OFFICIAL: Kansas City will host 2023 NFL Draft

UPDATE 2:50 p.m. Arrowhead Time:

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced that Kansas City will host the NFL Draft in 2023.

hile the Kansas City Chiefs continue with OTAs on Wednesday, the NFL spring meeting is taking place in Key Biscayne, Florida.

According to Sports Illustrated MMQB writer Albert Breer, one of the items on the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting is whether to award the 2023 NFL Draft to Kansas City.

As Breer notes, the league will also decide on Wednesday whether to award the 2021 draft to Cleveland. The 2020 draft is already set for Las Vegas, but no city has submitted what the NFL considers to be an acceptable bid for 2022.

That begs the question: why isn’t Kansas City trying for the 2022 draft?

As Breer said in reply to his original tweet, the NFL Draft is a big deal. As you’ve seen in coverage of drafts hosted by other cities in recent years, it requires much commitment from the host city — multiple venues and lots of hotel rooms to accommodate not only the league officials and media, but also fans who will travel to the host city to attend the draft in person.

Such a commitment requires advance planning — and also being sure that the draft would not interfere with conventions and other events that are planned for the potential host city. Those kinds of events are planned and scheduled years in advance, so the host city has to work around them.

And as friend-of-the-site Matt Derrick pointed out, there’s another issue in Kansas City.

Construction of the new terminal at Kansas City International airport is currently expected to be completed in early 2023.