NFL's first regular-season game in Germany during ’22 season will take place in Munich at Bundesliga club Bayern Munich’s stadiumBAYERN MUNICH
The NFL's decision to hold regular-season games in Munich and Frankfurt over the next four seasons shows Germany remains a "key market for the sport's global expansion plans," according to Benjamin Bathke of DEUTSCHE WELLE. The NFL said that there are "19 million American football fans in Germany, though a recent survey where only 3.8% named American football as their favorite sport sheds some doubt on the NFL's figure." Still, the number of people staying up late to watch the Super Bowl "has been climbing steadily: Viewership quadrupled from 580,000 in 1999, the year the annual spectacle was first broadcast on German free TV, to an impressive 2.23 million last year." NFL Germany GM Alexander Steinforth said that the league "will try to emulate some marketing strategies that it used during the 2007 London series." One such gimmick was "using the Union Jack in merchandising and on the pitch." Four NFL teams have "secured the rights to market their brand in Germany:" the Panthers, Chiefs, Buccaneers and Patriots. Given the steadily growing interest in American football among Germans and the NFL's presence over the past three decades, it is "not a question of if the NFL will further grow its fan base through the Munich and Frankfurt games, but by how much." Steinforth said, "Depending on how the first four games go, the plan is to turn those four years on the ground into many more" (DW.com, 2/10).
GROWING THE GAME: ESPN's Adam Schefter said the NFL has "grown the sport so much here" in the U.S. that it is "almost tapped out, so where can they get additional revenue?" Schefter noted that is why games in Germany have been scheduled and "let's build our brand into a worldwide product and try to make it as popular there as it is here." ESPN's Louis Riddick said, "Where is the next revenue source going to come from? It has to come from international expansion" ("SportsCenter," ESPN, 2/9).
