The NFL is heading to Germany – and the country has fallen for American football

A weekly ritual begins when the clock strikes 7pm on a Sunday in Germany.

Whether over a barbecue, a meet-up with friends, or from the comfort of their homes, hundreds of thousands settle in for their dose of NFL action, much like their American counterparts.

On the channel that broadcasts the German versions of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! (Ich bin ein Star — Holt mich hier raus!) and Germany’s Got Talent (Das Supertalent), fans can watch one of the early slate games live followed by another in the later slot. Two games for, well, nothing. The free-to-air German-language broadcast makes viewing easy and is helping to attract a new generation of NFL enthusiasts in Europe.

Close to 70,000 will visit the sold-out Allianz Arena in Munich on Sunday as the New York Giants and Carolina Panthers face off in the final game of this year’s international series, giving German fans the rare chance to experience the NFL live on home soil.

It will be the fourth time Germany has hosted a regular-season game, the first being at the same venue in 2022 while Frankfurt’s Deutsche Bank Park played host to two games in 2023, which was the year RTL started broadcasting NFL games in the country after acquiring exclusive free-to-air rights until 2028.

The broadcaster’s audience is growing. On average, the channel brought in 710,000 viewers during the 7pm regular-season games in 2023, up from 660,000 the year before when it was shown on ProSieben, also free-to-air. The later game averaged 490,000 viewers, an increase of 50,000 viewers from the previous season, RTL told The Athletic. 

February’s Super Bowl saw an average of 1.71million fans watch on RTL, with peaks of up to 2.27m, the broadcaster said. In the United Kingdom, by comparison, viewership peaked at 761,000 and 996,000 on broadcasters Sky Sports and ITV respectively, the latter a free-to-air channel.

“The atmosphere we are trying to bring (to the broadcast) is first and foremost fun and excitement about the game of American football, get people excited and get them to fall in love,” Patrick Esume, an expert NFL commentator on RTL, told The Athletic, “and the second step is to try to get some deep insights for those fans who have been around the NFL for some time.”

Patrick Esume, commissioner of the European League of Football, takes a selfie (Jürgen Kessler/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Esume started playing American football at the Hamburg Silver Eagles before moving to the Hamburg Blue Devils. The German balances punditry with his role as the commissioner of the European League of Football, a professional American football league founded in 2020 which has 18 teams split into three conferences. This forthcoming weekend, however, is one of the most exciting weeks in his calendar.

“It is our little Super Bowl that we have every year. It has its own style, it is unlike any other atmosphere. It is not soccer, it is not NFL in the U.S. It is different and it is special,” Esume said.

“Free coverage was the kickstarter to propel the game and the NFL to another level,” he added. Paid options with increased coverage are now available through DAZN, the NFL League Pass, and RTL+.

Tom Brady acknowledges the crowd in 2022 after his Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Seattle Seahawks at Munich’s Allianz Arena (Sebastian Widmann/Getty Images)

Daniel Jensen hosts an NFL-dedicated podcast called the Footballerei Show from Hamburg. He told The Athletic that the now-defunct NFL Europe, a competition that existed on-and-off for 15 seasons in various guises until it finally folded in 2007, provided the foundations from which interest in the sport has grown. Germany had provided the majority — and the most successful — teams in that league.

“The NFL Europe league started a base interest which has evolved,” Jensen said, adding that the absence of Bundesliga games, the top division in German soccer, on Sunday evenings, also contributes to the NFL’s popularity.

Soccer is the national sport. Historically, Germany has always been successful internationally, winning the men’s World Cup four times and the women’s World Cup twice. And in Bayern Munich, the country also boasts one of Europe’s most successful men’s teams.

Yet, Bayern’s dominance has made the Bundesliga predictable in recent history. The home team of the Allianz Arena, where Sunday’s NFL game will take place, had won 11 consecutive league titles between 2013 and 2023 before Bayer Leverkusen broke the spell last season.

In the same period, there were eight different Super Bowl winners. The NFL’s ability to level the playing field with salary caps and the draft offers German sports fans a variety and unpredictability they don’t often get in soccer, a sport where the most successful teams are often the wealthiest, and who consequently attract the best players. The NFL also provides fans with the physicality and combativeness lacking in some other popular sports in the country.

