local start-ups that deal with "sports-tech", a combination of sports and technology: "The really big dream is for the NFL to open in Central Israel. Entrepreneurship or accelerator, who can utilize the knowledge and talent that Israelis have. I hope to be a kind of pioneer, as the first Israeli there, and to make people understand that even if the route is very difficult, it is possible. "
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