The 2023 NFL Draft Should Generate More Than $100 Million For Kansas City

Whether among city leaders or the front office of the reigning Super Bowl champions, the consensus is that the 2023 NFL Draft will be Kansas City’s biggest sporting event ever.

“No one can really think of anything that would have been bigger,” said Kathy Nelson, president and CEO of the Kansas City Sports Commission and Visit KC. “This is probably the largest sporting event and — possibly even — the largest event our city has ever hosted.”

The event, which lasts from April 27 to 29, is expected to have an economic impact on the city of more than $100 million, according to Visit KC’s calculations.

That sum would come from hotels, restaurants, merchandise, transportation and food and beverage sales. Taxes on the latter will further benefit the city.

“It’s great for Kansas City,” Chiefs head coach Andy Reid said.

The NFL predicted around 300,000 will attend the free event, which is in line with numbers for last year’s draft. Depending on weather conditions, attendance possibly could approach the record of 600,000 at Nashville, Tenn. in 2019.

Since moving from New York City and then spending two years in Chicago (2015 and 2016), the draft has become a traveling a road show. Philadelphia in 2017, Dallas in 2018, Nashville in 2019, Cleveland in 2021 and Las Vegas in 2022 have hosted it.

Nashville serves as the best recent comparison to Kansas City because Las Vegas is a very unique city, Dallas’ was centered around AT&T Stadium (Jerry World) and the country was still coming out of the pandemic for the Cleveland draft. (The 2020 draft was virtual, and commissioner Roger Goodell announced picks from his home.)

According to The Tennessean, the 2019 NFL Draft generated $132.8 million for Nashville.

The previous record was 2018 when Dallas brought in $74 million, followed by $56.1 million in direct spending in Philadelphia in 2017 and $43.9 million for Chicago in 2016.

The 2023 NFL Draft will take place at both the National World War I Museum and Memorial and Union Station in downtown Kansas City, Mo.

The draft theater and stage, where the NFL rookies will bro hug Goodell, are set up outside and in front of Union Station. The stage is covered, and there are indoor contingency plans in place in the case of very extreme weather.

The green room, where the rookies wait with their families to be to selected, will be inside of Union Station.

The lawns of the National World War I Museum and Memorial will be where fans can gather. The north lawn of the museum will have a viewing area and feature a Bud Light beer garden. The south lawn of the museum has the NFL Experience interactive exhibits, a signature attraction for this unprecedented event in the City of Fountains.

“The international reach and the global marketing of this,” Nelson said, “is unlike anything our city has ever seen.”

Kansas City, though, has the benefit of recently hosting a major event in the same area. Hundreds of thousands gathered for February’s Super Bowl LVII parade honoring the Chiefs, and that rally ended in front of Union Station.

In some ways that served as good preparation, but that one-day event was spread out along a 2.3-mile route and featured one small stage.

The NFL draft spans three days and involves a secured perimeter of 3 million square feet of space, and the physical structures entail four weeks of setup and one week of teardown.

“It’s very different,” Nelson said. “There’s nothing like the setup.”

But like the parade, the draft represents a unique opportunity for Kansas City to celebrate football and showcase its downtown.

“It’s a great city,” Reid said. “I’m mainly happy for the city and for the NFL for bringing it there.”