Green Bay officially on the clock for the 2025 NFL draft at Lambeau Field

GREEN BAY –With 345 days to go, the 2025 NFL draft in Green Bay got off to a successful, if windy, start.

Hundreds of kids and adults went to Lambeau Field on Tuesday to mark the ceremonial handoff of the event from Detroit to Green Bay, which will host the draft on April 24-26 next year.

Draft organizers have talked about how the event would constitute a yearlong advertisement for Green Bay and Wisconsin, and Tuesday's activities highlighted that. Most of the day was spent promoting the bike-able parts of eastern Wisconsin, from Milwaukee to the Fox River Trail in Brown County.

The day began with the arrival of an NFL draft football in windy, rainy Milwaukee by Lake Express Ferry from Michigan. A group of bicycle riders representing the Packers, Travel Wisconsin, Wisconsin Bike Fed, Green Bay-area bike shops and bicycle advocates, hopscotched their way up Interstate 43 with the football, riding bikes in some places and a bus in others. They left the rain in Milwaukee, but the wind stayed with them to the end.

The final trek was from De Pere, up the Fox River Trail to downtown Green Bay and back down Broadway until they wound up at Ray Nitschke practice field, where they were met by about 100 young bikers for the final couple hundred yards to the Lambeau Field Atrium.

Kids providing their bicycles to players to ride to practice during training camp is an enduring tradition in Green Bay.

"I think the bicycle tradition, which started (in) 1958 with Vince Lombardi, (is) I think the most special tradition in the NFL. It's the connection between the community and the team, and particularly the kids, and you'll see it's going to be an integral part of the draft for us," said Packers President and CEO Mark Murphy

Optimism, if not outright hyperbole, was the order of the day. "I have no doubt that the 775,000 people who attended the draft in Detroit will not be a difficult bar for Green Bay, Wisconsin, to beat," said Jeff Miller, executive vice president of the NFL and Bayside, Wis., native.

"I think this will be the best draft ever held," Murphy said.

Detroit counted a record attendance of 775,000, which is nearly three times the size of Brown County, but not quite as startling a number as it seems. The count includes all the people who passed through metal detectors into the official draft site, and people were counted every time they went through, all three days. Still, it beat the previous record by 175,000.

The Packers are forecasting a turnout of 250,000 over three days, which could be 83,000 each day, or 120,000 one day and 65,000 the next two, or the 250,000 could be low. Or high. In any case, Murphy has said it will be the biggest single event ever held in Green Bay.

"Every city has challenges. Between the league and the team and the city and the commitment that everybody's made, we'll figure that out," Miller said. "Big crowds are not that unusual for Green Bay in the fall. Now we'll just do it in April."

Speaking of commitment, draft organizers, primarily the Packers and Discover Green Bay, need $8.5 million to host the draft. They have $900,000 to go, said Gabrielle Dow, Packers vice president of marketing and fan engagement.

"We're still raising money," Dow said.

The state contributed $2 million and the Packers $1 million. A number of Green Bay's leading businesses kicked in, too, including the likes of Delaware North, Kohler Co., Miron Construction, Oneida Casino, Associated Bank, Ariens Co., Bellin Health, Belmark, Bergstrom Automotive, Festival Foods, Green Bay Packaging, Oh Snap Pickling Co. and Schneider National.

Draft organizers anticipate a $90 million economic impact statewide and $20 million in Brown County.

The Packers petitioned the NFL to host the draft almost as soon as it took the event on the road in 2015, Before that, it had been held in New York City for decades. The draft was held in Wisconsin once before, in 1939 in Milwaukee. In their bid for hosting duties, the Packers emphasized the team's ties to the history of the NFL. Eventually, that resonated with the league.

"The thing that's great about Green Bay and what a lot of us are excited about, is that it's an opportunity to really celebrate the history and culture and traditional of NFL football. What better place than here?" Miller said. "It's not too emotional to say that in many ways this is one of the birthplaces of the modern game of football and can be celebrated uniquely in Green Bay. Every city has put its own stamp on the draft."

Contact Richard Ryman at rryman@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @RichRymanPG, on Instagram at @rrymanPG or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/RichardRymanPG

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Packers' history major part of 2025 NFL draft plans at Lambeau Field