On Friday morning the legendary Tom Brady floated into Munich, according to many experts the best American football player the world has ever seen. The man is adored by fans as “GOAT”, as the “Greatest Of All Time” because he has won more titles and set more records than anyone else in the history of the American professional league NFL. And because the greatest of all time and, of course, of all globes and galaxies has brought his playmates from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, nothing stands in the way of the most gigantic football spectacle that Germany has ever seen: On Sunday afternoon (3:30 p.m.) Brady’s Buccaneers meet in the Fröttmaninger Arena to the Seattle Seahawks. After a few test games during pre-season in the early 1990s, this is now the National Football League’s first real, serious league game on German soil. The league said she could have sold three million tickets for it.
Headquarters for all Seattle Seahawks fans: the Augustinian ancestral home.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have boarded the Hofbrauhaus.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
The arena doesn’t have much more than 67,000 seats, but significantly more fans seem to have flocked to the city. In the past few days, the NFL, its participating clubs and their fans have increasingly shaped the cityscape and let the city run warm and hot for the long-hyped event. The Augustiner headquarters on Neuhauser Strasse was already identified as “Seahawks Haus” last Sunday and flagged with the club’s banners. A little later, Tampa’s pirate logo was emblazoned over the entrance to the Hofbräuhaus, which the Buccaneers had summarily boarded and declared their temporary headquarters.
Other teams have also branded restaurants – like the New England Patriots the “reign times”.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
In the old town, other restaurants were “branded” by the NFL, as it is called in marketing jargon. Since then, stickers with the NFL logo, a coat of arms created especially for the Munich game, or just the words “2022 NFL Munich Game” have been stuck on doors and windows, signaling that fans are welcome there. In addition to Tampa and Seattle, there are other NFL clubs that have set up “hot spots” even though their teams don’t even play here: The Kansas City Chiefs, for example, have occupied Klosterwirt, the Carolina Panthers have occupied Hochreiter am Markt and the New England Patriots the “Reign Times” in the Valley. These are clubs that have already secured marketing rights for Germany with the NFL and are now using the opportunity to market themselves.
Not even the police have much objection to the peaceful takeover of the old town by the NFL company. “We assume that it will be a nice family sporting event, similar to the European Championships in the summer,” says Roland Helmig, the head of operations, in connection with all NFL activities this weekend. According to his investigations, “football doesn’t have these classic two camps that don’t agree with each other,” as we know it from football in this country. While there are various classifications up to high-risk games in view of some rivalries between clubs, Helmig sees the NFL duel as a “no-risk event”. He believes: “The fans just want to have fun.”
Criticism of the presence of football in the city has not yet come to light
They should get it, the enterprising NFL has already taken care of that. There has been an exhibition on Odeonsplatz since Thursday, where large-format helmets from all 32 NFL clubs were unveiled, as well as another example specially designed for the “Munich Game”. Fans can take selfies next to their favorite team’s helmets, but they can also slip underneath and have the busy helpers snap the photos the league has set aside. If the pictures are not enough as a souvenir, you can buy all kinds of fan articles in a container. Criticism of the occupation of the public space has not come to light, unlike last year, when a monumental Mercedes pavilion on the square caused protests at the International Motor Show (IAA).
This time the passers-by are more likely to ask: “Are the players coming here too?” Of course they don’t do that, during their stay in Munich they are shielded in their luxury hotels and only train to a large extent to the exclusion of the public, like Tom Brady and his so-called Bucs on Friday afternoon on the FC Bayern campus. The fans should spend the time somewhere else until the kickoff on Sunday.
Star quarterback Tom Brady trained with his teammates on the FC Bayern campus on Friday afternoon.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
On Saturday evening there are various parties in the city, almost all of which are already sold out. The TV channel Pro 7, which has been broadcasting NFL games on Sundays in Germany for years, is celebrating the NFL point game premiere in Germany with 2,000 guests in the Löwenbräukeller. The German fan club “Seahawkers” has reserved the Bräuhaus im Tal for around 800 like-minded people. And the German edition of the American magazine Sports Illustrated invites you to the chic P1. And many who didn’t get tickets for the stadium have secured tickets for the Rudi-Sedlmayer-Halle, where there is a public viewing of the game on Sunday.
Football heart, what more do you want?
Well, if you’ve been to an NFL game in London, you’re going to miss something. The NFL has been giving guest appearances in the British capital for years, up to four a year, and there it has taken up entire boulevards – such as Regent Street, London’s equivalent of Maximilianstrasse – or pitched its tents on the South Bank the embankment of the Thames. And there were and always are all kinds of hands-on activities where people can try out what it’s like to throw, catch or kick the egg-shaped football. There’s that in Munich too, but only on Sundays directly in front of the stadium. In the city center there was obviously no more space for it. In any case, the city successfully defended Marienplatz against a takeover by the NFL. The Christmas market is being set up there.