The NFL Continues Its European Tour With First-Ever Regular Season Game in Germany
Published Nov. 11 2022, 11:47 a.m. ET
For the first time in its 103-year tenure, the NFL will play a regular-season game in Munich, Germany. The revolutionary contest will take place on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022, and see the Seattle Seahawks take on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
While most American fans ponder if superstar quarterback Tom Brady will show out on the football field, others can't help but wonder — why is the NFL playing in Germany? Here's what you need to know.
Why Is the NFL playing in Germany?
In February 2022, the NFL announced that Munich would host the first-ever regular-season game in Germany. The wildly popular sports league later revealed that Frankfurt would host future games.
"We are very pleased to welcome Munich and Frankfurt to the NFL family and are excited to reward our fans in Germany for their passion by bringing them the spectacle of regular-season NFL football," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said. "We look forward to staging our first game in Germany at FC Bayern Munich's fantastic stadium later this year and to exploring areas of broader collaboration with the Bundesliga."
Brett Gosper, the head of NFL Europe and UK, stated the league is "looking forward to partnerships with Munich and Frankfurt that will extend beyond the games and help us to deliver accelerated growth in Germany."
"The strong interest we received underlined what a fantastic opportunity regular-season games offer for a host, ranging from significant economic benefits and global exposure to the chance to become a hub for the growth of the NFL's fan engagement, community and grassroots activities," he noted.
The demand for tickets to the Munich game reached "insane numbers."
Like the NFL's annual London games, the league wants to reward its German fans and continue to establish American football as a permanent presence in Europe. According to The Athletic, this partnership is A-OK with the Deutschland since the demand for tickets reached "insane numbers."
The NFL announced (per The Athletic) that "more than [three] million fans requested tickets for a stadium that seats 70,000, and when tickets were first available online, more than 800,000 were queued up trying to get in."
Alex Steinforth, the general manager of NFL Germany, spoke about the demand for tickets with The Athletic, stating that three million is a "crazy number, but also kind of a reaffirmation for us going into the market."
He continued, "We already had a sense of that, from TV viewership and consumer products, but I’ve never experienced so much interest in one event before. The amount of messages I got for tickets was crazy."
Ahead of the big game, there has reportedly been a buildup of excitement. Carsten Neubauer, a massive Bucs fan from Germany who runs the Buccaneers Germany account on Twitter, told The Athletic that this game is "special."
"Football has exploded in the last couple of years in Germany. There’s such an enormous group of people enjoying the NFL, and they’ve been eagerly awaiting something to happen in Germany," Carsten added. "It could be Eagles, Cowboys, Packers, and it will be a very big party, no matter where you look at it."
The NFL Munich game kicks off Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022, at 9:30 a.m. EST.