The NFL draft comes to Green Bay next month. Is the league’s smallest city ready?

Jeanne DeGroot lives in a residential neighborhood in the shadow of Lambeau Field, but she’s been feeling a little uneasy in recent weeks.

That’s because her neighborhood, named after legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, is set to see an influx of visitors next month. 

In late April, Lambeau Field and the Titletown District in Green Bay are set to host the 2025 NFL draft, and local leaders are expecting nearly a quarter of a million attendees across the event’s three days.

If the league’s smallest city can’t handle the crowds at its biggest offseason event, DeGroot joked that it could scare the draft off Green Bay forever.

“I have been telling people for a long time that if you’re going to come to the draft [in] Green Bay, come this year because it may never ever come back,” she said. “We haven’t had this many people in one area in this town ever that I’m aware of.”

It’s taken nearly a decade for Green Bay to land the draft, and the popular event will put the community in the national spotlight. From a stage near the stadium, all 32 NFL teams will choose the best college football players in the country to join their rosters. Last year, more than 50 million people watched the NFL draft on television across 90 hours of live coverage, according to a league presentation.

The league started televising the draft in 1980, bringing the event into the public consciousness. The move accelerated the draft’s growth and allowed it to move out of a “smoky hotel conference room” to Radio City Music Hall in New York, according to the NFL. 

As football’s popularity has exploded, so has interest in the draft. Since 2015, the league has taken the show on the road, stopping at different NFL cities each year.  In Detroit last year, more than 775,000 people attended the festivities. Attendance in Green Bay is projected to be about 240,000.

Local leaders described hosting the draft as essentially hosting three Packers home games in a row from April 24 through April 26.

Some residents worry about how the event could affect their day-to-day lives. Earlier this month, DeGroot attended a meeting at a local church put on by the Lombardi Neighborhood Association, the Green Bay Packers, local law enforcement and the local visitors bureau.

More than 50 neighbors watched a presentation by the draft organizers that provided a sneak peek into how the area around Lambeau Field will transform into a festival grounds celebrating football for the event. 

The NFL Draft Theater will be located in the northeast corner of the Lambeau Field parking lot. That’s the area where the league commissioner will announce the first-round selections on opening night.

The neighborhood meeting also gave residents the opportunity to ask questions about how the event would affect things like driveway access and garbage pickup. DeGroot left the roughly hour-long meeting feeling “cautiously optimistic” about organizers’ plans.

“With all these people coming into this neighborhood, it’s a little scary,” DeGroot said. “It would be great publicity if it goes off without a hitch. I don’t think there’s going to be many hitches, but there’s just that unknown.”

Draft events provide a showcase for Green Bay

While some residents are nervous about the draft, others say it’s an opportunity to show off the community. Discover Green Bay, the local tourism bureau, estimates the event will have an economic impact of $20 million in the area and a statewide impact of $94 million.

“It’s very, very exciting,” said Green Bay resident Christian Dorst. “I see a lot of benefits for the city.”

Green Bay and its suburbs are no stranger to visitors. About 80,000 fans attend each of the Packers’ eight home games each season. Lambeau Field has also been used to host an international soccer game and concerts.

Brad Toll, CEO of Discover Green Bay, said the neighborhood of single-family homes across the street from an NFL stadium helps set the community apart from other pro-sports cities during the regular season and provides a unique backdrop for those coming to the draft.

He said neighbors often make their front yards available for game day parking, a practice he said “fascinated” league officials and will continue during the draft. Toll recalled a conversation he had with the NFL in which he described available restroom amenities for those parking in lawns, saying it encapsulates “Midwest nice.”

“They were thinking we’d get port-a-potties for all the houses,” he recalled. “We were like, ‘No, they let them go inside the house and go to the bathroom.’ … They couldn’t believe that that actually was true.”

Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich says residents’ hospitality is something his office receives emails and phone calls about from visitors throughout the NFL season, often from opposing fanbases.

“That’s something that we’re really, really well known for — for good reason,” he said. “We’re the smallest community in the NFL, but we’ve got the biggest heart by a long shot.”

The Packers and Discover Green Bay have been talking behind the scenes for years about trying to bring the draft to the community. They put their first formal bid in to host in 2016.

