The Draft Road Show

While I don't watch or particularly care about the NFL Draft, I know there are plenty of people who'll watch every hour of all three days.  If that's your thing, more power to you.  It's just not mine.  Mostly because I don't really watch college football (and thus don't know any of the players), but also because the NFL Draft is mind-numbingly boring television!  It's analysts sitting around for hours discussing the same players they've been discussing for months, with the occasional actual selection thrown in!  

Of course, it was the NFL Draft that really helped make ESPN what it is.  When Pete Rozelle first got the call from ESPN telling him they were interested in televising the NFL Draft, he thought they were crazy.  I'm sure there were some "who's gonna watch that?!" feelings.  But people, of course, did watch it, which is how the NFL Draft expanded into the three-day megaevent with the primetime first round that it is now.

In those early years, the NFL Draft was always held in New York.  That changed in 2015, when the NFL started holding a bid process to host the Draft, similar to the bid process for the Super Bowl.  And, frankly, that decision was brilliant!

Anything NFL-related is an incredibly marketable property.  And the Draft is the only event that brings together the rabid fanbases of the NFL and the rabid fanbases of college football.  So, it makes sense to bring the Draft to them instead of making them have to travel to New York.

Here's another reason why bidding out the location of the NFL Draft was so smart--anyone can host the NFL Draft!  Only a handful of teams can host the Super Bowl, which rotates between the same 8-10 warm-weather cities.  The Draft, meanwhile, is in April, when the weather's much nicer.  And, even if it isn't, the Draft can be held indoors.

The NFL, obviously, knows that, so it's not surprising that since they started moving the Draft around, most of the host cities are ones that wouldn't be in the mix to host a Super Bowl: Chicago (2015-16), Philadelphia (2017), Nashville (2019), Cleveland (2021), Kansas City (2023), Detroit (2024).  Only Dallas and New York have hosted both the Draft and the Super Bowl, while this year's Draft host, Las Vegas, will host Super Bowl LVIII next season.

Meanwhile, none of your regular Super Bowl cities (Miami, New Orleans, Tampa, Phoenix, Atlanta, etc.) has even emerged as a potential site for a future NFL Draft.  While I'm sure they're not excluded (and the NFL would probably very much like a Draft in Los Angeles at some point), it looks like the NFL is being very deliberate in the cities it picks to host the Draft.  Basically, they're making it possible for every team to host at least one of the marquee events (three if you include the Pro Bowl, which is also limited to warm-weather cities).

I wouldn't be surprised if future Drafts are held in places like Seattle or Pittsburgh or even Green Bay.  Or how about Indianapolis, which already hosts the Combine?  In fact, it wouldn't be shocking if they start moving that around, too.  That's probably less likely since the Combine isn't the fan event that the Draft is, but if they started allowing fans to attend that, you know they would.

Spreading the wealth is also a boon for whatever city hosts the Draft that year.  One of the reasons the NFL schedule release is so highly anticipated is because, perhaps more than any other sport, fans travel to see their team's road games.  Fans travel for the Draft, too.  And it's not just fans of one road team.  It's fans of 31 road teams plus God knows how many college programs!

Tickets to the NFL Draft are free, too.  They're first-come, first-serve, but if you want to attend, all you need to do is be in the city where the Draft is being held.  And all that requires is paying for a plane ticket (if the Draft isn't somewhere close enough for you to drive, that is) and a hotel room.  Which is obviously a tremendous boon to the Draft host economically.

So, if you think about it, it really made sense to stop holding the Draft in a single location every year and start moving it around instead.  Fans from around the league were traveling to the Draft already.  Why should New York be the only place to reap the benefits?  To the NFL's credit, they realized there was money to be made from taking the Draft on the road, so that's exactly what they decided to do.

Moving the Draft around isn't an idea unique to the NFL, either.  The NHL Draft has been held in a different league city since the mid-80s.  Prior to that, it was held in Montreal every year.  The NHL Draft is nowhere near the event the NFL Draft is, though.  Partially because fans don't know the players as well, partially because it'll be a few years until many of them are in the NHL.  So, while it's still cool for the different NHL cities to host that league's Draft, it pales in comparison to the NFL Draft.

With the spectacle both the NFL and NFL Draft have become, though, hosting the Draft really is a financial windfall for the host city.  The Super Bowl is in February.  The Draft is at the end of April.  So, other than free agency, it's literally the only thing NFL fans have to talk about for two and a half months!  And the anticipation is even longer for the college football fans who haven't seen these guys play since the bowl games.

There are certainly some perfect storm factors at play here, too.  And when you combine all of them, it's completely logical that the NFL Draft has become as big as it has.  It also makes sense that every city in the league would want to take advantage of that.