NFL Draft successes: Attendance more than doubled expectations, only 1 arrest reported

GREEN BAY, Wis. (CBS 58) – As people in Green Bay reflect on the past week and months of preparations that went into welcoming the NFL draft to town, some of the initial reports show positive signs for the league’s smallest market.

Packers' president/CEO Mark Murphy said last week the forecast was for a total attendance of 250,000 for all three days. NFL officials announced Saturday that the total attendance ended up at 600,000, more than doubling that forecast.

“That’s actually insane it was able to hold that many people, I did not know that many people were going to come,” said Kaitlin Boettcher, a manager at Stadium View Sports Bar. "It was a lot of work, but it was honestly worth it.”

Of those people who made their way to Green Bay, one of them was not Cem Vurusaner. He’s a lifelong Packers fan who had to work all weekend but made a point to visit Green Bay on Sunday as crews were taking down stages and signs.

“You don’t get this all the time, and you don’t know if it’s going to be back again,” Vurusaner said. “I don’t wanna miss something like this. Even if it’s done, I just wanna see what it was.”

The total attendance is measured by adding the crowd sizes for each of the draft’s three days, so a person who attended all three days would be counted three separate times.

Green Bay couldn’t match the record announced attendance of over 775,000 for last year’s draft in Detroit, but it matched the second-highest total since the NFL moved the draft out of New York and started sending it to various locations in 2015. The 2019 draft in Nashville, Tenn. also had a reported total attendance of 600,000.

People in Green Bay were also thankful the weekend turned out to be a safe one. According to the Green Bay Police Department, they made one arrest and eight ejections.

“We had a lot of security here too, so it was overall pretty safe.” Boettcher said.

The NFL Draft is set to be in Pittsburgh next year.