Detroit showed last week why so many cities want to host the NFL draft.
The NFL said more than 775,000 people attended draft-related events in the city, and Visit Detroit President and CEO Claude Molinari says the economic impact on the city will exceed the pre-draft estimate of $150 million to $175 million. Molinari says there might never have been a week in history when the area’s hotels made as much money as they made last week with the draft in town.
“The week before the draft was our best hotel revenue week of 2024,” Molinari said, via the Detroit News. “It’s possible that this past week with the draft will be the best hotel revenue week ever for Southeast Michigan, and that’s 128 years of tracking that.”
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said he believes the draft will bolster perceptions of Detroit as a place to visit and a place that can successfully host major events.
“What we needed to do was change our national reputation,” Duggan said. “We very consciously built up a national narrative and shared all of that with the national media, and I’m gonna say I was I was really pleased, and I think there’ll be a significant lasting effect.”
Green Bay will host the 2025 draft, and multiple cities are vying for the 2026 draft. The league has successfully turned the draft into a traveling show that has become one of the biggest annual events in American sports.
In the end, Detroit saw Nashville’s 600,000 and raised it. By a lot.
Per the NFL, “over 775,000” attended the three-day draft. That surpasses the prior record, from 2019, by nearly 30 percent.
Next year, Green Bay gets its turn. The fact that a division rival drew so many people will surely be regarded as a challenge by Green Bay and all of Wisconsin to match or exceed it.
It feels like, somewhere, the draft will hit one million for the three days, sooner than later. It’s come a very long way from Radio City Music Hall, where the first night was magical and the second night was OK and the third day featured tons of empty seats. (I was present for each of the last five drafts held there.)
The league left in 2015 because of a scheduling conflict. The draft went to Chicago for two years and then to Philly and it will never look back.
The next time it’s in New York, it won’t be in Radio City Music Hall. And it will feature a lot more people. Hell, it might be held in Times Square, turning New Year’s Eve into a three-day affair.
Regardless, look for the draft to keep on moving. And look for it to keep on getting bigger and bigger.
Detroit did it.
With 700,000 fans in attendance for the three-day draft — and counting — Detroit has shattered the prior attendance record.
That happened five years ago in Nashville, when 600,000 were present.
The first two nights officially had 550,000 fans, according to the NFL.
Look for more and more massive crowds as the draft makes the rounds from NFL city to NFL city. Because it’s held in the spring, every city will eventually get a turn. If it wants one.
If not, plenty of cities would be happy to host it again.
Detroit loves the draft. Even after the best night of it.
Another massive crowd has assembled for the rounds two and three of the draft, one day after (officially) 275,000 showed up and (unofficially) 400,000 turned out.
Kudos to Detroit and again to the NFL for realizing the draft could be made even bigger than it was by taking it on the road.
It really is, as we’ve said before, the ultimate reality show about nothing. They could do it anywhere. They could do it nowhere. They could do it by group text.
It’s just a stage from which names are announced. It’s amazing that it has become what it has become.
What it has become is the biggest tentpole of offseason. A flea market for plausible hope that lets fans of all teams think this year could be the year.
The first 14 picks in Thursday night’s first round were offensive players, which was both the longest run without a defensive player to open an NFL draft in history and a good development for the Lions.
Lions General Manager Brad Holmes said that the team was hoping to add a cornerback in the draft, but that they didn’t plan on former Alabama corner Terrion Arnold slipping to the 29th pick. That calculus changed once all the offensive players started coming off the board and Holmes pulled the trigger on a trade with the Cowboys once Arnold made it to No. 24.
Holmes said there was “a pretty significant line underneath him to the next guy,” so it was hard for him to contain his pleasure about how things played out.
“I don’t want to say speechless, but overly thrilled with how tonight went,” Holmes said, via Justin Rogers of the Detroit News. “All these drafts, you never know how it’s going to go. We knew it was an offensive-heavy draft. That’s what we did know. We didn’t quite know those defenders would get pushed to that point, especially a guy like Terrion, but we couldn’t be more ecstatic or thrilled with how it went.”
Arnold will have some familiar faces meeting him in Detroit as former Alabama players Jahmyr Gibbs, Brian Branch, and Jameson Williams have joined the Lions in recent years. The hope is that they can help the Lions maintain the kind of success they grew accustomed to in college.
