Inside the NFL’s strategy to turn the 2026 draft into a social moment you can’t escape

FastCompany: When The Las Vegas Raiders announced Indiana University quarterback Fernando Mendoza as the first overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft yesterday, it kicked off what might just be the most special time of year for any football fan. This three day draft period—April 23-25—is unquestionably the moment in the year when the highest number of fans are at their most optimistic. No wins, no losses, just new beginnings, new players, new possibilities. It’s also a marquee event for the league. About 600,000 people attended last year’s draft in Green Bay over its three days, across seven rounds, 32 teams, and 257 picks.

On TV and streaming, the draft drew massive audiences, with the first round averaging 13.6 million viewers across TV and digital platforms, making it the second most-watched in history . View this post on Instagram But that is dwarfed by the draft’s presence on social media, as the league, all the teams, many of the draftee players, fan creators and influencers, all combined to make reams of content that weave together the entire story. It’s a scale and scope of mass concentrated content creation rare in any other pro sport.

Draft week on just the NFL’s own social channels now drives more than 500 million views, which has doubled in the last five years. According to the league, on TikTok during the draft last year, 30% of the reached audience was female, and 44% were 18-24, significantly younger and more female than the league’s reach during the NFL regular season. “The draft is consistently one of the top five to 10 social moments of the year,” says Ian Trombetta, the NFL’s senior vice president of global social and influencer marketing .

“Obviously we’re in a World Cup year, so there’s going to be some nuance there, but in a normal year the draft lands inside the top five.” View this post on Instagram The NFL’s social and influencer team operates a real-time content command center to help harness the power of the occasion. On-site in Pittsburgh, its social programming team of 10 people produces about 1,000 social posts a day during the draft, from the moment a prospect’s name is called and introduced to their new city, to last-minute trades. It’s live action social media at scale.

Last year, the league’s team averaged 33 pieces of content per hour during the draft on each of its three days. Tucked inside Pittsburgh’s Acrisure Stadium, the league’s social team overlooked all the fans cheering their picks, chronicling all the action. On Day 1, on top of all the picks, there were seven trades, keeping the social team incredibly busy. Not just online, but after every trade, the whole team did push-ups to keep the energy up. For this draft, not only is the league hoping to build on the audience it had last year, but also be the ultimate conduit and connector between all the various stakeholders across social media.

Here’s how they’ll do it. Monitor When Mendoza’s name gets called—or any draftee for that matter—social media jumps, with not only fans of the QB and the Raiders, but also his sponsors (which include Adidas, Taco Bell, Pfizer, LinkedIn, JLab, Epic Games, Keurig, and Dr. Pepper), creators, NFL influencers and more. One of the primary functions of the NFL’s social command center is to keep track of all of this, which then informs how it reacts (or doesn’t).

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The NFL's strategy to leverage the draft as a cultural moment through innovative social media engagement represents a significant shift in brand strategy, making it highly relevant and impactful for industry professionals.