Behind the scenes of Pittsburgh’s pitch for the NFL Draft

PITTSBURGH — WPXI is taking you behind the curtain of what the NFL Draft would look like if Pittsburgh is awarded the bid to host.

The city sent a proposal to the NFL to host the draft in either 2026 or 2027.

Channel 11 Sports Anchor Jenna Harner talked to several city officials over the last two weeks to find out what the draft would look like, including where the stage and other activities would be.

“Well, keeping in mind that the stage, the backdrop is downtown,” VisitPittsburgh President and CEO Jerad Bachar said. “So the visibility of downtown has to be very quite apparent. So the front of the stage where the viewers will be looking into at the front of the stage would be facing downtown because then you would have a camera that would be in and around the stage that would be looking this way. So as the as the recruits and so forth are coming out so you could see the stage being located just on this side of Acrisure Stadium facing the downtown area.”

The weekend-long event could bring a major economic boost to the city.

“We estimated the economic impact to be anywhere from $100 to $150 million. I think last year it was about $165 million in Kansas City that they estimated and we could even exceed that,” Rich Fitzgerald said.

The NFL is expected to make a decision on the 2026 and 2027 host cities at their Spring League meetings from May 20 through May 22.

The official announcement could come by the beginning of June.

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