Earlier this week, the National Football League announced the locations for a couple of future NFL Drafts, and though we know that the Minneapolis/St. Paul area sent a delegation to Nashville to explore the possibility of holding it in the Twin Cities, it likely isn’t going to happen until 2024 at the earliest.
The league has announced that the 2021 NFL Draft will be held in Cleveland, while the 2023 NFL Draft will be hosted by Kansas City. The location for the 2022 NFL Draft has not yet been determined, but Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network shared this tidbit about that year’s selection meeting.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announces that the #Browns and Cleveland will host the 2021 draft and Kansas City will host the 2023 draft. Expect a big city to host the draft in 2022, and obviously Las Vegas hosts next year.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) May 22, 2019
I’m relatively certain that by “expect a big city to host the draft in 2022,” what they really mean is, “We’d really, really, really, really, really, really like to do this at the new stadium complex in Los Angeles, but we want to make sure that they can handle it.” With the 2020 Draft already slated for Las Vegas, we now know where three of the next four NFL Drafts will be held.
In any event, I’m not sure if the Twin Cities qualify as the sort of “big city” that the league would want for 2022 if that is, indeed, the direction they’re trending in. If that’s the case, the Twin Cities won’t be hosting the NFL Draft until 2024 at the earliest. So, if Minnesota Vikings fans want to take in the Draft live, they’re going to have to start looking at travel reservations.
I do think that the Twin Cities will be hosting the NFL Draft in either 2024 or 2025. Given the success they had with hosting the Super Bowl, it would be kind of foolish of the NFL to not bring their second-biggest event to the area, in my opinion. The locations for those two drafts likely won’t be announced any time soon, though, so all we can do until then is speculate.