The only factory making NFL game balls is in Ohio—and it's expanding

The NFL’s 2024 season starts in over two months, and they’re already making the balls for the games right here in Ohio.

They’ll be making more of them than ever before, too, thanks to a $15 million investment in a new factory by Wilson Sporting Goods in Ada.

As fans with the clearest big-screen TVs likely already know, Wilson is the sole provider of footballs for the NFL. In fact, it’s the only ball the NFL has ever used, said Kevin Murphy, Wilson's vice president and general manager for team sports.

“We’ve been making balls for the NFL for 80 years,” Murphy said.

In other words, Wilson's been making balls for professional football in America since before there was anything called a Super Bowl, or even the NFL as we know it today.

Though they were not the sole provider of balls at the time, Wilson was making balls for pro football even before Cleveland won its last championship. That was 60 years ago—not that anyone’s counting, right?—when the Browns beat the Baltimore Colts 27-0 in Cleveland to win the 1964 NFL Championship behind running back Jim Brown. Back then, there were two leagues, the NFL and the American Football League, but there was no Super Bowl until 1967 after the leagues merged.

Most of those balls were made in Ada, a small town of a little more than 5,000 people in Hardin County, about 100 miles southwest of Cleveland. And the town’s residents have been making every ball the NFL uses for decades.

“Since the ’50s we’ve been in Ada,” Murphy said.

That’s now set to continue for the foreseeable future, thanks to Wilson investing in a new factory, right next to its old one, that began making balls last month.

Murphy said the old plant could no longer keep up with demand for the balls, which Wilson makes for not only the NFL, but also for many NCAA teams, and all NCAA championship games, as well as for high school players and the general public.

“It was cramped quarters, and we clearly outgrew it,” Murphy said. “For the last several years we were literally not able to make enough footballs to meet consumer demand. We were falling behind and that’s not where we want to be.”

The new plant will give the company room to grow, Murphy said. At 80,000 square feet, it’s a little more than twice the size of the old plant, he said. It will enable the company to add 10 to 20 new people to its current staff of 120, Murphy said.

Wilson needs to expand, but it also needs to ensure that the quality of its football doesn’t lose a stitch, Murphy said.

That might sound easy until you take a good look at a high-quality football like Wilson makes. Those completely even seams, binding oddly shaped pieces of leather over a ball that is even more oddly shaped, are not easy to make, and even lacing the balls properly requires great skill, Murphy said. And all that work has to be done by hand.

“Between sewing and lacing the balls, it’s a tough thing to automate,” Murphy said.

But if you think machinists and welders are hard to find, try to hire some experienced football sewers or lacers. Wilson has to train them, but that was difficult in the cramped quarters of the old factory, Murphy said.

“We now have space where we can train people side by side with veteran workers,” he said. “It does take a while to get to the skill level of doing NFL game balls.”

As you might expect, those who do make the ball take great pride in seeing them on TV.

“They’re sewing game balls for the Super Bowl. They get pretty geeked up about seeing their product on the field,” Murphy said.

That pride might be a reason they stick around, too. Murphy said some of the ballmakers in Ada have been with the company there for 45 years or more.

Murphy said the new balls coming out of the plant match the quality of what came out of the old plant. After all, it’s the same people making them, by hand, he said.

“You won’t see a bit of difference,” he said. “Just more of them and, hopefully, faster.”