GREEN BAY, Wis. — Bringing the NFL draft to the league's smallest market was supposed to mean a smaller crowd.
Green Bay Packers fans had other ideas.
Packers president/CEO Mark Murphy said last week the forecast was for a total attendance of 250,000 for all three days. NFL officials announced Saturday that the total attendance ended up at 600,000, more than doubling that forecast.
''Green Bay is kind of that destination where everybody wants to come and see Lambeau Field,'' Steven Chowanec of Osseo, Wisconsin, said Saturday as he waited for the final four rounds to begin.
The total attendance is measured by adding the crowd sizes for each of the draft's three days, so a person who attended all three days would be counted three separate times.
Green Bay couldn't match the record announced attendance of over 775,000 for last year's draft in Detroit, but it matched the second-highest total since the NFL moved the draft out of New York and started sending it to various locations in 2015. The 2019 draft in Nashville, Tennessee, also had a reported total attendance of 600,000.
The first round of the draft on Thursday drew a reported 205,000. League officials said another 175,000 fans came Friday night for the second and third rounds, even though it had rained for much of the afternoon. The estimated crowd was 220,000 for the final four rounds on a picture-perfect Saturday, many of them staying all the way until the end and then sticking around for a Brad Paisley concert.
That three-day total is particularly notable considering Green Bay's size. The city's population is under 110,000, though the entire metro area includes about 320,000 people.
