GREEN BAY, Wis. — On a recent Thursday morning, a construction crew was busy working on a corner of Lambeau Field while cars moved in and out of a parking lot. Many of them belonging to Green Bay Packers employees.
Outside the Oneida Nation Gate Packers, Director of Public Affairs Aaron Popkey explained how this part of the stadium property could be transformed for the 2025 NFL Draft.
“The Green Bay Packers expect this area to be electric a year from now,” he said. “Beginning in late March or early April as the NFL comes in and starts setting up the draft theater.”
Exactly what the layout will look like is unknown, but it’s expected to use Lambeau Field and the adjoining Resch Complex area and on the other side of the stadium, the Titletown district.
The NFL will determine where the draft theater is located.
“They’ll ultimately decide where it goes, but we know it’s going to be here on campus. Our sense is that it’s going to be outside the stadium,” Popkey said. “That build out begins 20 or 30 days prior to the draft. We know we’ll be busy in late March through the whole month of April.”
Green Bay will host the draft April 24-26, 2025. It’s the culmination of years of preparation and bids to bring the event to Wisconsin.
Nick Meisner of Discover Green Bay said planners are still processing what they saw and learned at the recent draft in Detroit.
“It’s not the start of the planning by any means, visiting Detroit and seeing that. The team has been working on this for years and years,” he said. “We’ve been planning for a while now, especially since the announcement was made.”
The event is expected to have a regional impact beyond the Green Bay metro area.
“We see it for home games. People staying in the Fox Cities and Milwaukee and Door County,” Meisner said. “You look at large events that have been helped in the region recently, like the Ryder Cup. We had full hotel rooms for the Ryder Cup up here in Green Bay. They had full hotel rooms down in Milwaukee. We anticipate those shoulder regions to feel the impact of the NFL Draft.”
Popkey said the Packers’ planning team has had inside access to the past few drafts. That includes Detroit this year where the NFL says more than 750,000 people attended.
“We’re not sure what the number is going to be. We know it’s going to be a tremendous number and the largest event the area has hosted,” he said. “From that standpoint, it will be a record. It’s just a matter of how many people show up. No matter the number, we’ll be ready for them.”