‘This is our Super Bowl’: As the NFL draft draws near, Green Bay area leaders say they’re ready

With the NFL’s largest offseason event coming to its smallest city in just days, local leaders say Green Bay is ready to welcome tens of thousands of visitors.

The NFL draft will be held Thursday through Saturday at Lambeau Field and the Titletown District. During the event, the league’s 32 teams will select the best eligible college football players in the country to join their rosters. 

In addition to the business of football, the draft also brings with it a three-day football festival where visitors will be able to see tributes to all of the league’s teams.

As of Monday, crews were still working to construct the NFL draft campus around Lambeau Field. League officials told reporters that everything was progressing on schedule for the event’s kickoff Thursday.

Local leaders from Green Bay, Ashwaubenon and Brown County held a press conference Monday to talk about how the community has prepared to welcome thousands of visitors.

Brown County Executive Troy Streckenbach said preparing for the draft was a team effort that brought together all levels of local government around the stadium to showcase the best the community has to offer.

“The municipalities, the county, the first responders are all coming together to really put our best foot forward in terms of making sure that we can do the best job to invite and welcome all these people who are going to be coming to Lambeau Field,” he said. 

Much of that collaboration has been between law enforcement and public safety agencies creating contingency plans to ensure those attending the event can be safe. Green Bay Police Chief Chris Davis said those efforts are similar to the cross-agency collaboration that happens on game days, but with the expectation of potentially more people.

Local leaders have said they expect about 240,000 people to attend the event, roughly the attendance of three Packers home games.

But Nicki Ewell, the NFL’s senior director of events, said the league isn’t yet releasing its attendance projections and plans to announce attendance numbers after the event. 

“We know it’s going to be tens of thousands of fans that are going to come to this campus over the course of those three days,” Ewell said. 

From the Packers’ perspective, the NFL draft is the closest the team will come to hosting a Super Bowl at Lambeau Field, said Aaron Popkey, director of public affairs for the Packers. 

Green Bay has fewer hotel rooms than traditional Super Bowl host cities, and the big game is played in what’s usually the middle of Wisconsin winter.

“This is our Super Bowl,” Popkey said. “We’re not necessarily a community that would be in the Super Bowl rotation, but I think the idea of the draft was something that they could bring to communities that wouldn’t necessarily get the Super Bowl.”

The Packers and Discover Green Bay, the local tourism bureau, spent about a decade working to bring the draft to the NFL’s smallest city. Both organizations have sent representatives to recent drafts and have been working behind the scenes to bring the event to the community since it left Radio City Music Hall in New York.

Ewell said the league expects the event to bring people from all across Wisconsin to Green Bay, calling it a “statewide” event. She said Green Bay’s proximity to other metropolitan areas, like Madison and Milwaukee, with football fan bases is one of the things she said set it apart from other NFL cities. 

“We’re going to have all these amazing feeder markets throughout Madison and Milwaukee, drivable NFL markets, that are going to come in,” she said. “People here don’t care if they have to drive 90 miles.”

Beyond the action near Lambeau Field, Green Bay community groups also have a slate of events planned throughout the draft days, from live music to a cooking competition. Several local school districts are giving their students time off for the draft, as well.

Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich said Monday the events throughout the community are meant to complement the activities near the stadium and get visitors to experience more of the area.

“One thing that I heard from mayors from former host cities … was really do whatever you can to leverage this event, to put your best foot forward, to attract people into the community and to circulate them to other places when the event itself is not ongoing,” Genrich said. “I think we’re going to be able to put on some really fantastic events.”