Germany Set to Host First NFL Regular Season Game

As of 2022, there will be a total of five regular-season games played outside the US, one a season in Germany, three in London, and another will take place in Mexico. The teams and dates of these games will be released later in the year.

Germany has a long and seasoned interest in the NFL, partly fueled by the fact that around 40,000 American troops are still based in the country, and last year over 2 million Germans watched the Super Bowl.

Soccer team Bayern Munich will allow the use of their Allianz Arena stadium for games in 2022, and in 2023 the Deutsche Bank Park in Frankfurt will host a game, and both cities will then alternate for the fixture in 2024 and 2025.

The shift to increasing the number of games taking place overseas does, of course, mean some teams will have fewer games on their home turf and this may affect their overall regular-season record. Indeed this could lead to fluctuations in the NFL football computer picks, which are based on 100s of simulations that result in predictions for given games.

The NFL extended its season to 17 regular-season games last season, and there has been talk of a further extension, and the possible addition of new teams (both in the US and overseas) as the American Football league seeks to maximize revenue, and this news is something that commissioner Roger Goodell was keen to announce

"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," Goodell stated before adding.

"We look forward to staging our first game in Germany at Bayern Munich's fantastic stadium later this year and to exploring areas of a broader collaboration with the Bundesliga."

While initially moves to play NFL games outside of the US caused quite a lot of consternation, it's something that has proven a big success since the first occasion it occurred, back in 2005.

The first time a regular-season game was played outside the US was in October 2005, when over 100,000 spectators watched in Mexico City as the Arizona Cardinals beat the San Francisco 49ers 31-14.

Since then, London has hosted a total of 30 games, and cities such as Toronto have also played host to regular-season games, and it appears this will continue to expand as the NFL sees fit.

Four teams have been granted access to the German market; the Carolina Panthers, Kansas City Chiefs, New England Patriots, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but it's not been decided whether these teams will be taking the field in the opening matches on German soil.

NFL teams have already agreed to the playing of four international games per season, and this will seemingly increase to five. Interestingly, the Green Bay Packers are now the only team to have never played a game overseas.

Micah Soto

Update 16 February 2022