GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – To navigate the thousands of people who will inevitably make the trip to Green Bay next year for the 2025 NFL Draft, NFL staff will be hiring local community members to help the event run smoothly.
“The program they use to hire folks for the draft is called the Teammate program, they are all paid positions and there will be an application process through the NFL eventually once they get to that point in the process of planning,” says Nick Meisner with Discover Green Bay.
Meisner and his team expect the Teammate program and applications to open at the end of this year or early 2025.
While the available positions haven’t yet been announced, FOX 11 spoke with Detroit leaders about what the NFL is looking for.
“A lot of it was human arrows, as far as directing people, signage, ticket taking, bringing people into the event,” says Claude Molinari, the President and CEO of Visit Detroit. Molinari was also chair of the draft organizing committee for the 2024 draft.
“From runners and people making sure there’s relief and water for the employees to people scanning NFL one passes to get into the venue and everything in between,” he adds.
FOX 11 found the Teammate job listings from the 2024 draft, and there were both on-site and behind-the-scenes jobs available. That list of jobs and their descriptions can be found here.
But with the draft still around 280 days away, it’s still not yet clear just how many of these positions will need to be filled.
“Every footprint, every draft is a little different and the needs are a little different. That’s because they really try to feature the city, the community,” says Meisner. “You can go to multiple drafts in a row nothing is set up exactly the same every single time. So, with a grain of salt we know it is around 1,800 people they’re looking to hire, that number could go up or down depending on the final footprint, where entrances are, security needs, and all these various things we are not quite sure of yet but that’s the number we hear they’re going to be targeting.”
Visit Detroit’s Molinari tells FOX 11 that around 1,200 people were hired by the NFL to work the 2024 draft, and 70% of them were directly from Detroit.
He says workers were paid a living wage, and work lasted for around a month; before, during, and after the draft.
Those workers, he adds, played a major role in the more than $200M economic impact the draft had on the city.
“Of that $213 million, $160 million came from people who traveled from over 100 miles away for Detroit and those are the people who were really impacted by our Teammates being such great ambassadors for the region and helping those people out,” Molinari says.
Now, it’s Green Bay’s turn.
“The draft is going to be a showcase of the greater Green Bay community and really Wisconsin as a whole because, you know, unless you’re swimming or coming by boat, you’re driving through the state to get to Green Bay, so we’re really excited to showcase our state, our community, and local people on the ground just highlight that experience and make it even better when people from outside the area can engage with locals and really find out about things that make Green Bay unique.”
“Embrace the event. It’s going to be worth it,” Molinari adds.
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