Attention turns to Detroit as the city prepares to host the 2024 NFL Draft

Feb 2, 2024

While the Detroit Lions’ historic winning season has come to an end, football mania in the city isn’t over yet. The 2024 NFL Draft takes place in Detroit April 25-27. Campus Martius and Hart Plaza will be the primary sites for NFL draft activity in the city, which will include the NFL Draft Experience, the NFL’s interactive theme park.

Hundreds of thousands of football fans are expected to visit Detroit for the draft, Visit Detroit CEO Claude Molinari said. During the 2022 NFL Draft in Las Vegas, more than 300,000 fans attended events in the city and NFL draft coverage was seen by 10 million viewers, a Ford Field press release said. With a handful of other NFL cities close to Detroit, Molinari expects attendance in the city to meet or exceed previous years.

RELATED: Detroit Lions superfans share excitement for the team’s historic winning season

Visit Detroit is also offering “On the Clock” tours through April. The tours include 10 stops across seven of Detroit’s neighborhoods in an effort to boost excitement around the city’s neighborhoods leading up to draft day.

One Detroit contributor Stephen Henderson, host of “American Black Journal,” sat down with Molinari at the 2024 Detroit Policy Conference to talk about how the city plans to host one of the largest events it has undertaken recently. Plus, they talk about how tourism, city amenities and outsiders’ perception of Detroit have changed over the last decade, as well as what impact the draft will have on suburban counties like Oakland and Macomb.

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