Tracy Bell, a woman “born and raised in Southern California,” said she’d been to Pittsburgh nine times prior to the 2026 NFL Draft.
Bell, 41, of Long Beach, Ca., is a die-hard Steeler fan — and that dedication extends to the team’s home city, too, she said. So when she had the opportunity to make her 10th cross-country excursion for this year’s draft, Bell said it wasn’t a hard choice to make.
“This is history right here,” Bell said. “This is definitely history, and plus this is my first [NFL] draft. So why not spend it in the ‘Burgh?”
Bell and the hundreds of thousands of other football fans who flocked to Pittsburgh for the draft seemed, for the most part, blown away by the city’s sights. It was hard walking around the drafts’ footprint Saturday to find anyone not having a blast, even in spite of the day’s breaks of light rain.
“Pittsburgh is a city that’s gonna make it happen — rain, sleet, [or] snow,” Bell said. “To me, if it ain’t raining, it ain’t Pittsburgh.”
The NFL’s attendance numbers seem to back that sentiment up: Pittsburgh broke both the single-day and overall draft attendance record, accruing 320,000 people on the first day of the draft and 805,000 over the course of the entire event.
And city and other government officials had hoped for such circumstance, dumping about $19 million in public funds toward preparation efforts. The state, on behalf of Gov. Josh Shapiro, sent around $60 million to revitalize Downtown; that money, in part, went to renovating Market Square and building the new Arts Landing park in the Cultural District.
Locals attending the draft took notice of the city’s upgrades.
“I think the city was in much need of improvement,” Leslie Rivers, 50, of Green Tree, said, “and so if this kind of lit the fire to do it, I think it’s a positive … I think we set the bar.”
The event itself had a massive footprint, taking over just about all of Point State Park and Market Square. The North Shore, where the actual draft took place, was packed. Free Gateway Clipper ships ferried attendees to and from the event areas. The ferries also traveled to a parking area in Station Square.
Over the course of the three-day event, there were plenty of activities for guests of the draft.
A makeshift combine was assembled in Point State Park encouraging guests to try their throwing arms and 40-yard dashes. Concerts — namely one from Pittsburgh-native Wiz Khalifa — entertained those in-between draft picks.
Many county fair-style vendors cropped up around the city, too.
On top of all that, there were apparently no arrests made by city police within the footprint of the draft, according to the Tribune-Review. Eight people were arrested Downtown; Point Park police said there were no incidents within their patrol area.
Local businesses, though, said they didn’t make out so well.
Many took to social media to air their frustrations with low sales and patronage. Some even offered directions from the site of the draft to their respective businesses in hopes of reeling some visitors in.
The story was more or less the same on Wood Street at PGH Candle and The Silly Goose, two new businesses that opened up in the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership’s [PDP] surge to fill empty storefronts through its “Project Pop-Up” initiative.
Alex Page, co-owner of PGH Candle, said the vendor wasn’t expecting “a million people walking through [it’s] door.”
“We heard all the numbers that were thrown around about the extra people in town,”
Page said, “but I think we limited our expectations as to the people that were actually gonna walk through our door.”
The candle-making shop did see a boost in sales by the time the weekend rolled around, but Monday and Tuesday were “extra dead,” Page said.
“I think we probably made a little bit of extra money,” he added.
At The Silly Goose — a Jim Thorpe-based gift shop that expanded Downtown last month — store manager Cassy Weir said sales for the week of the draft were “a little bit of a disappointment.”
“We were kind of expecting more, considering that’s why [the PDP] wanted us here to begin with,” Weir said, “But I mean, we’re not really totally complaining because it still gave us the opportunity to spread the silly through Pittsburgh and gave us a reason to be here in general. And we’ll be around for at least a year now after the draft.”
The NFL draft moves next year to Washington, D.C., where city officials there are apparently already sourcing some area businesses to help get the festivities going.
As for Pittsburgh, another big event, the annual Pittsburgh Marathon, is set to run this Sunday, May 3.
