Is the 2024 NFL Draft in Detroit shaping up to be a bigger party than the 2019 draft hosted in Nashville?

Don't tell anyone in Music City, but NFL Network insider Ian Rapoport says it’s close.

“The scene in Detroit is insanity. It rivals the Nashville Draft,” Rapoport posted on the ‘X’ platform, formerly Twitter, shortly before the NFL Draft first round began Thursday.

Nashville broke the league draft record in 2019 with an estimated 600,000 attendees over three days, according to the NFL — more than double the previous record when 250,000 people attended the draft in Philadelphia. The Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp reported crowd estimates of 200,000 for Thursday and Friday, respectively. Those numbers included visitors to the NFL Draft Experience at Nissan Stadium and the Lower Broadway main stage.

More: 2024 NFL Draft live tracker

People who believe Nashville set the new bar for draft attendance point to the images of NFL fans flooding lower Broadway and its honky-tonks in 2019.

But Detroit fans have shown up, too. This was the scene in Detroit's downtown area, including at the Campus Martius Park and Hart Plaza, about an hour before the draft began.

Here's the draft attendance per city since 2015.

∎ 2023: Kansas City | 312,000

∎ 2022: Las Vegas | 300,000

∎ 2021: Cleveland | 160,000

∎ 2020: Virtual

∎ *2019: Nashville | 600,000

∎ 2018: Dallas | 200,000

∎ 2017: Philadelphia | 250,000

∎ 2016: Chicago | 225,000

∎ 2015: Chicago | 200,000

*NFL record

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: 2024 NFL Draft: Detroit ‘rivals’ Nashville’s 2019 record draft, per Ian Rapoport