He Santiago Bernabeu and the Cívitas Metropolitano They have been fighting for many months to become the Madrid venue for an official match of the La Liga season. NFL. A path that capital of Spain has traveled with a certain timidity, letting itself be carried away by the interest of the American football league itself in expanding into new territories. And the NFL, which this year has played matches in London (England) and Frankfurt (Germany), plans to add a new country to its list of international duels next season. The finalists: Brazil and Spaincon Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Madrid as candidates, and the latter as favorite. For all that, THE WORLD has traveled to Frankfurt to see the New England Patriots – Indianapolis Colts and discover what it is like show for which the madridista stadium and the rojiblanco one yearn.
He Deutsche Bank Park of the Concord It debuted this year as the venue for an NFL match. The league had already reached Allianz Arena from Munich in 2022, on his first European adventure beyond London, and plans to return to the field of Bayern in 2024, but this time the city on the Main River has won the jackpot. The stadium has been key in its choice, but also the attached facilities, and this is where we must begin to visualize the surroundings of the stadium. Bernabéu and the Metropolitan to guess which one best suits the NFL needs.
Because the American league not only moves a game from the United States to another country in the world. Move all your product, all your showall its reason for being. Because the NFL, and American sports in general, is not only what happens on the grass or the track, it is also, and sometimes more important, everything that is generated around it.
In Frankfurt, after passing five security checks and observing the occasional sniper in the stadium towers, the fan finds several open areas in which to satisfy his desire for NFL and entertainment. The classic food, drink and music food trucks are joined by a multitude of stalls with different activities related to the NFL: throwing a field goal, acting as a receiver and catching a friend’s pass, testing how high we can jump… All of that is called ‘Game Day Experience‘ and occupies the area of two football fields. Again, return to the Bernabéu and the Metropolitano.
Still without entering the stadium stands, we continued on our way to look for the official NFL store, set up for the occasion in one of the attached pavilions. It’s not about selling Patriots or Colts clothing. Here the experience is total and the NFL offers its fans a megastore in which to find jerseys of the 32 teams in the league, sweatshirts, hats, scarves and all kinds of items from, we insist, all the clubs. “It’s crazy. Each person spends from 200 to 800 euros on each purchase. We sell millions every day“says one of the clerks. The store, open the three days before and on the day of the match, is a river of people. The match held in Munich in 2022 generated a impact of more than 70 million of euros. If this were achieved in Madrid, it would surpass events like the Marathon (42 million) and would fight with him Mutua Madrid Tennis Openone of the city’s major sporting events, whose impact reaches 130 million over two weeks.