Last year, the regular season game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins in Frankfurt sold out in 15 minutes, with 1.42million people in the online ticket queue within two minutes, according to Sports Illustrated. The game averaged a regular season record of 1.35m viewers and peaked at 1.51m on RTL.

According to the NFL, there are approximately 19million fans in Germany, with 3.6m (18.9 per cent) following the NFL closely.

“I think around 20 to 25 per cent (of viewers) have a good grasp of the game and the rules, but the vast majority is actually around American football because they love the atmosphere that the broadcast brings to their living room,” explained Esume.

“They are there for the social part of it and then through that fall in love. It is our job to ensure we get more football experts here in Germany.”

On Instagram, as seen in the table below, the Chiefs and the New England Patriots are the most popular teams in Germany.

“Different teams become popular depending on the era,” Jensen said. “All the German fans were into the ’90s Dallas Cowboys, Seattle Seahawks, and Pittsburgh Steelers, the Patriots and Green Bay Packers during the 2000s and 2010s, and the Chiefs right now. It is not like we have real roots with the teams like in America, so it is about finding a team you like.”

Ten NFL teams have international marketing rights in Germany as part of the NFL’s Global Markets Program, which allows franchises to build brand awareness and fandom beyond the US. Mexico is the only other country with the same amount.

It perhaps helps that there are plenty of German representatives in the NFL, too. Jakob Johnson is a fullback for the Giants, Marcel Dabo is on the Indianapolis Colts practice squad, while Minnesota Vikings running back Aaron Jones has worn a German flag on his helmet after spending time there during his childhood as his parents were in the U.S. Army. Indeed, the origins of the sport in Germany date back to when American soldiers were stationed in the country after the Second World War.

Amon-Ra St. Brown, a wide receiver for the Detroit Lions who was ranked the 23rd best player in the NFL by his fellow players in the NFL Top 100 Players of 2024, has a German mother, so possesses dual citizenship, and can speak German.

“St. Brown is not that much of a German sports star, like big soccer stars for example, more an NFL superstar at the moment but the next step would be to become more of a public figure in Germany and it would be very interesting to see if that is possible,” Jensen said.

Off the field, Gerrit Meier, head of the NFL’s international operations, is also a dual German and U.S. citizen. But for now, at least, some of the biggest stars in the country are former players who have become part of RTL’s expert line-up.

Esume said: “The vast majority of viewers see more of our on-air stars such as Bjoern Werner (former first-round pick and global ambassador for the Colts), Markus Kuhn (who played with the Giants), and Sebastian Vollmer (two-time Super Bowl champion with the Patriots).

“They are the true German rock stars when it comes to the NFL. They are even bigger stars than the active German NFL players because they are on our TVs every week.”

Encouraging for the sport, and RTL, is that younger audiences are showing an interest in the NFL. RTL recorded 23 per cent of their market, on average, as 14 to 29-year-old males during the 2023 regular season.

Duke Dennis returns an interception for a touchdown during a celebrity flag football game on 9 February, 2024, in Las Vegas (Ian Maule/Getty Images)

However, as Jensen points out, there is still work that needs to be done to increase participation.

The German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) has 500 registered football teams with more than 70,000 members, according to sports marketing agency SPORTFIVE.  As of 2023, the German Basketball Association (DBB) had 242,344 members.

“Participation (in Germany) is the part the NFL needs to develop and work on,” said Jensen. “Issues with concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) can be off-putting but that is why flag football will be good for the future.”

Flag football, where ball carriers are deemed to have been tackled when one, or both, of two flags attached to their waist are pulled off by a defending player, will appear at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

The NFL say the non-contact version of its sport is the world’s fastest-growing sport, with 20million players in 100 countries.

“Basketball is more developed in that part. It is a lot more of a domestic sport, people playing in our own league. But the NFL is more popular than the NBA right now,” he said.

There are 14 German players in the NFL Academy, based at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom. Since 2019, the program has provided full-time high-school education alongside American football training. More than 40 students have gone to the U.S. on scholarships, with 19 in NCAA Division 1 this season.

“The next step, I think, is to bring something like that to Germany,” Jensen added.

Whether it is for the entertainment, the variety or to watch homegrown players on the sport’s biggest stage, increasingly more Germans are booking out their Sunday evenings.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Meech Robinson)