The Pittsburgh Steelers, along with various organizations and city officials, have been going through the steps to host a future NFL Draft. The bid was officially submitted in February to host either the 2026 or 2027 NFL Draft, and Art Rooney II recently said that they should know about 2026 sometime this upcoming week.
The NFL Draft is becoming a bigger and bigger draw in recent years, and part of that is the NFL’s decision to start moving the event from city to city rather than anchoring it in New York as they had for 50 years starting in 1964. The recent success in Detroit, breaking Nashville’s previous record for fans in attendance, is an exciting prospect for a smaller city like Pittsburgh.
Jenna Harner of WPXI Channel 11 Sports recently interviewed several city officials and others with knowledge of the ongoing bid, and things seem to be trending in the right direction.
“When they’re looking at Pittsburgh, they’re talking about things on such a level of detail that we wouldn’t typically expect at this stage of the bid,” said Jerad Bacher, the CEO of VisitPittsburgh.
Just reading between the lines, that makes it sound like the impending 2026 announcement this week could be awarded to the Steelers and the city of Pittsburgh. League officials were in Pittsburgh during the 2023 season to scout the area and its suitability to host the event, which includes the infrastructure of the city. The Detroit Free Press reported that Anderson Economic Group calculated the total net economic impact of 775,000 fans in attendance in Detroit, and that number came out to $165 million for the downtown area.
That type of windfall would be huge for the local Pittsburgh economy. Allegheny County Exec Rich Fitzgerald told Harner some estimates for the attendance and economic impact to the city.
“We’re estimating there’ll be over 300 to 350,000 visitors that would come to Pittsburgh, putting an economic impact anywhere from 100 million to $150 million,” said Fitzgerald. “And that’s I think being actually somewhat conservative.”
That may not seem like a huge attendance figure compared to Detroit or Nashville’s 600,000, but that would surpass Las Vegas’ 300,000 as one of the highest-attended drafts in league history. Especially when considering the population of the city of Pittsburgh is a little over 300,000, that would be quite the influx of customers who stay at local hotels and Airbnbs, dine at local restaurants, and buy local merchandise.
It would be great exposure for the city, and provide a ton of direct revenue to local businesses as well as tax revenue for the local government. Stay tuned this week for an official announcement on 2026.
