How Did the Germans Fall in Love With American Football?

Even though it is called American football, the sport has long crossed national borders and gained fans all over the world. The Germans above all European countries are crazy about the complicated and violent sport from thousands of miles away.

On Sunday, the National Football League (NFL) made its regular-season debut at Allianz Arena in Munich with a game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Seattle Seahawks. 3 million fans requested tickets for this match, but unfortunately the stadium only seats about 75,000 people. That didn’t stop the German football fans from traveling to Munich and celebrating this historical sports event. The city’s streets were full of fans who couldn’t be in the Allianz Arena, but wanted to be as close as possible to the game they love.

That is a realistic snapshot of football in Germany at the moment. But how did the Germans fall in love with this foreign sport?

30 years ago, American football was still a strange sport for the Germans. They have never seen anything like it, and even those who played it had gaps in their understanding of the game. The NFL then launched NFL Europe and got the ball rolling. In any other European country, the teams couldn’t attract fans, except for Germany. The German teams drew 30,000 fans to the games which would turn into a big party afterward.

In 2007, NFL Europe got cancelled. The NFL sniffed more money by playing a few games overseas with the existing NFL teams, instead of financing a whole league in Europe. But even though the professional league that the Germans loved so much vanished, 15 years later there are somehow even more fans than before. Germany now is hosting Europe’s largest NFL fan base and American football is the second most popular sport in the country, behind soccer of course.

One of the reasons for the rising popularity of football in Germany is the broadcast that makes NFL games accessible to the fans. With the easy-to-understand commentary, the complicated sport is more comprehensible to people beginning to watch the sport, not just the die-hard fans.

Another reason is the European League of Football (ELF) which was launched in 2021. The games attract more than 10,000 fans, even though the players aren’t pros like in the NFL. This once again shows the Germans’ passion for the sport.

The NFL believes that there are more opportunities for football to grow in other countries, as the sport can’t really become more popular in the United States. Germany has long been a grateful supporter of this growth, the center of European football.

It was very much visible on Sunday in Munich that the Germans love football for the same reasons the Americans do: For the community within the sport, for watching the games with friends, and for cheering on the team they support. While the Buccaneers beat the Seahawks in Allianz Arena, the fans had the biggest party in German football history.