PHOTO: Courtesy of WLUK
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — We’re just three weeks away from the 2025 NFL Draft, but there are still plenty of places available for visitors to stay.
Some renters are disappointed they’re not cashing in to the degree they thought they would when it was first announced the draft was coming to Green Bay.
“A lot of the houses in Green Bay are not rented out,” said Debbie Jacques, who is trying to rent out her duplex. “Why? Did we oversell it? Are not a lot of people coming?”
Jacques’ duplex — which she calls “Under the Lights of Lambeau” — is the closest house to where the NFL Draft stage is going up. Yet, she still hasn’t had anyone request to rent it.
“I think everybody in our neighborhood was initially so excited it’s coming, and we are really excited it’s coming, but I thought we would get our house rented,” said Jacques.
Jacques initially listed her place for $10,000 a night with a five-night minimum. Now, it’s $3,000 a night with a three-night minimum.
She says her place rented for more when the LSU-Wisconsin football game was played at Lambeau Field in 2016. At this point, she’s hoping to make as much as she would for a regular Packers game.
“We’ll just keep lowering it and see what happens,” said Jacques.
A search of Airbnb shows 608 places listed in greater Green Bay.
In the Lambeau neighborhood, Airbnb listings are mostly in the $7,000-$9,000 range for total asking price for a four-night stay from Wednesday through Saturday.
On the east side of the Fox River, in the Allouez and Bellevue area, the total asking price for four nights is closer to $3,000-$5,000.
For hotels, a search of booking.com for a room for four people for four nights starts at a total cost of $1,489. Seven of eight hotels listed for having that vacancy are between that amount and $2,527.
“The draft visitor is not like a Super Bowl visitor,” said Nick Meisner of Discover Green Bay. “It’s not the corporate, $5,000-for-a-single-ticket audience. It’s a free event. It’s families and it’s fans.”
Meisner says Discover Green Bay doesn’t recommend prices for people to set, but says the available rooms could still be snapped up.
“When you purchase a ticket for a concert and a game that is out of town, the first thing you do right away after that is go and get your hotel,” said Meisner. “This being a free event makes that cadence a little bit different.”
Booking.com shows only 15% of hotels are available in Green Bay for the Thursday of the draft, which is consistently the event’s best-attended night. The average price for the available rooms is $789.
Seven weeks ago, the same search of booking.com had lower availability — just 8% of hotels having vacancy and the average price of the available rooms was also $200 higher at $988.
“The headquarters of those hotels will kind of manage the supply and demand and release rooms when they feel it’s best time to release the rooms,” said Meisner.
Meisner says there probably isn’t much correlation between the availability of hotels and Airbnbs and how many people will actually be coming for the event.
He also says local organizers do not receive updates on how many people have registered to attend the draft.
The NFL says it does not share registration numbers prior to the event. That means the initial projection of 240,000 people attending the draft throughout the three-day event is likely still our best estimate.
Draft organizers are also maintaining the weather will be the biggest factor in attendance.
When the draft was in Kansas City in 2023, 57% of attendees came from drivable markets. That number was 69% when the draft was in Cleveland in 2021.
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