The NFL draft has become the league’s showcase offseason event. Not only is the annual player selection meeting now a primetime program, but hosting the draft has become a prize for teams throughout the league. Pittsburgh wants to be the next city added to the list of NFL draft sites.
The Steelers have submitted an official request to the league for hosting the three-day event, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The Steel City is hoping to be awarded either the 2026 or 2027 draft. City officials said the event would not be held inside Acrisure Stadium but in an area that could accommodate hundreds of thousands, likely on Pittsburgh’s North Shore. In 2019, Nashville drew 600,000 visitors for the draft.
Hosting the draft isn’t just about bragging rights and standing out from the league’s 31 other teams. The three-day event brings a significant economic benefit to the host city. The Kansas City metropolitan area derived a $164 million impact from hundreds of thousands of visitors in 2023, according to the KC Sports Commission. Detroit will host the 2024 draft, followed by Green Bay in 2025.
Those cities join Chicago, Philadelphia, Arlington (Texas), Nashville, Cleveland, Las Vegas, and Kansas City as host sites for the draft since the NFL decided to take the event out of New York City and rotate it throughout the league.