DETROIT – Ain’t no NFL Draft like a Detroit NFL Draft.
The 2024 NFL Draft in Detroit now holds the all-time record for attendance, previously set in Nashville in 2019, with 700,000 fans packing Downtown Detroit over three days.
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The 2019 Nashville draft recorded 600,000 fans.
Detroit had already set the Day 1 attendance record with more than 275,000 fans on Thursday night, according to NFL estimates.
The draft has been “on tour” since 2015, and will be hosted in Green Bay next spring.
The Motor City, which was once one of the nation’s largest and most powerful cities, has bounced back from filing for bankruptcy in 2013 and has made the most of an opportunity to shine.
“A special thank you to everybody here who came from across Michigan and across the United States to help Detroit set new attendance records for the NFL draft,” Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, joined by Hall of Famer Barry Sanders, said on stage before announcing the Lions had drafted Missouri cornerback Ennis Rakestraw Jr. in the second round.
The NFL draft is giving Detroit a chance to show the world how far it has come, according to Dan Gilbert, whose real-estate company, Bedrock, was among the private and public entities to land the league’s annual event.
“The city, it’s got an energy to it,” Gilbert said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I think that’s one of the reasons we’re able to convince the NFL to do the draft out here. They could feel the energy as we took them on tours here.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.