{"id":7121,"date":"2020-02-12T17:06:17","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T22:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ceros.com\/inspire\/?p=7121"},"modified":"2021-03-10T11:46:46","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T16:46:46","slug":"nfl-draft-audience-experience-las-vegas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ceros.com\/inspire\/originals\/nfl-draft-audience-experience-las-vegas\/","title":{"rendered":"How the NFL Draft Went from Being an Event to Being an Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 4<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

The NFL Draft should be relatively a straightforward event. Teams take turns selecting new players, just like in gym class kickball. It goes like this: deliberation, announcement, handshake, photo op, repeat. There\u2019s really not that much to it, and so in the beginning, there was never really a need for fans to follow along live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that\u2019s changed. For the past 40 years, the Draft has been must-watch TV for football fans. Now, the NFL is flipping the notion of a straightforward draft on its head again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, the NFL Draft isn\u2019t something you merely watch\u2014it\u2019s something you experience<\/em>. Ideally, for three days. By thinking outside the box, the NFL has built a free, three-day football-palooza that\u2019s unique to the year\u2019s host city and welcomes hundreds of thousands of football fans every year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is how they got here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For 50 years, from 1965 to 2014, the National Football League hosted its annual draft in New York hotel ballrooms, or the 5,000-seat Theater at Madison Square Garden, or Radio City Music Hall. In its early years, the Draft occurred on a weekday with very little media coverage. But in 1980, the League and ESPN partnered to televise the event, beginning a process that transformed the event from little more than an owner\u2019s meeting into primetime viewing for millions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, the NFL set its sights higher. In 2015, following almost 40 years of a consistent formula, it left the comfort of New York to host its draft outdoors, a free event open to the public in Chicago\u2019s Grant Park. Attendance skyrocketed\u2014instead of roughly 6,000 people crammed into Radio City each night, over 225,000 lined the sprawling greens of Grant Park over the course of a weekend. That\u2019s almost a 40x improvement in a single year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With attendance and revenues growing year over year, the NFL kept their good thing going\u2014to Philadelphia, then Dallas, then Nashville. Last year, the Draft smashed the attendance record set in Philly (250K) when over 600,000 people<\/a> descended upon Nashville\u2019s Lower Broadway over three days to celebrate all things football.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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