Erika Fieldhammer is not a big football fan, but she expected the NFL Draft to intrude on her daily life when it came to Green Bay due to its sheer size relative to the city.

The draft drew 312,000 unique visitors to the Wisconsin city last year, according to local estimates, approximately triple the local population of 106,000.

2026 Pittsburgh
NFL Draft

“For six months leading up to the draft, everybody was talking about how big it was going to be and how bad traffic was going to be,” said Fieldhammer, an administrative assistant at a contracting company. “When it finally arrived, I personally didn’t notice any difference. … The only thing I noticed personally was that I was actually moving that weekend, and I ended up having to reschedule my movers because the guys who were going to move me were going to the draft.”

Pittsburgh will play host this April to the draft, a three-day football festival where the league’s 32 teams select their newest players. The sports media ecosystem will descend on the city April 23-25, and following big turnouts in Green Bay last year and Detroit in 2024, Pittsburgh organizers are expecting more than 500,000 attendees across the three days combined.

This figure sent many Pittsburghers into a state of dread, or of booking a weekend getaway — or planning a lucrative weekend helping football fans part with their money. But several Green Bay residents interviewed by Public Source (as well as dozens who commented anonymously on Reddit) said the draft did not impose upon residents who lived outside its immediate shadow, and generally brought positive energy — though it did not spread visitors’ money far and wide throughout the city.

“As soon as you leave the stadium district it was business as usual,” said Erica Larsen, who works in banking in Green Bay. “I was really concerned about having to work and being called into the office, so that’s why I took [time off of work]. There was no tangible impact at all.”

Not all out-of-towners

The NFL held the draft in New York for decades and only recently began staging it in smaller cities, so data is limited. But in Green Bay, an economic impact study showed that most people who attended the draft didn’t travel from very far, and many didn’t stay overnight.

Under a third of attendees came from outside of Wisconsin, according to the study, and just under a quarter paid for overnight lodging. Only 14% reached the event by air travel.

The 2024 draft in Detroit showed similar patterns. The local tourism bureau there released a report stating 70% of more than 700,000 attendees across three days traveled less than 100 miles to get there.

Jerad Bachar, president and CEO of VisitPittsburgh and part of the draft organizing committee, said the lofty attendance estimates include the expectation that Pittsburgh residents will partake in the festivities.

“We don’t want Pittsburghers to be afraid of the big numbers we’re talking about,” Bachar said. “It’s such a big footprint, when you think about the North Shore and Point State Park and everything in between, there’s a lot of space for people to move around.”

Renderings released in early February showed the main draft stage set up next to Acrisure Stadium and an additional festival site across the river at Point State Park. Bachar said the two areas will be connected by a pedestrian corridor routing people across the Roberto Clemente Bridge. He said parts of PNC Park will be open to fans, as will seating in the lower bowl of Acrisure Stadium for those who want to watch the draft on the big screen.

Nick Meisner, vice president of digital marketing and communications at Discover Green Bay, said traffic around last year’s draft was in some ways easier to navigate than that of a normal NFL game, because attendees flowed in and out through the day instead of the mass entrance and exit at the start and end of a game.

“Highway speeds remained consistent,” Meisner said. “Mobility around the area was congested more than normal but nothing crazy.”

Managing business expectations

Mayor Corey O’Connor during a December interview just before he took office told Public Source the draft will be a chance to “promote neighborhoods that haven’t seen people, people otherwise wouldn’t visit.”

The draft has been heralded as a major economic opportunity for Pittsburgh, and it figures to be a boon for local hotels (and the county that collects the hotel tax) and restaurants. But business owners not in the immediate area of the draft may not want to overstock and staff up.

“We anticipated that it might spread business around a little bit but most of the spending occurred around the draft area and the draft footprint,” Meisner said. “Some folks maybe geared up and didn’t see that business.”

Dan Drella, a transportation safety worker in Green Bay, said he was able to go to restaurants a half-mile from the draft and find them uncrowded.

“There are a number of restaurants that spent money, brought in extra staff and spruced the place up and a lot of them were disappointed they didn’t see the foot traffic they anticipated.”

Bachar said businesses Downtown and in the North Shore could benefit from proximity to the stadium, unlike in Green Bay, where the stadium is more isolated. But businesses in other parts of the city should expect to serve their usual clientele.

