Colts, Falcons Head to Berlin As NFL Touts Global Plans

Amid the National Football League’s fast-growing international ambitions, the league will return this weekend to what is, on many fronts, its top overall global market.

The Colts and Falcons will play Sunday at Berlin’s Olympiastadion, the sixth of seven NFL international games this season. While the league is increasingly looking at new frontiers such as the Middle East, and it plays more games overall in the United Kingdom, Germany forms a key core of the NFL’s worldwide plans.

Among the key indicators:

• Eleven of 32 teams have rights to Germany in the NFL’s Global Markets Program, including the Colts and Falcons, and a figure higher than any other country.
• Germany will be a fixture of the rotation of international games in upcoming seasons, with games coming back to Berlin in 2027 and 2029 and going elsewhere in the country in 2026 and 2028. Until Rio de Janeiro next year becomes the second Brazilian city to host an NFL game, Germany is the only country outside of the U.S. to have league contests in multiple cities. 
• The league claims to have more than 20 million fans in Germany, representing one of its top international markets, both in raw fan count and penetration relative to population. 
• Several NFL teams have marketing relationships with Bundesliga clubs, with the pacts looking to further leverage the crossover between football and soccer fandom. 

“Berlin is going to be something special given the last time we were there was 35 years ago,” said NFL SVP Gerrit Meier at the recent NFL fall meeting, referencing a 1990 preseason game there between the Rams and Chiefs amid the end of the Cold War and the pending reunification of Germany. 

The league’s activities in the country, home of the world’s third-largest economy, have been fruitful in recent years as it now reaches the German capital with a regular-season game. After starting with the first regular-season contest there in Munich in 2022, Frankfurt hosted two more in 2023, and then the league went back to Munich last year. 

Like other international trips for the NFL, the Berlin visit this weekend will be supplemented by a series of fan and flag football events, player meet-and-greets, and other community functions. 

The Berlin game, meanwhile, is expected to be the Indianapolis debut of Colts cornerback Sauce Gardner, acquired this week in a trade with the Jets. Gardner cleared the NFL concussion protocol Thursday.