Saints to welcome 750 family members of players, coaches, and staff vs. Packers
About 750 family members of New Orleans Saints players, coaches, and support staff will be in attendance at Sunday night’s game with the Green Bay Packers, the team announced. This follows their season opener with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and a road game at the Las Vegas Raiders, neither of which involved a live audience.
The Saints characterized this as a trial run of their health and safety procedures for spectators amid the COVID-19 pandemic, explaining in a statement:
This is a strict test of our health and safety protocols that we have been working on with ASM Global, local and national health experts and city and state governmental leadership, including Governor John Bel Edwards and Mayor Latoya Cantrell, both of which are aware and have approved this safety test.
These protocols include health screenings, mobile ticketing, social distancing and other health and safety enhancements. Face masks will be required for all those attending. This is open only to immediate family, allowing us to test our procedures while allowing us to have a firm handle on who is attending for the purposes of safety and tracing.
This also follows a $100,000 fine for Saints coach Sean Payton and a $250,000 penalty to the team after Payton didn’t keep his face mask up during last week’s Raiders game, which violated NFL policy (Las Vegas coach Jon Gruden and his team were issued the same fines for also not following protocol). While Payton has already recovered from the coronavirus and begun donating antibodies to help others, it’s still important for everyone to follow the rules here.
So the Saints will be hosting just over 10.7% of the Superdome’s maximum occupancy against Green Bay as a test of their own procedures. If all goes well, they could be approved to welcome fans to future games in greater numbers; the next Saints home game on the schedule is an Oct. 12 kickoff on “Monday Night Football” with the Los Angeles Chargers.
