The NFL regularly plays games in England, and occasionally in Mexico. But there’s a third international market the league is eager to gain a foothold in: Germany.
Peter King writes in today’s Football Morning in America that Germany is the NFL’s fastest-rising international market, and that the NFL would like to play in Germany every year starting in 2022 or 2023.
Germany is the world’s fourth-biggest economy, trailing only the United States, China and Japan, so it’s easy to see why the NFL thinks it could be a lucrative market. (Playing games in China or Japan would be a lot more difficult because of the longer travel for teams and the difficulty of finding a time to play the game that would work for both the local fans and the American TV audience.) Germany also has a solid American football fan base, stemming from NFL Europe, and an estimated 2.2 million Germans watched the Super Bowl.
The first game in Germany would likely be played at Allianz Arena, the 70,000-seat stadium where soccer team Bayern Munich plays, on a Sunday afternoon in Germany with a morning kickoff time for American viewers.
