Watch out London, the NFL circus is rolling into a new city. In Frankfort, the Kansas City Chiefs paint the city red and dock a team-themed yacht on the Main River.
Who knows, Taylor Swift might drop by to see Chiefs pal Travis Kelce, while in Germany’s financial center and fifth-largest city, two 6-2 AFC powerhouses — Kansas City and the Miami Dolphins — meet tomorrow at Deutsche Bank Park.
Next week, the New England Patriots will show off their six Super Bowl trophies in front of fans as the NFL circus continues ahead of their match against the Indianapolis Colts at the 49,000-seat stadium, home of Bundesliga side Eintracht Frankfurt.
The hunger for American football in Germany is unquenchable. It is the second most popular sport, with almost half a million fans watching the two matches shown on free-to-air RTL every Sunday. In June, an online queue of 1.4 million people – 1.7 percent of the population – waited for tickets to the Chiefs game, which sold out within 15 minutes.
After Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the Seattle Seahawks at Allianz Arena in Bayern Munich, the first game of the regular season in Germany, nearly 75,000 fans chanted Take Me Home, Country Roads and Sweet Caroline for 15 minutes after the latter whistle had sounded. No wonder the NFL is coming back for more.
The city of Frankfurt, Germany, is about to experience a whole new type of football
Two men have played an important role in the growth of the sport on the European continent.
Dr. Alexander Steinforth is an alumni of both Cambridge and Oxford universities. He worked for two years at Manchester United as a strategy manager before joining Fortuna Düsseldorf as commercial director. In 2021, he became general manager of the NFL in Germany.
Düsseldorf-born Sebastian Vollmer started playing American football at the age of 14 and earned a scholarship to the University of Houston. He was drafted by the Patriots in 2009 and spent eight years protecting Brady. The offensive tackle retired in 2017 with two Super Bowl rings.
Now involved in German NFL broadcasts and ambassador for the Patriots, he describes the appeal of the sport.
‘Football provides a very unique experience compared to other sports. It’s the calmness and otherness of American football, but the excitement of football, right?
‘In home team football, when the attack takes place on the pitch, it is quite quiet. Then the defense arrives and it gets loud. It ebbs and flows.
‘In Munich it was just loud, there was so much excitement all the time. I think players are really looking forward to that.
‘What we will see in Frankfurt are the four teams playing very well, but there will also only be general fans.
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‘In what other team sport do we see other jerseys in the thousands? You can have the Green Bay Packers fan walking hand in hand next to the Vikings fan and having a beer. I think it’s such a cool, unique experience.’
“You have a very balanced competition,” Steinforth adds. ‘You have the concept system and you have a spectacular TV product. I think this is the best media product you’ll ever see. All of that together has really helped us grow the fan base over the past few years.”
During last year’s match at the Allianz Arena, gamblers increased Munich’s coffers by $77.5 million. Matchday merchandise records were broken – sales were the highest ever for a game outside the US – and the match was watched by 8.2 million people worldwide.
‘In a nutshell it was the most successful international match the competition has ever had. After the final whistle, people were singing Country Roads in the stadium,” Steinforth adds. “Started last year with Tom Brady for the very first game and now Patrick Mahomes, Tyreek Hill, the Patriots. It’s definitely a dream combination.’
Since 2007, 41 regular-season games have been played outside the U.S.: 36 in London, four in Mexico City and one in Munich. As Frankfurt prepares for its football celebration, there are strong rumors that Spain will also host a match in the near future.
“It’s fair to say there’s a lot of interest on the part of the League to see what the future holds for us, and a lot of excitement about international competitions in general,” says Steinforth.
‘We now also have a dedicated managing director for international in New York who brings even more attention to all kinds of internationally related topics than was possible in the past.
‘It is good to see that there is also more and more interest and enthusiasm at team level. If you go back 10-15 years ago when it all started, it wasn’t always easy to find teams willing to make those trips.
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‘This seems to have changed dramatically as all teams – or many of them – now see the value of international and how it can help them grow their fan base or help the League grow the fan base for American football in general. That is certainly an exciting development.’
No sport is better at greed than the NFL. Wanting to grow the game beyond its borders, it extended the regular season from 16 to 17 games in 2021. In a related measure, it was determined that every team must play abroad at least once every eight years.
Later that year, 18 of the 32 teams opted to participate in the global rights program, which allows teams to market abroad such as in the US, sell merchandise, organize fan events and commercialize. The Bears, Vikings, Jets, 49ers, Jaguars and Dolphins can be marketed in Britain, as can the Chiefs, Patriots, Buccaneers and Panthers in Germany.
Over the next two weeks, the Chiefs and Patriots will be nominal hosts, each giving up a home game. But they have both invested significantly in their new homes, with the Chiefs spending $1 million on fan events.
“The two designated teams, the teams that own the marketing rights that are playing, are strongly activating in Frankfurt,” says Steinforth. ‘The Chiefs have rented their own ship, which docks in the center of Frankfurt on the River Main.
“New England has a Patriots Haus in Frankfort and there are a lot of fan activations, stakeholder events and VIP dinners.
The Chiefs’ opponents for this game are the equally talented and successful Miami Dolphins
American football has become very popular in Germany, where millions of people watch games
‘For us it also shows the excitement of all the global market teams – teams that don’t play here, like the Panthers, are also doing their own activations around the Frankfurt Games.’
With Swift set to kick off her tour in Buenos Aires, Argentina on Thursday, could the pop princess show up and make it to the retractable roof of Deutsche Bank Park?
Steinforth, who has a fine line in understated humor, smiles.
“Apparently there’s a gap in the tour, so we’ll see what happens.”