2023 N.F.L. Draft Live Updates

That qualifies, at least for a midsize American metro area, as a championship run.

“This will be a great way to put an exclamation point on it by hosting the draft,” said Clark Hunt, the owner of the Chiefs.

Kansas City, Mo., he added, was the only city in the Midwest chosen to host games for the 2026 World Cup, when the men’s soccer tournament comes to North America.

Hunt said he had no idea that his team, let alone his city, would have had so much success when he urged Kathy Nelson, a board member of the Kansas City Sports Commission, to consider applying to host the draft.

In 2015, the N.F.L. moved the draft to Chicago after many years in New York, where the event couldn’t grow much in the confines of Manhattan. The event in Chicago was such a success, drawing more than 100,000 fans, that the N.F.L. invited bids from other potential host cities.

After two years in Chicago, the draft moved to Philadelphia, the Dallas area and then Nashville. Following a shift to Commissioner Roger Goodell’s basement during the pandemic, it went on to Cleveland and Las Vegas.

Nelson and her team proposed several locations, including the Chiefs’ home venue, Arrowhead Stadium, but were turned down. One of the problems, she said, was that many members of the N.F.L.’s event staff had not been to Kansas City and couldn’t envision what the draft might look like.

Soon after, the Royals won the 2015 World Series, and a celebration with hundreds of thousands of fans converged on Union Station, the Beaux-Arts building that looks out at the vast lawn in front of the World War I Memorial.

“Once we did the World Series parade here, the light bulb went off,” Nelson said. “We brought them in for a site visit, and they could see it, feel it.”

Kansas City was chosen in 2019 to host a draft, but the pandemic pushed everyone’s plans back a year. Hosting this year, however, has worked out well because the Chiefs are once again defending Super Bowl champions.

The N.F.L. expects about 300,000 visitors, with a healthy contingent of locals mixing with tens of thousands of fans within a day’s drive of Kansas City. One of the visitors will be the nominal host of the draft, the Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, who doesn’t usually attend the draft in person because he is always in the team’s war room.

This year, the Chiefs are scheduled to pick last, so Hunt will watch the first few picks in person and then drive to the Chiefs’ facility for the rest of the evening.

“There’s always a chance with our general manager that he might trade up, but I think I’ll be safe for the first few picks,” Hunt said last month. “So I think seeing that live would be really special.”

The draft will also showcase Kansas City to tens of millions of television viewers.

“You get a bunch of eyeballs, you get a lot of people into town, and once you get them into town, they’re interested in coming back,” Mayor Quinton Lucas said. “Kansas City is on the map in a way that it has never been, and I say that as a kid who was born and raised here.”