Its such a big day they made a pretty okay Kevin Costner movie about it
this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
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The NFL preseason to Super Bowl lasts about 6 months. That means they were going about 6 months after the Super Bowl with no significant events or anything else to draw revenue. So the people who run the NFL wanted to do something that could drive revenue during that half-year when they aren't playing games.
So they marketed the hell out of the draft. They turned it into a big media event so they could sell sponsorships and put it on TV so they can sell ads.
It's entirely a manufactured event to drive revenue.
Ah. So it's like Valentine's day.
More like Prime Day or Black Friday.
While Valentine's Day is heavily marketed and focused on consumer materialism now, it was actually celebrated as a religious holiday for well over a thousand years. It's more an example of an existing celebration that got turned into something commercialized by capitalism.
Where as the NFL Draft, Prime Day, and Black Friday are "celebrations" wholly invented for the purpose of commercialized consumerism.
Ah yes. Often forget about black friday tbh. Haven't cared about that in years lol.
As someone who doesn't give two shits about Football or competition sports, I honestly feel like a fucking alien sometimes. Like I literally couldn't care less. I've tried to care. I just fucking don't. It's so hard sometimes because every male (either my friends or at work) talks about Sports and I'm just like "yea idk, I didn't watch the game." Then they stare at me like I'm a boring sack of shit. It sucks.
Totally with you there (probably a big selection bias on Lemmy, of course). Especially the draft. It's... Announcements of people getting job offers. Yay?
That said, look up some of Jon Bois's videos on YouTube if you have some time. I only learned about him because he's a delight on Bluesky, and he has a kind of interesting/entertaining way to tell stories about sports. At least, the couple videos I just started watching have been!
That said, it may not be the best for current events.
It matters to sponsors. Big companies pay money to have their name slapped on everything, and then huge amount of marketing to ensure the max audience size means many more eyes in the sponsors crap. The NFL makes a killing on these sponsored events, so they will drive up the engagement wherever they are. And since sports matter to many Americans, this needs to REALLY SUPER matter.
I agree, who cares about teams picking players except for the players?
So it's basically a combination of everything that everyone else has said.
- NFL is by far the most popular sport in the country, but it also only has 17 regular season games (versus 82ish for NHL and NBA, 40ish for MLS, and 162 for MLB), and the entire season is spread over only 6-7 months of the calendar year, versus 8-10 for the others. There is an appetite for any content at all that materially affects the most watched sport.
- College Football itself is probably the fourth most popular sports "league" in the country, though its organization and economics are WAY different (for now) than the normal pro leagues'. There's huge overlap in general of course, but the Draft brings all of the fans together as CFB fans see where the top players will move.
- Going back to number 1, the NFL and media companies, being what they are, noticed the gap in the sporting calendar (after March Madness, before NBA and NHL playoffs, very early in the MLB season, MLS well... (LOL, I love MLS and it's a miracle it's stable but it's still not an important "TV sport" in this country). They also noticed that a certain segment of die-hards have been watching the draft for 30 years, and they saw an opportunity to tap that dormant interest for months of "segments" and a big day of ratings and revenue, so of course they did.
- More recently, seeing that their hype efforts were working, they've moved it out of an auditorium near League HQ and made it a travelling road show, goosing local attention and furthering the image that it's an event.
As to why all that worked, I like the posts that talk about the optimism and renewal that the draft represents. The NFL is unique in how it handles player development, in that it mostly doesn't because it has an independently-popular lower league that will do it for free. Since that lower league is effectively the sole source of players, and since the NFL is an American-style sporting cartel, the Draft becomes the single biggest infusion of talent that a team will see in a given year, some of it ready to contribute on the field right away, and the teams that need the talent the most usually have the best picks and therefore a real chance to improve quickly, though the same bad management that gets teams in a bad place will often squander that chance.
For those who follow European football (soccer, not the niche gridiron leagues over there), imagine a single day (okay, three days now, but Rounds 2-7 are still for the nerds) that combines the anxiety of a promotion playoff final (though with deferred results) with the excitement of the summer transfer window (let's consider NFL free agency the equivalent of the winter window).
Because sports ball is important to them. Will a good player be on their team? Will they finally drop that player no one likes? What team managed to snag that up and coming player.
All those things are relevant to someone.