Maybe they should change the title of the classic KISS song to Detroit Draft City.
Via the Detroit News, the NFL’s official attendance number for last night’s festivities was 275,000. Police officials, however, estimated that 400,000 showed up.
It underscores the raw power of taking the draft on the road, something that happened basically by accident in 2015. Radio City Music Hall was booked for the weekend the NFL wanted to do the draft, so the league went to Chicago and that, as they say, was that.
The official number shatters the prior single-day record of 200,000 in Nashville. And it means that the draft will continue to be a traveling, open-air roadshow — with every NFL city likely getting its chance to host the league’s No. 1 offseason tentpole event.
The crowd noticeably thinned as the night lingered. It apparently was cold. It will be interesting to see how many fans show up tonight and tomorrow, as the event loses its natural opening-night luster.
The Cowboys were on the clock at No. 24, but they opted to move back instead of drafting Duke offensive lineman Graham Barton. Oklahoma offensive tackle Tyler Guyton also remains on the board.
The Lions gave up the 29th pick and the 73rd pick in return to move up five spots. Detroit also received a 2025 seventh-round pick from the Cowboys.
The Lions used the selection to take Alabama cornerback Terrion Arnold, only the seventh defensive player to be drafted tonight.
Detroit has upgraded at the position this offseason, with Arnold pairing with veteran Carlton Davis. The Lions traded with the Buccaneers for Davis earlier in the offseason.
It is the third consecutive year the Lions have drafted an Alabama player in the first round.
Detroit has shown up and is showing out tonight.
Downtown Detroit is hosting the NFL draft, and two hours before it begins, the crowd is sizeable.
NFL vice president of communications Brian McCarthy tweeted a photo from a security camera showing a crowd the league estimates at 150,000 and growing with two hours to go until the Bears are on the clock with the No. 1 overall pick.
One of three entrances into the draft already is closed due to crowd capacity.
This is the first time Detroit has hosted the draft.
Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown signed a lucrative contract extension on Wednesday, signaling just how far he’s come since the day the Lions drafted him.
In fact, St. Brown considered everything about the 2021 NFL draft a major disappointment: He wasn’t happy that he lasted until the fourth round, and he really wasn’t happy that the Lions were the team to draft him.
“Three years ago, when I got that call at exactly this time, I told my brother [Equanimeous], ‘If there’s one team I don’t want to go to, that’s the Lions. Just, please, I don’t want to go to the Lions,” St. Brown said, via Eric Woodyard of ESPN. “I was happy but I was unhappy at the same time because I didn’t want to come here. But looking back on it, it’s for the best. I don’t think there’s another place where I could have done what I’ve done here, with the people that are around me, the coaches, my teammates, the fans, the city, the whole story of how everything has been going so far, I would pay for this if I could, to have this whole thing happen again. It’s a perfect story.”
And it’s a story that will have several more chapters. This week’s contract extension ensured that.
News dropped on Wednesday that the Lions had agreed to contract extensions with a pair of 2021 draft picks: offensive tackle Penei Sewell and receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown.
A fourth-round pick in the 2021 draft, St. Brown noted even last year that he still thinks about the 16 receivers who were selected ahead of him — illustrating how he plays with a chip on his shoulder.
So now that he’s earned a second contract, how will he maintain playing with that edge?
“I’ve gotta go harder. I told everyone, I’m going harder now,” St. Brown said on Thursday, via Eric Woodyard of ESPN. “I’m not changing. My goal — our goal — is that Lombardi. We need it. We feel like we can do it. So, that’s our goal going into the season — we want that trophy.
“But I’m not changing. Everyone knows that — or I hope they do, or they’ll find out. I’m just glad I’m here for four more years, whatever it is. To be with the guys, the coaches, the teammates, the fans — everyone that’s a part of the organization is… I hear a lot of stories about other teams and whatnot, but this is all I know and they’ve been awesome to me so far.”
St. Brown was a first-team All-Pro in 2023 after recording 119 catches for 1,515 yards with 10 touchdowns in 16 games. He then had 22 receptions for 274 yards with a touchdown in three postseason contests.
He’s registered 315 catches for 3,588 yards with 21 TDs in his first three seasons.