PHOTO: Courtesy of WLUK
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — The countdown clock to the start of the 2025 NFL Draft in Green Bay is ticking louder now that the Super Bowl is done; and that means planning for the event reaches a new level.
As a three-day record of 775,000 people descended on Detroit for last year’s NFL Draft, local organizers and NFL officials say planning for the big event would ramp up at this time.
“The intensity builds because of the timing of it,” said Jon Barker, NFL Senior VP of Global Event Operations and Production.
Barker oversees the production of tentpole events and international games for the NFL. This is his seventh draft and says the process is a lot like building a house. A lot of layers will be added in the next few weeks.
“We bring in our sponsorship department, we bring in our marketing department, we bring in our broadcast department, we bring in our entertainment guys, we bring in our presentation guys, and we start to build the next layer of this thing,” said Barker. “It just so happens that starts in the end of February.”
Now that we’ve reached this point in planning, both Green Bay-based organizers and the NFL feel good about where things are at.
“We’ve never hosted one before, so we don’t really know where we’re supposed to be,” said Brad Toll, president and CEO of Discover Green Bay. “We were talking with the NFL, they felt we were probably 60 days ahead of where they’d normally be at this point, so I think that’s a good thing.”
We’ve known throughout the process the draft campus will be centered around Lambeau Field.
The Titletown District will be the site of the NFL Experience – an interactive area where fans can test their football skills, check out Super Bowl rings and trophies, and enjoy player appearances.
In June, it was announced that the stage is planned to be located on Oneida Street, facing the stadium.
“The reason that we wanted to face Lambeau Field is because when you shoot into the theatre, you’re shooting the stage and the backdrop, but the shot you want is that turnaround, so when you’re shooting out from the stage and back over the crowd, what I really wanted to see Lambeau Field,” said Barker. “I wanted to make sure the hero shot had the hero in it and the hero is Lambeau Field. “
Organizers say the campus layout won’t see any major changes moving forward.
“We expect all those things are going to continue to be planned that way and I think once we get to early and mid March, more of that information will be really finalized, so we’ll see what that looks like in its final form,” said Aaron Popkey, director of public affairs for the Packers.
Popkey said the stage will resemble the one from when Kansas City hosted the draft two years ago. That stage was inside more of a rectangular theatre compared to last year’s in Detroit – which had more of a dome look.
“I’ve likened Detroit’s stage to about half the size of the Resch Center,” said Ashwaubenon Village Manager Joel Gregozeski. “So, if you take kind of the roof line of the Resch Center, cut it in half, and drop it down, that’s kind of the size of the overall stage. What we’re being told is this year’s stage is going to be larger than Detroit’s.”
It helps Green Bay’s draft campus is expected to be about double the square footage of Detroit’s.
“You were in Detroit, you saw some of those challenges that downtown area presented for both public safety but then the people that were attending as well,” said Green Bay Police Captain Ben Allen. “I don’t think we have as many of those challenges with our space.”
Entrances to the campus are expected to be on the west end, near Titletown and Ridge Road.
“The nice ingress to the campus will be smooth and spread out,” said Popkey.
The perimeter of each draft campus is fenced, draped with marketing to prevent people from seeing in or out. While Lombardi Avenue will be shut down, there will be a walkway for people outside of the fence-line to get to the campus gates without going into the residential neighborhood.
“Really the perimeter, stage location, entries, those things are pretty set in stone,” said Barker. “It’s the inside of probably of the fence line we might tweak a little bit, but I wouldn’t see any big changes coming.”
Local organizers say the finer details for the campus layout should be finalized in early to mid-March.
The same goes for road closures before, during, and after the draft, as well as getting here and around the area the week of the draft.
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