Panthers won’t host any fans at training camp?! Ugh. Time to revise this plan
If you’re one of those diehard fans that likes to attend free Carolina Panthers training camp practices to get an early look at the team, you’re mostly out of luck this year.
Next year, too, for that matter.
The Panthers announced Wednesday that due to ongoing construction at their practice fields in Charlotte, they won’t be able to host fans on-site for both the team’s 2025 and 2026 training camps. They will have a Fan Fest event on Aug. 2 at Bank of America Stadium that is open to the general public for a $5 charitable donation, but that’s the only “open to the public” practice they will hold in 2025.
The Panthers’ construction project is absolutely needed — their temporary practice bubble is gone and they are building a new indoor fieldhouse. But it’s a wrong-headed decision to make the team available only once to the general public during July and August (outside of paying to go to a preseason game).
It’s also an avoidable mistake and could still be fixed with more off-site practices, as I’ll explain in a moment.
This lack of public availability stands in stark contrast to last year, when the Panthers had 14 “free and open to the public” workouts at their practice fields in Charlotte that are a five-minute walk from the stadium.
Before that, the Panthers always held their training camp at Wofford College in Spartanburg, 80 miles away, where fans had their pick of at least a couple of weeks of free and open practices to choose from (at least in non-COVID years).
A summer road trip to Spartanburg to catch lunch and a Panthers practice was a rite of passage for many Carolina fans, especially because those practices gave fans a far better chance to get player autographs and selfies than any other public availability did all year.
Before I give my solution to this, let me point out for the sake of fairness that what the Panthers are doing isn’t unprecedented. In fact, if you look at what the Panthers’ NFC South peers did in 2024, none of them had nearly as good of a level of general public access as the Panthers did.
The Atlanta Falcons shut down on-site fans at their facility in 2024 due to construction and had just two open practices for fans — one at their stadium and one at a local high school. The New Orleans Saints moved almost all of their training-camp practices to California in 2024, putting them out of reach to almost all of their core fans, although they did have one “Fan Fest” type event back in New Orleans in August.
Tampa Bay was the closest parallel to the Panthers, with two practices that were open to the general public but eight more that were “semi-open,” attended by various other groups like season-ticket holders.
Still, what’s happening in 2025 for Carolina is going to result in too little access for your average Panthers fan in 2025 and 2026. And I particularly feel sorry for the kids who won’t get as up close and personal as often with their Panthers heroes the next two years. I have seen hundreds of instances where a Panthers fan gets an autograph from a Cam Newton or Luke Kuechly or Bryce Young and walks away, floating on air.
Panthers quarterback Bryce Young said Wednesday in a press conference that he understood the “logistics” behind the construction but that he would be sorry to see the fan interactions at training camp largely disappear for the next two seasons for Carolina.
“That part is super unfortunate,” Young said. “For me and for the entire team, we love that fan interaction.... That’s really one of the highlights of the year for us.... So that’s something we’re definitely gonna miss. You know, it sucks. Obviously you had to (build a permanent indoor practice facility), but we’re definitely going to miss that daily interaction with the fans and with the community.”
The Panthers could still fix this, though. One somewhat expensive way would have been to return to Wofford for the next two years, where the facilities are already NFL-ready. But it appears that ship has sailed.
Still, how about another one-off, off-site event besides Fan Fest? That’s not too difficult. The Panthers held an event exactly like that in Clemson last year to celebrate their 30-year anniversary, remember. A similar event could be staged at any college campus in the Carolinas in 2025.
And if you don’t want to go all the way to Columbia or Clemson or Raleigh or Chapel Hill, have that open practice at UNC Charlotte or Davidson.
Or, as the Falcons did only one year ago in Buford, Georgia, hold an additional open Panthers practice at a local high school in Charlotte. While you’d need to pick a field and stadium that could accommodate NFL players and the resulting crowd, it’s totally possible. It would be a big deal for the local high school community. I’ve got several ideas for where that theoretical practice could go.
In other words, there are options here. And those options remain.
It’s not a realistic option to just skip the construction project, though. The Panthers need a permanent fieldhouse. You may not remember, but they used to get stuck practicing at Charlotte’s convention center in bad weather. Once, just before the 2015 NFC Championship game against Arizona, they held a key practice in the snow. It worked out fine that time, but it’s not ideal in the long run. You don’t want a player you have invested $50 million into running around on a wet field and tweaking a hamstring.
Still, it’s not right that the Cleveland Browns can visit the Panthers’ training camp this year — they are coming in for a joint practice — but regular fans cannot see the team work out unless they go to Fan Fest.
At least 1-2 more “free and open to the general public” off-site accessibilities should be offered, both this year and next.
The Panthers have always liked to say how important the average fan is to their organization. They need to work harder on this plan to make sure the average fan actually feels that way.
This story was originally published April 23, 2025 at 11:25 AM.
