German football League<\/a> is live since the \u201870s.\u201d<\/p>\nSince then, Germany has long been one of the NFL\u2019s most reliable and durable markets, with more than 20 million self-described NFL fans in a nation of 82 million \u2014 the largest fanbase in Europe. By the time NFL Europe ceased operations, the league featured five teams in Germany and one in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
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\u201cYou have to be super passionate to get up in the middle of the night to follow your team,\u201d says Steinforth of German fans. \u201cIt\u2019s an interesting merger of German fan culture. \u2026 It brings together the best of both worlds. You have fans that have only recently joined the sport, you have fans who started watching the \u201870s or \u201880s when they went to the U.S. for a high school year, and then you have lots of people who joined us during the NFL Europe days. On average we can say the age of a football fan is significantly younger than in the U.S. It\u2019s a sport that\u2019s very popular especially among the younger demos, 15 to 39.\u201d<\/p>\n
Berlin itself hosted a number of preseason games in the early 1990s in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall; the league has enough history in the city that, for a 1990 Rams-Chiefs preseason game, the city was still known as \u201cWest Berlin.\u201d Germany as a whole has hosted five games since the 2022 season, two in Frankfurt and two in Munich in addition to Sunday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
\u201cA majority of people still identify themselves as fans of the league rather than fans of a team,\u201d Steinforth says. \u201cSo you can get into this market as a team and really grow new fans. That is much more difficult in a more established market like the U.S., where (fandom) gets passed on from one generation to another.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The NFL opened a merchandise store in central Berlin ahead of the first NFL regular season game in the city.<\/p>\n
(Maja Hitij via Getty Images)Will the world embrace the NFL?<\/p>\n
Looming over all this international pomp and circumstance is a single, dominating question: Will this work? Will NFL football connect with international audiences the way it has with American ones? Football is a uniquely American sport; its combination of violence and frequent ad breaks can be jarring to audiences accustomed to, say, the constant action and embedded advertising of a soccer match. Yes, it\u2019s fun to don the uniform of a new team and proclaim yourself a fan of the Patriots or Rams or (heaven help you) the Jets, but will that translate to the kind of lifelong fandom that soccer clubs enjoy?<\/p>\n
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Barker believes so. \u201cThe beauty of NFL football lies in its captivating unpredictability. It\u2019s a powerful blend of strategy, intensity and emotion,\u201d he says. \u201cEvery play lasts only seconds, yet it can redefine the entire game. There\u2019s a remarkable tension between structure and spontaneity: coaches and players executing complex plans that, in an instant, hinge on instinct and precision.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NFL only needs to look at the way that soccer has wrapped itself around the DNA of European countries as a guideline. European crowds bring a unified euphoria to a stadium that even the most raucous Packers or Cowboys fans can\u2019t match.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt international games, something that is always fun to see is the sea of NFL jerseys in every crowd. Fans come repping their teams \u2014 which tend to include a complete variety of all 32 clubs,\u201d Barker says. \u201cAs fans become more knowledgeable about our game, international games now feel increasingly like a home game for participating teams. The energy across every international game is unique and inspiring.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Europe\u2019s stadium-wide unity is bred around the soccer pitch and now applied to an NFL game \u2026 and that\u2019s exactly what the league would like to commandeer and redirect. It\u2019s why the league has created a Global Markets program, where teams can build their fanbases through a series of international events. Eleven teams \u2014 the Falcons and Colts, plus the Panthers, Lions, Packers, Chiefs, Patriots, Giants, Steelers, Seahawks and Buccaneers \u2014 all have a presence in Germany, and all will have representation in Berlin this weekend at fan events.<\/p>\n
The league is also hoping to snag international fans when they\u2019re still international kids. It\u2019s why the NFL now places such an emphasis on flag football in its various host-city outreaches; it\u2019s a whole lot easier to introduce a new sport to a country if that sport involves running rather than smashing.<\/p>\n
The international conundrum: When to kick off?<\/p>\n
One logistical challenge for the NFL in its international expansion efforts is the increasing time difference between potential host cities and the league\u2019s domestic fanbase. There are three factors to consider here:<\/p>\n
