Detroit Lions hope to be ‘serious contenders’ to host 2024 NFL Draft

Ever since Detroit Lions team president Rod Wood was hired to be the franchise’s team president, he’s been trying to bring the NFL Draft to the city of Detroit. The NFL started rotating host cities for the draft in 2014 after a long stint at Radio City Music Hall in New York with stops in Chicago, Philadelphia, Arlington, and Nashville. Wood took over as team president in 2015.

Detroit’s first bid to hold the NFL Draft was turned down three years ago when the league decided to hold the 2020 and 2021 drafts in Las Vegas and Cleveland, respectively (obviously, the Las Vegas draft was canceled last year). Detroit’s pitch was denied, in part because of a conflict in schedule, according to Wood.

But the Lions are prepared to make another pitch for the next set of draft sites.

“We’re hoping to be a serious contender for the 2024 Draft,” Wood told reporters this week. “We’re still in the mix for that, and hopefully we can bring that to Detroit, and by then everything is fully reopened and we can have hundreds of thousands of people downtown enjoying the Draft in Detroit.”

Previously, the Lions had pitched to the league the use of the FOX Theater as a host site for the draft, but it’s unclear if that’s still part of the team’s plans.

For now, the earliest the Lions could potentially host an NFL Draft is in the year 2024. The next three host sites have already been determined: Cleveland (2021), Las Vegas (2022), and Kansas City (2023).