America's Talking - Economist: Hotel Data Shows Hosting NFL Draft Has Minimal Positive Effect

Episode Date: July 27, 2025

(The Center Square) – Cities that host the NFL Draft have seen small increases in hotel revenue in recent years but those gains are far smaller than what is claimed by teams, the National Football League and the marketing and tourism departments in local government have claimed. The first three cities to host the draft after it left New York saw insignificant changes in hotel stays during the event while host cities since 2019 have seen between $4 million and $6 million in hotel revenue increases due to the event, according to a new paper provided to The Center Square from economist E. Frank Stephenson from Georgia’s Berry College.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx Full story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/wisconsin/article_4bf85da5-df7a-4699-9805-eaeef0737f72.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America's Talking. I'm J.D. Davidson, a Midwest regional editor for the Center Square. You might not know it with the heat wave currently gripping a lot of the country, but it is football season. And for the national football league, it's always football season. Joining me today is John Stife, Wisconsin Reporter for the Center Square, and one of the leading reporters on publicly funded stadiums and tourism impact of those stadiums and the events that follow. That's what we're jumping into today. John recently published. an exclusive story that detailed the actual economic impact of the NFL draft as it travels the country from year to year. John, let's start there. Tell us about that report. So one of the things that happens every year is that a host city will come out with what it says is the economic impact of hosting this event. And what they want to do is say, hey, a bunch of people came here and they use an exit survey from a third-party company to do that. they ask people, well, they're there, saying, hey, you know, we're staying for three days, we're staying in a hotel, and then they put that into a formula that multiplies all the expenses

they would have over three days, the hotel stay, the food, any other entertainment. And then they say, look, this thing brought $120 million in this case into Wisconsin, was the claim about a week ago. And so academics, when they look at something like this, they look at it as an equation. And they say, well, let's compare last year when you didn't have the draft and how many people stayed in the Wisconsin hotels in the summer. You know, it's obviously a landing spot for a lot of people to go visit Wisconsin. It's beautiful in the summer. People who are county places like that.

So you compare the two things. There hadn't been academic literature about the actual traveling NFL draft until this last week. an economist in Georgia at Barry College, his name's E. Frank Stevenson. He looks at hotel data around the country and kind of analyzes it. He's been working on for more than a year looking at the NFL draft and how it's traveled since it went to Chicago in 2015 and left New York City and what that impact is on each city. And the result is, not surprisingly, that there aren't a lot of extra people that go to these cities for the actual NFL draft. It's a lot of people who drive in for the day.

They come for a couple days. They leave. And then there's actually less people in hotels the third day of the draft, the day after the draft. Two days before the draft, people that would normally come to a city don't go to that city because they're avoiding the big event. You know, it's interesting. We're not saying that there isn't an impact overall of a city having the NFL draft. And, you know, it's interesting that, you know, the NFL started to. move that draft when it sent it to Chicago, two cities that likely wouldn't get a Super Bowl

until they got a don't. So it was Cleveland. It was Pittsburgh. Vegas had it. That would be the one that I could think was maybe an outlier. There's pride in having the draft in your city. It's a neat thing. But what we're talking about is the actual economic impact. And then, John, talk a little bit about what the actual cost cities have when putting on an event like this, whether it's this or the Super Bowl or the political convention or anything like that. The costs are usually in between 10 million and 20 million, probably closer to 20 million in cost. Because a lot of the things you already have, like you have the big venue, you have spaces where you could have a bunch of people, but they go in, they build stages, they build barricades, like in Green Bay.

They did it all in the parking lots. And so they built up this whole area out there. And one of the largest expenses is the additional crowd control, the public safety, the additional cost for to have EMTs there and to have police there and to be able to do all those things. So the states will come and grant money, I think Wisconsin sent $2 million reason. recently to just those, the four law enforcement agencies, the county and the cities involved, that had extra expenses related to this. But that was just part of the cost.

It's not high costs. And what Stevenson's paper ends up saying is, you know, I'm not saying it's bad to have this or it's not a little bit beneficial. But the problem is that the conversations that occur surrounding this are not close to reality. The reality is, revenue-wise, because hotels cost more, they raise the prices, hotel companies make $4 to $6 million additional when they bring it in, most of them, except for Las Vegas, which had 20,000 less hotel rooms booked during the five-day span of the draft compared to if it wasn't there at all. Because other people that are going there for other things just don't come.

So you also wrote pieces not only about Green Bay, but specific pieces about Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and Vegas. In a short time, we have left, tell us a little bit about what those showed. So Philadelphia hosted, I believe, was 2017, and they made big claims about that there were 18,000 additional hotel rooms. the reality is that maybe 19,000 hotel rooms were booked, period. And that didn't take into account people that are usually there. And they were attributed that all to the draft, even though the pen relays were there, all these other things. The reality is it was like the same amount of hotels booked as if the draft wasn't there. And they made a little bit more money.

In Las Vegas, like a lot of the sporting events that have come to Las Vegas outside of the Super Bowl, it actually cost them in hotel rooms because people didn't come to do other things. The big one on that was the Grand Prix where they shut down the roadway and interfered with everything else. And then still, the prices went up and less people came. But it was similar with the draft. 20,000 last hotel rooms were booked during that five-day period. Why it matters is when coming up next year, Pittsburgh is going to host the draft. Same state, they're asking Pennsylvania for money.

they already have $11 million for the additional expenses, and they're going to come ask for more. One million of that came from the state, and the other come from, like, local tourism agencies, which get state money to do it. And the year after that, it's going to be on the national mall in Washington, D.C., and we've already had a press conference about how that's going to be great, and the president even saying,

oh, this is going to be the best one yet, because it's on the national mall. It's going to be more prominent than anything. we've ever seen. You know, it's a great story. And like we said at the top, we're not saying these events are bad. We just, the honest reporting that you're giving us and the honest look at publicly funded stadiums about major events and about the tourism spin that goes along with it, that's valuable information for people to make decisions on. John, thanks for joining us. And you can read more about this as well as see the entire report on the center square.com.