Green Bay Has 12 Airport Gates. The NFL Draft Draws 250,000 Fans. What Could Go Wrong?
Today's newsletter includes 2,000 words on how a Rockettes show forced the NFL to move its draft, why Green Bay was approved as a host, and even specific details from the Packers 30-page bid proposal.
The 2025 NFL Draft officially kicks off tonight. Over the last several years, hundreds of thousands of fans have visited cities like Chicago, Dallas, Nashville, and Detroit, simply to watch Commissioner Roger Goodell read names off a list like a phone book.
But while those cities represent some of the NFL’s largest and most passionate fan bases, Green Bay, Wisconsin, presents an entirely different challenge. Green Bay’s local airport has only two runways, a single terminal, and twelve gates, with fewer than one million total passengers flying through its terminals each year.
Total Annual Passengers By Airport
Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW): 88 million
Los Angeles International (LAX): 75 million
Chicago O’Hare (ORD): 74 million
Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW): 31 million
Nashville International (BNA): 22 million
Austin Straubel International (GRB): 670,000
Green Bay’s airport isn’t the only logistical challenge, either. The city has fewer than 5,000 hotel rooms, compared to 120,000 in New York City and 100,000 in Los Angeles. And even if we wanted to overlook Green Bay’s small airport and limited hotel options, Lambeau Field has no public transportation. Fans often park in residential driveways on game day, and many people are wary of their ability to handle an NFL Draft crowd of 250,000, three times the size of the crowd for a Packers home game.
So, why did the NFL pick Green Bay to host its most important offseason event? Well, it’s complicated. Green Bay has been bidding on this event for a decade. The city has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in physical infrastructure to convince the NFL that it can handle the event, and the team’s 30-page proposal included everything from providing the NFL with public subsidies for free, unrestricted use of police and medical services to weather contingency plans and revenue guarantees from sponsors.