American football in the capital
The stars of the NFL come to the Berlin Olympic Stadium
December 11, 2024 – 4:35 p.mReading time: 2 min.
NFL American football games have already taken place in Munich and Frankfurt. Now another German city has joined the list of venues for the US professional league.
Games from the North American American football league NFL are scheduled to take place in Berlin in 2025, 2027 and 2029. The Senate Department for the Interior and Sport announced this on Wednesday. Accordingly, the games should take place in the Olympic city.
Berlin’s Interior Senator Iris Spranger (SPD) says she is hoping for medium to long-term additional income from hosting the NFL games: “For Berlin, this means global visibility, numerous international guests, long-term impulses for tourism and high economic value creation,” says Spranger quoted in the communication from her Senate administration.
The NFL justifies its decision in favor of Berlin with a “long history with the city.” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is quoted as saying these words. “We played a preseason game in the Olympic Stadium for the first time 34 years ago.” In view of “almost 20 million NFL fans in Germany”, they now want to open the next chapter in the mutual relationship and play a regular-season game in the federal capital for the first time, Goodell continued.
The Senate Interior Administration leaves it open which clubs will meet in the Olympic Stadium. However, the Detroit Lions have secured marketing rights for German-speaking countries. The German-American wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown is under contract with the club. “We know that the teams with the marketing rights for the German market are particularly interested in playing in Germany,” said German NFL boss Alexander Steinforth to the German Press Agency (dpa) in this context.
Before the decision in favor of Berlin, NFL games had already taken place München and took place in Frankfurt am Main. There was immense interest in tickets for the games in both cities.
