Cleveland hoping to host another NFL Draft in the near future

The only confirmed hosts are Detroit in 2024 and Green Bay in 2025.

There is no rumored date, but the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission (GCSC) made it clear that they want another NFL Draft in Cleveland sooner rather than later. While the event itself is great, the reasoning is also fueled by the fact that the city of Cleveland didn’t get to realize the full economic impact that a draft typically brings, since it was the first major event as the “pandemic” was winding down. David Gilbert, President of the GCSC, talked about the subject last week with Jonathan Peterlin of 92.3 the Fan:

“We’ve asked the NFL directly — because of when the draft was in 2021, we had probably a third of the fans that we expected to have based on past drafts. It was great it happened, but impact-wise, it meant about $42 million in direct spending. It would’ve been well over $100 million [had it not been for the pandemic]. So we’ve asked the NFL directly, ‘We didn’t get what we’d hoped for,’ and I think that will play well in future discussions of trying to get the draft back here sooner rather than later.

After Cleveland, Las Vegas hosted the 2022 draft and Kansas City hosted the 2023 draft. Detroit will host the draft in 2024, and Green Bay will host in 2025. Future years are too be determined.

If you recall, back in 2021, the in-person draft in Vegas was cancelled and went virtual instead. However, Vegas’ planning and efforts were still rewarded, as they were given the 2022 draft instead. Cleveland essentially took the bullet of having the first big event in the country post-pandemic, which was pretty darn cool — but it’s understandable why the city feels they’re owed another one in the near future. However, I can also see the NFL’s potential perspective if they want to visit a whole host of other new cities first. We’ll see what happens — in the mean time, feel free to re-live this tour of the 2021 NFL Draft that I filmed: