5-year plan: NFL, Las Vegas made the most of draft delay

By Case Keefer (contact)

Thursday, April 28, 2022 | 2 a.m.

Eric Finkelstein, the NFL’s senior director of event operations, remembers not being sure what to expect the first time he sat down with local officials to discuss bringing the NFL Draft to Las Vegas.

It was five years ago, months after the league’s owners approved the Raiders’ move from Oakland to Las Vegas and right as the NFL began traveling with the draft and raising its status as a spectator event. So Finkelstein, who’s worked on the draft for the past 23 years, and his team dreamt up what they felt were some wild visions that they were a little nervous about presenting.

“We started talking about, ‘Hey, we want to build this massive structure and take over and shut Las Vegas Boulevard down,” Finkelstein reminisced a couple weeks ago. “They were like, ‘OK.’ We’re sitting there like, ‘Wait a minute. In most cities, this takes a lot more effort.’”

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell pledged the league would break with its longstanding ban on Las Vegas and instead embrace the city by bringing all its biggest events to Southern Nevada once the Raiders relocated. Local executives like Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Authority CEO/President Steve Hill responded by welcoming them all and vowing to set a new standard for everything the destination could host.

Both sides uphold their end of the promise starting today when the 2022 NFL Draft begins on a parcel of more than a million square feet between Caesars Forum and the Bellagio. Gates to the NFL Draft Experience open at noon, the same time Goodell, Hill and Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak will kick off the celebration by welcoming fans in an event at the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo Road. The first pick, barring a late trade, belongs to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Goodell will announce their selection no more than 10 minutes after the draft officially begins at 5 p.m.

Las Vegas got a taste of the NFL taking over the town in February with the Pro Bowl, but the draft is on another level with its free-to-enter status, making it the league’s most-attended event annually. The Super Bowl is next in line in Las Vegas’ NFL parade, scheduled for Feb. 11, 2024, at Allegiant Stadium.

“We’ll take them all,” Raiders general manager Dave Ziegler said. “Vegas is a city built for that. So we’re just excited to have the draft here. It’s good for the city.”

And it’s a long time coming. The NFL has never worked on a draft for five years like it has the one in Las Vegas.

That wasn’t by design, of course, but rather a consequence of the COVID-19 lockdown scrapping plans to hold the draft here in 2020. Planning had already started for the 2021 draft in Cleveland, so Las Vegas landed this year’s as a replacement.

The delay seemed devastating at first after so many hours had been put in with the 2020 plans, but both Finkelstein and Hill say it eventually turned into a benefit.

“The actual plans are about the same as they were in 2020,” Finkelstein said. “But what it gave us is the time to take a step back and think, ‘Is everything exactly where we want it to be?’ So, it was more refinement and working closely with the local officials to dial in the plans we were already envisioning to do and evolving them.”

Caesars Entertainment, the draft’s official host, might have done the most with unforeseen extra time. Sean McBurney, Caesars regional president, said the company focused on having new “experiences” like restaurants and shows open in time for this year’s draft.

The NFL’s production at the main theater outside the Caesars Forum convention space is also more amplified now than it would have been two years ago, though it’s keeping some of the specifics secret until draft time.

“We’re going to have more entertainment than we’ve ever had before at any other draft across the three days,” Finkelstein said. “Las Vegas acts, magicians, acrobats, all different types in addition to musical performances. It’s a sheer spectacle that we’re creating here.”

The start of the NFL’s current push to take the draft outdoors and make it a party with hundreds of thousands of fans started in 2017 in Philadelphia when it built the main stage at the famed Rocky steps. Talks for Las Vegas’ turn to host started months later.

Hill and his team have attended every draft ever since in preparation. They got a sense for the basic logistics in 2018 at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The 2019 draft was held in Nashville, which Hill called “the most similar site” they studied.

Nashville attracted a record 600,000 total attendees over three days, but there were aspects Las Vegas planners witnessed that they wanted to do differently. Namely, the Draft Experience, which is part interactive theme park and part museum, was several blocks away from the main stage. It won’t be that way in Las Vegas, as both attractions are right next to each other spread across the outside of Caesars Forum and the Linq Experience parking lot.

The 2021 draft in Cleveland provided a refresher and an update on how everything ran with COVID-19 restrictions still in place after the NFL was forced to be conduct its 2021 draft virtually.

“They all were a little different and we learned something from each of them,” Hill said of past draft sites. “But Las Vegas is going to be a different experience than you can get in any other city.”

According to Hull, most attendees at other sites were local or regional: They drove in to see the spectacle. That won’t be the case in Las Vegas, which could attract as many as 300,000 visitors who are traveling from all over the country.

Having more than 100,000 hotel rooms within a short walking distance is another Las Vegas-specific bonus that has made the NFL so eager to bring its events to the area. Organizers are confident the draft would have been a success in 2020, but they’re even more certain of it after two years of extra lead time.

“It’s going to be even better than I think it would have been in 2020,” Hill said. “After what everybody has been through for a couple years, just the delayed gratification of being able to do it with the pandemic behind us is even more special.”

Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or