“At the end of the day this is an event where football fans want to be in and around the event, they want to be at that stage,” Bachar said. “If [neighborhood businesses] want to be involved in the draft and have some kind of a connection … the audience for that is going to be their residents, people who want to come together and celebrate the draft and the football legacy of Western Pennsylvania.”

Bachar said his organization is advising food truck operators against planning for robust sales outside the draft site.

“It just didn’t do the type of sales they expected [in Green Bay]. People want to get into the site where the action is going on, and there’s plenty of food and beverage inside the site.”

Charlie Wolfson is the local government reporter for Pittsburgh’s Public Source. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.

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What Green Bay says about hosting last year’s NFL Draft

by Charlie Wolfson, Pittsburgh's Public Source
February 24, 2026

<h1>What Green Bay says about hosting last year’s NFL Draft</h1> <p class="byline">by Charlie Wolfson, Pittsburgh's Public Source <br />February 24, 2026</p> <p>Erika Fieldhammer is not a big football fan, but she expected the NFL Draft to intrude on her daily life when it came to Green Bay due to its sheer size relative to the city.</p> <p>The draft drew 312,000 unique visitors to the Wisconsin city last year, according to local estimates, approximately triple the local population of 106,000.</p> <p>“For six months leading up to the draft, everybody was talking about how big it was going to be and how bad traffic was going to be,” said Fieldhammer, an administrative assistant at a contracting company. “When it finally arrived, I personally didn’t notice any difference. … The only thing I noticed personally was that I was actually moving that weekend, and I ended up having to reschedule my movers because the guys who were going to move me were going to the draft.”</p> <p>Pittsburgh will play host this April to the draft, a three-day football festival where the league’s 32 teams select their newest players. The sports media ecosystem will descend on the city April 23-25, and following big turnouts in Green Bay last year and Detroit in 2024, Pittsburgh organizers are expecting more than 500,000 attendees across the three days combined.</p> <p>This figure sent many Pittsburghers into a state of dread, or of booking a weekend getaway — or planning a lucrative weekend helping football fans part with their money. But several Green Bay residents interviewed by Public Source (as well as dozens who commented anonymously on Reddit) said the draft did not impose upon residents who lived outside its immediate shadow, and generally brought positive energy — though it did not spread visitors’ money far and wide throughout the city.</p> <figure class="wp-block-pullquote"> <blockquote> <p>“As soon as you leave the stadium district it was business as usual.”</p> <p><cite>green bay resident Erica larsen</cite></p></blockquote> </figure> <p>“As soon as you leave the stadium district it was business as usual,” said Erica Larsen, who works in banking in Green Bay. “I was really concerned about having to work and being called into the office, so that’s why I took [time off of work]. There was no tangible impact at all.”</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-not-all-out-of-towners">Not all out-of-towners</h2> <p>The NFL held the draft in New York for decades and only recently began staging it in smaller cities, so data is limited. But in Green Bay, <a href="https://www.packers.com/news/2025-nfl-draft-in-green-bay-exceeds-economic-impact-projections">an economic impact study</a> showed that most people who attended the draft didn’t travel from very far, and many didn’t stay overnight.</p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://www.publicsource.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/AJ-NFLDraftArts-Petras-20.jpg" alt="A person takes a photo of a large yellow NFL Draft countdown clock in a snowy park, with Pittsburgh's city skyline and bridges in the background." class="wp-image-1329111" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A person takes a picture of the NFL Draft countdown clock on Feb. 2 on the North Shore. (Photo by Alex Jurkuta/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)</figcaption></figure> <p>Under a third of attendees came from outside of Wisconsin, according to the study, and just under a quarter paid for overnight lodging. Only 14% reached the event by air travel.</p> <p>The 2024 draft in Detroit showed similar patterns. The local tourism bureau there <a href="https://detroitsports.org/news/2024/7/11/general-visit-detroit-and-the-detroit-sports-commission-announce-record-setting-2024-nfl-draft-generated-213-6-million-in-economic-impact.aspx">released a report</a> stating 70% of more than 700,000 attendees across three days traveled less than 100 miles to get there.</p> <p>Jerad Bachar, president and CEO of VisitPittsburgh and part of the draft organizing committee, said the lofty attendance estimates include the expectation that Pittsburgh residents will partake in the festivities.</p> <figure class="wp-block-pullquote"> <blockquote> <p>31% of Green Bay attendees traveled from out of state.