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\u2022 By placing games in Western Europe, 5 to 6 hours ahead of U.S. time, the NFL effectively creates an entire new fourth block of football \u2014 Sunday mornings \u2014 that\u2019s simply not realistic if you\u2019re playing all your games stateside.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The further away from the East Coast you go, the more you have to inconvenience the host fans. This is the problem the Olympics often faces: Do you put on your marquee event in the morning so that it\u2019s on in prime time in America? A Western Europe start of 3:30 p.m. (9:30 a.m. ET) isn\u2019t a huge sacrifice, but Australian audiences might face an 11:00 a.m. Monday kickoff for a game that would air at 8:00 p.m. ET Sunday night.<\/p>\n
\u2022 On the flip side, the NFL could adopt the F1 approach, which is to say: cater to the host fans and let those in the rest of the world set their alarms. This works for F1 because of its globally dispersed fanbase; this might not play so well in, say, Pittsburgh if fans have to get up at 3:00 a.m. to watch the Steelers. But that sort of host-based scheduling does have the effect of targeting a new market in its prime time, while assuming \u2014 probably correctly \u2014 that one game\u2019s worth of inconvenience isn\u2019t going to cost the league its stateside fans.<\/p>\n
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Typical American food is on offer at the NFL Experience fan event on Uber Platz. The NFL is hosting a major fan event in Berlin to kick off the season as part of the global “NFL Experience” program.<\/p>\n
(picture alliance via Getty Images)The NFL\u2019s worldwide party<\/p>\n
The league is now deeply committed to spreading the NFL gospel to its host nations. For instance, this week in Berlin, the NFL has held flag football clinics and a Special Olympics Flag Football tournament. The Colts and the NFL contributed to the creation of a new elementary school playground. Both teams have dedicated pubs focusing on their new fans, complete with team-relevant experiences \u2014 the Falcons\u2019 pub features Atlanta-style lemon pepper wet chicken wings and mac n\u2019 cheese. (How that tastes filtered through German sensibilities is anyone\u2019s guess.) Massive fan zones and NFL shops dominate the city\u2019s center, and the league created an enormous flag football field right in front of Berlin\u2019s iconic Brandenburg Gate.<\/p>\n
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The mural and the Brandenburg Gate field are the most obvious of the league\u2019s branding efforts all around Berlin, but you don\u2019t have to look far to see the league\u2019s influence. Huge posters of Jonathan Taylor and Michael Penix Jr. are visible on kiosks; NFL shield stickers \u2014 helpfully pre-printed with graffiti to add that extra touch of Berlin \u201cauthenticity\u201d\u2014 cover streetlight poles, newspaper bins and post office boxes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWatching kids around the world playing flag football, or hearing from U.S. fans who travel abroad and are genuinely surprised by how passionately fans in places like Brazil, Germany and the U.K. understand and love the game,\u201d Barker says, \u201cthose are reminders that football really does have a global heartbeat.\u201d<\/p>\n
An International Series game is not merely a football game, in other words. This is an entire experience, a road show designed to promote the NFL as game, sport, brand, lifestyle and state of mind. Sunday\u2019s game is the culmination of the week, yes, but it\u2019s only one element of the overall journey \u2014 one the league hopes will continue long after the Colts and Falcons leave town.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis is generational work,\u201d Barker says. \u201cI don\u2019t expect to see the full impact in my lifetime \u2014 maybe my kids will, or their kids. In many ways, it reminds me of the early days of the NFL, when a small group of visionaries came together in Canton, Ohio, with a shared love for the game. I\u2019m sure they couldn\u2019t have imagined what it would one day become.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN \u2014 Above the Savignyplatz train station in Berlin looms a massive mural, four stories high and a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[156671,634,3361,64,63,79354,1234,6095,156669,156670,23417,156668,23168,5364,5346,593,5132,5353,85,5350,3601],"class_list":["post-269002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-adam-vinatieri","tag-american-football","tag-arsenal","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-berlin","tag-dallas-cowboys","tag-flag-football","tag-german-football-league","tag-international-fans","tag-international-game","tag-international-games","tag-jaguars","tag-jonathan-taylor","tag-michael-penix-jr","tag-nfl","tag-pittsburgh","tag-seahawks","tag-sports","tag-steelers","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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