Could The NFL Draft Return to Cleveland Sooner Than Expected?

Speaking at the Greater Cleveland Sports Awards this week, President of the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission David Griffin shared that the city is hoping to bring the NFL Draft back to Cleveland sooner rather than later

The city of Cleveland has proven to be plenty capable of hosting some of the nation's biggest events. Big ticket items like the RNC, the MLB and NBA All-Star Games and the NFL Draft all passed through Northeast Ohio with rave reviews.  

As far as the latter of those is concerned though, Cleveland didn't quite get what it signed up for. When the draft made its way to the lakefront in 2021 the world was still living with the realities of a global pandemic. Covid restrictions forced the event to become much smaller in scale, with sectioned off areas for fans and vaccination requirements in place the city fell well short of its expected revenue for the weekend.

That could pave the way for Cleveland to host the event again sooner than anyone would have expected. On Tuesday night, the president of the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission David Griffin joined 92.3 The Fan's Overtime with Jonathan Peterlin and discussed the possibility at the Greater Cleveland Sports Awards. According to Griffin, they've already had discussions with the NFL about bringing the Draft back to Cleveland.

"We've asked the NFL directly, because of when the draft was in 2021 and because of Covid we probably had a third of the fans we expected to have based on past drafts," Griffin explained. "It was great it happened but impact wise, it meant about $42 million in direct spending and it would have been well over $100 million. So we've [said to] the NFL directly, we didn't get what we hoped for and I think that will play well in future discussion in trying to get the draft back here sooner rather than later." 

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Griffin didn't elaborate on exactly how soon the league could consider rewarding the draft to the city of Cleveland again. At the very least though it sounds like Griffin and the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission are leading the charge to bring one of the NFL's premier events back into town. 

Hopefully next time, Browns fans and members of other fan bases that attend the event can enjoy the full NFL Draft experience.