</p> </blockquote> </figure> <p>“We don’t want Pittsburghers to be afraid of the big numbers we’re talking about,” Bachar said. “It’s such a big footprint, when you think about the North Shore and Point State Park and everything in between, there’s a lot of space for people to move around.”</p> <p>Renderings released in early February showed the main draft stage set up next to Acrisure Stadium and an additional festival site across the river at Point State Park. Bachar said the two areas will be connected by a pedestrian corridor routing people across the Roberto Clemente Bridge. He said parts of PNC Park will be open to fans, as will seating in the lower bowl of Acrisure Stadium for those who want to watch the draft on the big screen.</p> <p>Nick Meisner, vice president of digital marketing and communications at Discover Green Bay, said traffic around last year’s draft was in some ways easier to navigate than that of a normal NFL game, because attendees flowed in and out through the day instead of the mass entrance and exit at the start and end of a game.</p> <p>“Highway speeds remained consistent,” Meisner said. “Mobility around the area was congested more than normal but nothing crazy.”</p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://www.publicsource.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/qf1qxgx0ezfuk1ojk5a3.jpeg" alt="Aerial view of downtown Pittsburgh at sunset, showing stadiums, rivers, and bridges, with text announcing the 2026 NFL Draft presented by Bud Light." class="wp-image-1329624" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Renderings of the planned NFL Draft sites on the North Shore and at Point State Park. (Courtesy of the NFL)</figcaption></figure> <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-managing-business-expectations">Managing business expectations</h2> <p>Mayor Corey O’Connor during a December interview just before he took office told Public Source the draft will be a chance to “promote neighborhoods that haven’t seen people, people otherwise wouldn’t visit.”</p> <p>The draft has been heralded as a major economic opportunity for Pittsburgh, and it figures to be a boon for local hotels (and the county that collects the hotel tax) and restaurants. But business owners not in the immediate area of the draft may not want to overstock and staff up.</p> <p>“We anticipated that it might spread business around a little bit but most of the spending occurred around the draft area and the draft footprint,” Meisner said. “Some folks maybe geared up and didn’t see that business.”</p> <p>Dan Drella, a transportation safety worker in Green Bay, said he was able to go to restaurants a half-mile from the draft and find them uncrowded.</p> <figure class="wp-block-pullquote"> <blockquote> <p> “Some folks maybe geared up and didn’t see that business.”</p> <p><cite>nick meisner, discover green bay</cite></p></blockquote> </figure> <p>“There are a number of restaurants that spent money, brought in extra staff and spruced the place up and a lot of them were disappointed they didn’t see the foot traffic they anticipated.”</p> <p>Bachar said businesses Downtown and in the North Shore could benefit from proximity to the stadium, unlike in Green Bay, where the stadium is more isolated. But businesses in other parts of the city should expect to serve their usual clientele.</p> <p>“At the end of the day this is an event where football fans want to be in and around the event, they want to be at that stage,” Bachar said. “If [neighborhood businesses] want to be involved in the draft and have some kind of a connection … the audience for that is going to be their residents, people who want to come together and celebrate the draft and the football legacy of Western Pennsylvania.”</p> <p>Bachar said his organization is advising food truck operators against planning for robust sales outside the draft site.</p> <p>“It just didn’t do the type of sales they expected [in Green Bay]. People want to get into the site where the action is going on, and there’s plenty of food and beverage inside the site.”</p> <p><em>Charlie Wolfson is the local government reporter for Pittsburgh’s Public Source. He can be reached at </em><em>charlie@publicsource.org</em><em>.</em></p> <p>This &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://www.publicsource.org/nfl-draft-lessons-green-bay/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; first appeared on &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://www.publicsource.org&quot;&gt;Pittsburgh&#039;s Public Source&lt;/a&gt; and is republished here under a &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;img src=&quot;https://i0.wp.com/www.publicsource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/cropped-ps_circle_favicon_blue.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;amp;ssl=1&quot; style=&quot;width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;&quot;&gt;</p> &lt;img id=&quot;republication-tracker-tool-source&quot; src=&quot;https://www.publicsource.org/?republication-pixel=true&amp;post=1329621&amp;amp;ga4=G-CCLXQK5C14&quot; style=&quot;width:1px;height:1px;&quot;&gt;&lt;script&gt; PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: &quot;https://www.publicsource.org/nfl-draft-lessons-green-bay/&quot;, urlref: window.location.href }); } } &lt;/script&gt; &lt;script id=&quot;parsely-cfg&quot; src=&quot;//cdn.parsely.com/keys/publicsource.org/p.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;

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