NFL Draft: Did It Really Benefit Pittsburgh?

    This past April, the 2026 NFL Draft was hosted in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When business owners found out that the city was hosting one of the most-attended sports events in the United States, they quickly saw opportunities to get their businesses to boom and succeed. This would allow people from all over the world to try their food or products. Lots of those smaller businesses happened to be women-owned, black-owned, Italian-owned, etc. Little did they know, they would be preparing for something that wasn't going to find its way even close to their businesses.

     I grew up just 10 minutes from downtown and I've always loved how community-based and uniquely diverse the city is. One of the most diverse things in the city is the thousands of cuisines we have in the city. If you asked a Pittsburgher what they think of when they think of their home, three things always come up. The sports, the art, and the food. The cuisine in Pittsburgh is like no other, mainly because of our strong immigrant roots. The city contains 90 different neighborhoods throughout like Bloomfield, known historically as Pittsburgh's "Little Italy". Then there's the South Side, historically dense with Eastern European immigrants including Polish, Ukrainian, Croatian, and Serbian ethnicities, then moving to the the Central and Hill District Areas primarily and historically black neighborhoods, and Squirrel Hill, a historically Jewish community with a slowly growing Asian population. This gives the city its rich and diverse food scene.

    So of course when Pittsburgh announced it was hosting the draft, this was huge news for so many small businesses with different food cuisines and cultures, wanting to share with the world. In the months then days leading up to the draft, these business owners planned on and eventually bought more stock than they would ever need for a regular week for the three NFL Draft days. They extended hours, they made new menus, they invested so much into their businesses for this event, feeling confident that they'd have a successful few days to earn all of that and much more back.

    So what did the city do? They of course led the tourists all around the city to indulge in these rich traditions of Pittsburgh. Right? No. They did not. They in fact led those tourists through a mere 1 or 2 highways to get to where they needed. The city actually closed roads that many of the black-owned, immigrant-owned restaurants were, leaving them with a walk-in freezer full of food for a ghost town. 

Map of PGH during the NFL Draft. The red is the closed roads.

https://www.wtaj.com/sports/blackandgoldnation/final-pre-event-road-closures-announced-ahead-of-nfl-draft-in-pittsburgh/

    To add to that, in caution to the expected traffic that the Draft would bring, Pittsburgh residents stayed in. This meant not even these restaurants' regulars were coming in. These businesses got zero business after investing so much time, money, and effort into the event. 

    After the event was finished, news outlets and media were giving these businesses a voice to say something about this. An organization, VisitPittsburgh, responded to these stories with “While not every area experienced the same level of foot traffic during the event itself, the long-term impact extends citywide through infrastructure improvements, increased civic and charitable investment" (Pierce 2026). Though the infrastructure was extremely successful for the city's high-traffic zones, those places did not include the areas that these businesses were located (Shannon 2025). 

    To answer the question "Did the NFL Draft really benefit Pittsburgh?", my answer is yes and no. If I were to look at the rich, white, suburban family way I would say yes. In a very tunnel-vision and privileged way. If I were to answer this as a resident of the city of Pittsburgh, I would say absolutely not. This event only invested money into things that were already successful and while that's great, the real charm of Pittsburgh is the people running the mom and pop Italian restaurant or the soul food place on the corner. The real charm of Pittsburgh is the incredible diversity and culture we have in the city. These tourists saw none of that. And the city had completely lost sight of who we really were.

Sources:

Day, Colin. “Final Pre-Event Road Closures Announced Ahead of NFL Draft in Pittsburgh.” WTAJ, WTAJ | Your News Leader, 17 Apr. 2026, www.wtaj.com/sports/blackandgoldnation/final-pre-event-road-closures-announced-ahead-of-nfl-draft-in-pittsburgh/.

Pierce, Rachel. “‘Just a Ghost Town’: Downtown Pittsburgh Restaurants Disappointed by Business during NFL Draft.” WPXI, WPXI, 28 Apr. 2026, www.wpxi.com/news/local/just-ghost-town-downtown-pittsburgh-restaurants-disappointed-by-business-during-nfl-draft/4ALQ4YKZ3ZDCRH4YFGBVHLLWA4/.

Shannon, Bill. “Multi-Million Dollar Project Complete Ahead of 2026 NFL Draft in Pittsburgh.” WTAJ, WTAJ | Your News Leader, 17 Dec. 2025, www.wtaj.com/news/regional-news/multi-million-dollar-project-complete-ahead-of-2026-nfl-draft-in-pittsburgh/.