In the NFL’s ongoing quest to bring American football to the entire world, Paris and Dublin are among the cities that are being evaluated to potentially host future games.
Henry Hodgson, general manager of the NFL’s UK office, told the Irish Times that the league is looking at several cities to determine whether they have a suitable stadium to host the NFL and a fan base that would be enthusiastic about attending NFL games.
“There’s a feasibility study, as we would call it, in a number of different European cities and Dublin is one of those,” Hodgson said. “Looking at the stadiums, taking local meetings . . . we’ll take away all of that information, digest it and determine what the next steps are. That’s something that’s happening in Dublin, it’s happening in Paris for example, and a number of other cities around the world as well.”
This year the NFL is playing three games in London, one game in Munich and one game in Sao Paulo. Next year Madrid will host a game, and Mexico City is expected to get back into the mix. The league has also indicated that Australia could host a regular-season game. International games continue to draw big crowds paying high prices for tickets, and the time zones can give the NFL the ability to open new broadcast windows for games that kick off at unusual times but can still draw big ratings in the United States. It’s easy to see why, from the league’s perspective, increasing the number of international games is an ongoing priority.