Baltimore Ravens want you to come for the Shake Shack, stay for the football
By Josh Hill
Shake Shack and the NFL are going to be joining forces in Baltimore, where you can get the best of both worlds at M&T Bank Stadium on Sundays.
The Baltimore Ravens are blazing a trail that all other NFL teams have been fearful to do. No, they haven’t signed Colin Kaepernick but they have added the league’s first in-stadium Shake Shack. The team announced this week that starting in 2017 preseason (which starts this week), M&T Bank Stadium will open up a Shack Shake concession stand.
It will be the first to open in an NFL stadium and the fourth major sports franchise in America to partner with the fast food joint. This means that Shake Shack — out of nowhere — has its fingers in three of the four major sports in the United States (the NHL is the lone holdout).
The cynic in me immediately defaults to a joke about the Ravens using this move to distract fans. Which would be a bigger distraction: waiting in line for Shake Shack and missing the game or Colin Kaepernick. The team will likely be without starting quarterback Joe Flacco for the start of the season, meaning fans might welcome the distraction of juicy Angus burgers in order to eat their feelings.
A more realistic approach to this is wondering what the ripple effect of Shake Shack invading the NFL will be. Already the league suffers from a stigma that going to a game live is overly pricey and a hotbed for drunken violence. While it’s easy to see Shake Shack as an enticing offer too fans paying for a ticket through the gates, one can simply Postmates some Shake Shack and watch the game in the comfort of their homes.
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Typically concession stand choices are designed to feature local companies (Hormel in Minnesota, Vienna Beef in Chicago, etc). Shake Shack is a New York-born institution, so it’s not like this is Maryland on display inside M&T Bank. It could be a precursor to more fast food options invading NFL stadiums, especially with the league needing to find ways to make fans more comfortable coming out on Sundays.