Two miserable American football teams, the Carolina Panthers and the New York Giants, dueled in the Munich Allianz Arena on Sunday. The league’s cash register is still ringing: the goal is sales of $25 billion per season.
Return game in front of 70,000 spectators, pathos included: The Carolina Panthers and the New York Giants duel in Munich.
Kolbert Press / Christian Kolbert / Imago
The RTL presenter delivered the most convincing performance of the day before kick-off. It was an impressive acting achievement that she managed to talk about the “most important NFL game” of the season without having to burst into laughter. The Carolina Panthers dueled with the New York Giants on Sunday afternoon in Munich; it was a sportingly irrelevant duel between two teams that will have nothing to do with the play-offs. As if the Bundesliga would send Bochum and Augsburg to the USA to promote German football. A bit grotesque, certainly, but also consistent.
Munich 2024 was the 55th competitive game of the National Football League outside the USA and the fourth game in Germany in the past two years. With playmakers Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady, the league initially sent two of its superstars to the growth market of Germany. But now said: The Germans can now get used to everyday life, which can be boring even in the glittering world of the NFL.
The biggest attraction on Sunday was Giants quarterback Daniel Jones. And only because he once again proved that there is probably no player contract in world sport with a worse price-performance ratio than his. The 27-year-old, who has won a single playoff game in his career, earns $40 million a year. And has been one of the worst quarterbacks in the league for years. Jones was also one of the main reasons the Giants suffered their eighth loss in the tenth game on Sunday.
Giants quarterback Daniel Jones makes $40 million a year.
Revierfoto / Imago
According to the NFL, more than three million people tried to get tickets for Sunday’s game
But the numbers prove the NFL strategists right. Alexander Steinforth, who is responsible for Germany at the league, said: “The first time we could have sold three million tickets. And this year there were even more people in line.” However, speculators who wanted to sell their tickets on the gray market for a few euros of profit were caught off guard – many tickets were available for significantly less than the purchase price. Which was undoubtedly due to the manageable attractiveness of this game.
But in terms of attention, the plan worked. Comfortable images from the Hofbräuhaus were transported into the American rooms, clichés of Germany that perhaps help to preserve the politically somewhat porous German-American friendship (no, we’re not talking about the very good band).
Former national team manager Oliver Bierhoff is now wandering in the orbit of the NFL
The game also received a lot of media attention, albeit sometimes with the depth of the “most important NFL game of the year” assessment mentioned at the beginning. Former football professional Oliver Bierhoff, for example, gave an interview to “TZ” because he supports the New England Patriots in building their brand in German-speaking countries. Bierhoff said: “The NFL is excellent at creating an emotional connection and appealing to new target groups. The continuous media support of the teams, the proximity to the players and the diverse content – these are success factors that can also be transferred to other sports.”
They were captivating statements from the man who was manager of the German national football team until 2022. And with each passing year they became more and more alienated from their audience because the chronically cold manager completely lacked a feeling for the base. It’s hardly surprising that he sees the NFL, which shields its professionals in oversized training centers like in a high-security wing, as a prime example of “closeness.”
The fact that figures like Bierhoff are floating around in the league’s orbit shows how big American football has already become in Germany. The NFL will also play a game here next year, and the debut is also planned in Spain, at Real Madrid’s Estadio Santiago Bernabeu. At the start of the season, the league traveled to Brazil for the first time; The effort to make the NFL a global event beyond the Super Bowl is massive. Somehow, league commissioner Roger Goodell has to get closer to his goal of $25 billion in sales per season by 2027, which is more than the gross domestic product of Armenia.
There is still a shortfall of almost 5 billion, but growth is steady. And is likely to continue unabated in Europe. As long as millions of people are trying to get one of 70,000 tickets for a Kehraus game in Munich, Goodell doesn’t have to worry about the security of his job. Under the league boss, who was appointed in 2006, the NFL has broken all commercial records, for which he can be credited: He earns more than $60 million per season.
