The rivalry between the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions, which dates back to the 1930s, has spilled off the football field and into their respective communities.
The city of Green Bay announced on Tuesday that the recently completed NFL draft, hosted at Lambeau Field, had more “unique visitors” than the previous year’s draft in Detroit.
The city cited numbers from Placer.ai, a global location analytics company, that used cellphone data. It found that 312,000 individuals attended the draft in Green Bay, up from the roughly 240,000 who attended the draft in Detroit in 2024.
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“As one of the handful of teams never to have won a Super Bowl, the Lions are understandably looking for wins where they can find them, but it appears they came up a little short again,” Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich said in a statement Tuesday. “Best of luck to them next time.”
The NFL has said around 600,000 people attended the NFL draft in Green Bay over the event’s three days, and 775,000 people attended the draft in Detroit the previous year. The NFL counts attendance by the number of people who entered the draft. If someone left the event and came back, they were counted each time they returned to the draft footprint.
But the city of Green Bay says the measure of unique visitors provides a better sense of the number of people who came to the draft and the event’s economic impact.
Brian Johnson, president of the Green Bay City Council, said the city uses Placer.ai data for various events throughout the community to track attendance and gauge economic impact.
“It pings your cellphone data, and these are real numbers that come back in aggregate form,” Johnson said. “It’s not like you’re looking at a crowd and shrugging your shoulder saying, ‘It looks like 20,000 people.’ This is real data.”
Genrich told WPR Wednesday that Green Bay took aim at the Lions in its announcement as a fun way to retaliate for some of the comments directed toward Green Bay ahead of this draft.
“We’ve got a good-natured rivalry, of course, in the NFC North,” Genrich said. “Some of the folks surrounding the Lions were talking a little bit of trash leading up to our draft, so (we were) trying to have some fun.”
Ahead of this year’s draft, Lions President Rod Wood told the Detroit Free Press that there was “no way Green Bay will come close” to topping the 2024 draft in Detroit.
“They’ll finish second or … they’ll finish third like they did last year,” Wood told the newspaper, referencing where the Packers finished the season in the division standings.
And after the NFL released attendance projections for the first night 2025 draft, the Detroit Free Press got into the fray.
“Once again, Green Bay comes up a little short against Detroit,” read an April post from the newspaper on social media.
Jeff Risdon, managing editor for The Lions Wire, said the rivalry between the Packers and Lions is one of the best in all of football. At one point in time, he said the NFC North was known as the “Black and Blue Division” for how physical the games between division rivals would get.
“Even when neither team was good in the 1980s — and I do remember those years — there were still fantastic football (games) and they were competitive,” he said. “It was one of those where you’re slugging one another throughout the game, and then after the game, you go and you have a beer with the guy who was sitting next to you in the opposite colors.”
Risdon said the numbers from Placer.ai sounded mostly accurate. But he also says Detroit still has plenty to brag about in the rivalry at the moment.
“We ended the Aaron Rodgers era. We’re very happy about that,” he said. “We’re the defending NFC North champions two years running. I think we’re going to make it three.”
The Packers and Discover Green Bay, which both worked together to bring the draft to Green Bay, declined to comment regarding the Placer.ai data.
But a Packers spokesperson released a statement calling the 2025 NFL draft a successful event that had “incredible energy” from the thousands of fans in attendance.
“The impact of the Draft was certainly realized during the event itself, but also will be beneficial into the future as the community, region and state will experience return and first-time visits from those who were inspired by the welcoming enthusiasm from Green Bay,” the statement read.
Discover Green Bay plans to release an economic impact report on the NFL draft next month.
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