To add onto this, you're also seeing a greater development of the nerd fan, propped up by fantasy football and gambling.
Before, a fan would be interested in their team and maybe a few others. You now have people dedicated to the league, treating it as the RNG running their games. That means knowing all teams, all players, and even how coaching staff will use players as that affects their own games and possibly even their own bottom lines.
I am an avid sports fan, and I will never understand the Draft worship. Like it's important to get good players, sure. But I don't need so spend a weekend watching about it. It's just a way for the NFL to make money by selling ads.
I'm a basketball fan, but the draft is a reset, and potentially a renewal for some teams that sucked last year. It's a time for a fan to get hopeful (unless they drafted low or this year's class is shitty).
Generally, it's also an excuse to get really drunk, talk shit (online or in-person), and set up your fantasy league team. It signals the start of the season and gets you hyped up for pre-season matches featuring the new guys, even though you know pre-season doesn't really mean shit.
There's not much "special" about it, but if sports are a major hobby for you, following along whenever there's an "event" is just something some people feel the need to do. Sports fans obsessing over the draft is kind of like people who are really into movies making a spreadsheet of all of the new movies for the year.
Dude, you live in Green Bay. Shouldnt you have been fully indoctrinated in Packers Football by now? I thought they issued everyone a cheesehead hat at birth.
I'm a Minnesota wild fan. Couldn't care less about football honestly.
So you have an axe to grind because of another sports success?
Or are you here "just asking questions"
Okay I fully agree with you. I am a very unsports bitch but I understand the draft craze for fans. OP seems very disingenuous.
? I don't understand your thinking:
American Football is the most popular sport in the U.S. -> Higher round picks are better than lower round picks because you have more / inherently better options -> Picks are used as bargaining chips / used in trades -> Watching who your team picks (and how good they are / what position) is extremely entertaining for fans AND can often define your teams future for years afterwards
...obviously?
The draft is being held in your state this year, it's the first time as far as I can recall, they want to make a good show of it so it might return some day.
How is it a show? Isn't it just guys reading names off a sheet of paper?
There's constant running commentary and speculation, and biographical segments, and sometimes a little drama when surprising things happen, or expected things don't, and a large group of people simply care enough that they want to know as soon as a pick happens, though how organic the growth of that group has been is certainly open for debate.
This is the best, most concise explanation in this thread, thank you!
The sheets of paper are getting filled in minutes before they're announced,
The teams can trade their picks between each other,
It's not known what teams are going to take what players, if my team (4) thinks team 1 is going to take player A, and team 2 isn't interested in that player but team 3 is, if team 1 takes player b instead my team might talk with team 2 about trading draft pick positions so we can get that player.
There's a lot of talking between a lot of professionals representing a lot of teams, the whole situation is very fluid, and it might change the course of your franchise (unless you're the Jets)
It's also 3 days of spectacle.
preview on the teams potential future.
its also like a graduation where theyre celebrating the class who basically worked their ass off for at least half their lives to get to that point. you can make the potential argument that getting drafted by the nfl is significantly more difficult than graduating, yet people celebrate that.
What else is there for people to do?
Read, learn something new, show empathy to other humans, glance at what politicians are doing (regardless of MAGA)
We don't have the draft for team sports in the rest of the world and it creates these megateams of galactico superstars. There is also relegation in European football/rugby so teams can push into the upper echelons if they are extremely lucky in terms of getting amazing performances out of nominally mid players.
Its where you get your hot takes and feel included in the sports conversations.
# Sports go sports! #
# Athletics are number one! #
# Participants are heroes! #
# Go team yeah! #
.
Edit: looks like I can't use hash symbols to show that they're lyrics - Lemmy thinks I want them to be headers...
Edit2: fixed the hash sign problem thanks to parlordrolap below.
Try preceding the hash with a backslash. Not all of the Fediverse supports all of the same parts of Markdown when viewing posts between instances, but that one ought to be reasonably standard.
# If you see this line preceded by a hash, that's because it actually starts with \#.
Huge thanks for this!
I feel so stupid - I'm a software engineer, so of course I'd need to escape them! I guess I need to brush up on my markdown.
Speaking of marking things down, looks like there aren't too many fans of Garfunkel and Oates from the number of downvotes I've received...