9 hours ago
In 2028, it will have been 10 years since U.S. Bank Stadium hosted Super Bowl LII. The Vikings are hoping to bring another major event to the stadium a decade after the Super Bowl.
The team and Minnesota Sports and Events submitted a bid for the 2028 NFL draft earlier this month. Minneapolis-St. Paul is one of several NFL markets bidding for the draft, which could bring hundreds of thousands of visitors to the area during the three-day event in late April.
Lester Bagley, the Vikings’ executive vice president of public affairs, said the team has been trying to bring the draft to the Twin Cities since 2019. The 2028 bid would feature U.S. Bank Stadium as the “anchor” of the draft weekend in downtown Minneapolis, Bagley said. The draft proposal would feature events in both cities, as well as the Mall of America and the Viking Lakes development around the team’s Eagan headquarters, MSE executive vice president of business development and tourism Matt Meunier said.
The late-April date for the draft could mean a dicey weather forecast for outdoor events in Minnesota, but Meunier pointed to recent NFL drafts in Green Bay, Detroit and Kansas City as evidence the possibility of a cold Midwestern weekend wouldn’t scare off draft visitors.
“The league definitely wants us to lean into U.S. Bank Stadium, so we proposed options,” Meunier said. “We can turn to similar markets, similar climates that have hosted outdoors. Obviously, Green Bay’s was very successful last year. So, the exact location of a lot of those sites is still to be determined.”
This year’s draft is April 23-25 in Pittsburgh.
Meunier said the 2024 NFL draft brought fans from all 50 states and 20 countries to Detroit, delivering an estimated $213 million of economic impact to the area as 775,000 fans attended the draft over three days. Last year’s draft in Green Bay brought $104 million of economic impact to the area, Meunier said, with 600,000 fans attending.
The committee would not share details about fundraising requirements for the bid because the market is still in competition to land the draft, but Wendy Blackshaw, MSE’s president and CEO, said the draft “will need to be funded primarily through corporate support,” adding the committee has contacted business leaders throughout the state asking for financial support.
Ecolab President and CEO Christophe Beck, U.S. Bank President and CEO Gunjan Kedia, and Medtronic Chairman and CEO Jeff Martha are all honorary co-chairs of the committee, as is Vikings co-owner Mark Wilf.
If the NFL doesn’t pick the Twin Cities for the 2028 draft, the leaders behind the bid would continue to petition for future drafts.
“In talking to other draft cities that have hosted, often times it does take multiple attempts to secure future drafts,” Meunier said. “And so certainly if 2028 doesn’t work out, we would need to pivot to a future year. We’d try to figure out what is the earliest available year, because we do want to bring this event to our community. It would be a massive, massive impact. So, we’re focused on ‘28 now, and we’ll just wait until the league tells us otherwise.”
After hosting the Super Bowl in 2018, U.S. Bank Stadium was the site of the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four in 2019 and has had events like the X Games and NCAA Division I wrestling championships, with WWE’s SummerSlam event scheduled for early August 2026 at the stadium. But a bid for the 2020 CFP national championship game fell short, and Blackshaw said MSE is the only sports commission of its kind in the country without a permanent funding model for major events.
“It puts us, frankly, at a significant disadvantage when we are bidding on these major events,” she said.
The NFL has typically announced draft sites in early May, so the 2028 announcement could come within the next several weeks.
STRIB
The team and Minnesota Sports and Events submitted a bid for the 2028 NFL draft earlier this month. Minneapolis-St. Paul is one of several NFL markets bidding for the draft, which could bring hundreds of thousands of visitors to the area during the three-day event in late April.
Lester Bagley, the Vikings’ executive vice president of public affairs, said the team has been trying to bring the draft to the Twin Cities since 2019. The 2028 bid would feature U.S. Bank Stadium as the “anchor” of the draft weekend in downtown Minneapolis, Bagley said. The draft proposal would feature events in both cities, as well as the Mall of America and the Viking Lakes development around the team’s Eagan headquarters, MSE executive vice president of business development and tourism Matt Meunier said.
The late-April date for the draft could mean a dicey weather forecast for outdoor events in Minnesota, but Meunier pointed to recent NFL drafts in Green Bay, Detroit and Kansas City as evidence the possibility of a cold Midwestern weekend wouldn’t scare off draft visitors.
“The league definitely wants us to lean into U.S. Bank Stadium, so we proposed options,” Meunier said. “We can turn to similar markets, similar climates that have hosted outdoors. Obviously, Green Bay’s was very successful last year. So, the exact location of a lot of those sites is still to be determined.”
This year’s draft is April 23-25 in Pittsburgh.
Meunier said the 2024 NFL draft brought fans from all 50 states and 20 countries to Detroit, delivering an estimated $213 million of economic impact to the area as 775,000 fans attended the draft over three days. Last year’s draft in Green Bay brought $104 million of economic impact to the area, Meunier said, with 600,000 fans attending.
The committee would not share details about fundraising requirements for the bid because the market is still in competition to land the draft, but Wendy Blackshaw, MSE’s president and CEO, said the draft “will need to be funded primarily through corporate support,” adding the committee has contacted business leaders throughout the state asking for financial support.
Ecolab President and CEO Christophe Beck, U.S. Bank President and CEO Gunjan Kedia, and Medtronic Chairman and CEO Jeff Martha are all honorary co-chairs of the committee, as is Vikings co-owner Mark Wilf.
If the NFL doesn’t pick the Twin Cities for the 2028 draft, the leaders behind the bid would continue to petition for future drafts.
“In talking to other draft cities that have hosted, often times it does take multiple attempts to secure future drafts,” Meunier said. “And so certainly if 2028 doesn’t work out, we would need to pivot to a future year. We’d try to figure out what is the earliest available year, because we do want to bring this event to our community. It would be a massive, massive impact. So, we’re focused on ‘28 now, and we’ll just wait until the league tells us otherwise.”
After hosting the Super Bowl in 2018, U.S. Bank Stadium was the site of the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four in 2019 and has had events like the X Games and NCAA Division I wrestling championships, with WWE’s SummerSlam event scheduled for early August 2026 at the stadium. But a bid for the 2020 CFP national championship game fell short, and Blackshaw said MSE is the only sports commission of its kind in the country without a permanent funding model for major events.
“It puts us, frankly, at a significant disadvantage when we are bidding on these major events,” she said.
The NFL has typically announced draft sites in early May, so the 2028 announcement could come within the next several weeks.
STRIB
Hurry-up Vikings, we ain't getting any younger!