Green Bay isn’t big enough to host a Super Bowl. It doesn’t have enough hotel rooms, and the big game is typically played during Wisconsin’s frigid winter months, Toll said. 

“This really is our Super Bowl, when it comes to the NFL,” he said of the draft.

Two years ago, the league announced that Green Bay would host the 2025 NFL draft.

“We want to pick non-traditional Super Bowl cities, but also cities that are rich in NFL fandom,” said Nicki Ewell, senior director of events for the NFL. “And of course, you can’t get much better than the Green Bay Packers.”

One local who might personify Green Bay’s dedication to its team is Reed Lewis, who plans to attend the draft. He lives in the Lombardi neighborhood and is a Packers season ticket holder.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me, so I’m definitely going to be here trying to suck in all the festivities,” he said. “Hopefully the weather will cooperate and it’ll turn out to be the best thing Green Bay ever had.”

Besides team picks, draft events are planned across the area

While the action on stage is the part of the event that fans are the most familiar with, it’s essentially a televised business meeting between all 32 teams, Ewell said. 

There’s also a football festival accompanying the action on stage. During the “NFL Draft Experience,” Ewell said fans will participate in interactive games, see the Vince Lombardi Trophy and look at a full collection of Super Bowl rings. They will also be able to listen to live music and eat food from vendors, including some selected to help provide a “Wisconsin supper club” feel, Ewell said.

One of the Wisconsin vendors hired to work the draft is the Milwaukee-based Saz’s Hospitality Group. Charlie Schnell, the company’s sales and events manager, said Saz’s was hired to cater “several thousand meals” for crews working on site from the Monday prior to the event through the Sunday after.

“Being a part of the draft was something that we always wanted to do,” he said.

In addition to the NFL’s event, the broader Green Bay community has a slate of events planned for the week of the draft. Those include concerts, a cooking competition and a football skills competition at City Stadium, the field used by the Packers before Lambeau Field.

Genrich said city leaders met with local officials from Kansas City and Detroit, cities that both previously hosted the draft. He said the biggest piece of advice he got was that it’s up to the host community to maximize the event’s impact.

“We just want to make it as easy as possible for people to get where they need to go within the community and then also create events that are going to be attractive for those who are visiting, as well as residents here,” Genrich said.

It isn’t just Green Bay that’s expected to greet visitors during the week of the draft. Toll said Discover Green Bay has been in regular contact with Travel Wisconsin and local visitors bureaus in the Fox Valley, Madison, Milwaukee, Wausau and Marinette regarding the event.

“A number of them are also sending shuttles … up to the event,” he said. “We’re working on making certain that those are credentialed and have maps so they know where they’re going when they come into the community. It’s been a large, coordinated effort.”

With other NFC North teams in Minnesota, Michigan and Illinois, tourism officials also expect there to be groups of fans driving to Green Bay from neighboring states.

How could Green Bay’s size, Wisconsin’s weather affect the draft?

While officials are optimistic about the event, hosting the NFL’s biggest offseason event in its smallest city does pose obstacles.

Ewell with the league said the biggest problem she sees related to hosting the event in a small-market city is a “lack of housing” for visitors.

She said some visitors might stay in hotels outside of Green Bay but within a couple-hour drive of the city. Hotels in Green Bay, the Fox Valley and Milwaukee saw a surge in prices for rooms during the event.

“Housing will probably be a little bit of a thing, but the hospitality, the food, the music [and] the personnel, they’re going to be top notch — no concerns,” Ewell said. 

Aaron Popkey, director of public affairs for the Green Bay Packers, said the team’s proposal to the NFL also included contingencies in case of an April snowstorm — something that isn’t totally outside the realm of possibility in Wisconsin.

“We’re [in] Lambeau Field, where the Packers play in all sorts of weather, so we know a little bit about snow removal,” he said.

Green Bay’s police and fire departments have also prepared for possible emergency scenarios, Genrich said. Those include everything from extreme weather to public safety concerns.

“We’ve thought about all those contingencies,” he said. “I think we’ve got a really good group of people in place to make sure that, regardless of what happens, people are going to stay safe and have a good time.”