The Green Bay Packers have been talking about hosting the NFL Draft for years now. And, it would seem they haven’t been given serious consideration for the same number of years, but that could be changing.
Packers president Mark Murphy says Green Bay is being considered to host the 2019 NFL Draft.
Talked with #Packers President Mark Murphy about hosting the draft. They're in the mix for '19, after not making final list for '17 or '18
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) May 24, 2016
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard this and we’re going to take it with a grain of salt.
Being considered is not the same as being a finalist or actually being named the host city.
Green Bay presents a litany of obstacles to hosting such a large-scale event, most notably, lack of public space and not enough hotel rooms. The Packers are banking on the Titletown District, the area they are developing next to Lamabeau Field, to remedy part of that.
They’re also banking on the nostalgia factor. The year 2019 will be the Packers’ 100th year of existence.
The Titletown District with feature accommodations, retail, restaurants and so forth, along with a 10-acre public plaza/park.
Unfortunately, that space is still nowhere near the amount of public space that Chicago offered up to host the 2015 and 2016 NFL Drafts. The draft took up 45 acres of public space in the Windy City.
The draft isn’t an event on the scale of the Super Bowl, which Green Bay has zero chance of hosting, but it still requires big-city infrastructure. The Packers may be trying to drag the city of Green Bay in that direction, but it seems unlikely they’ll get there by 2019.
So ultimately, the Packers’ bid comes down to the fact that they’ve been around for 100 years and maybe the league should do something nice for them.
2019 would be 100 years for us. Maybe that gives us the edge.