The Pitch: Croke Park set to host Steelers in biggest ever sporting event
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The Pittsburgh Steelers will host a Dublin ‘home’ fixture next year at Croke Park, The Pitch understands.
The match will surpass the Ryder Cup, Europa League Final and Open Championship by becoming the single biggest sporting event ever staged on the island of Ireland.
There is a strong expectation that the venue will stage the first of a regular fixture within the NFL roster, with the organisation set to bring 16 games outside America each year.
The Steelers tie for the 2025/26 season will not officially be announced until it receives formal Government endorsement, a formality which was just missed by the dissolution of the Dáil last week ahead of the general election and comments by NFL’s Roger Goodell in Munich on Sunday.
Once a new Government is formed in early December it’s expected that the NFL Commissioner will formally announce Croke Park ahead of Christmas.
Goodell hyped speculation on Sunday that a game might be on the horizon for Ireland when he said that there was potential for one here, stopping short of outright confirmation or naming a venue.
“We’re definitely going to Spain, we’ve announced that,” said Goodell in an interview which on the NFL Network.
“We expect to return to Mexico City, we expect to return to Brazil, we will certainly be back in the UK.
“And we are also looking at the potential of a game in the UK area, in Ireland, possibly – that’s a possibility.”
The Pitch understands a delegation from the GAA and Croke Park were at the Allianz Arena in Munich for the New York Giants 20-17 defeat to the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, and met Goodell ahead of his comments.
The confidence that he and the world’s richest sports brand have in Croke Park marks a significant milestone for the GAA and its stadium following a long-running strategy and partnership with the Steelers going back many years.
In 1997 the side played a friendly pre-season game at the stadium but this will be the first fully competitive league game for any NFL side here, coming in late Autumn-early winter of 2025.
Croke Park’s advantage over the Aviva Stadium, which hosts the annual NCAA College Classic, apart from its size, is the marketing rights it owns in Ireland with the franchise.
This is similar to other European venues with other NFL sides from the US’s east coast – teams from the west coast have built similar arrangements with Asian and Australian surrogates.
By bringing the world’s wealthiest domestic league around the world, the NFL is embarking on a significant marketing opportunity to generate and build greater fan bases outside of the USA and into other significant territories.
The Croke Park fixture will give the venue, GAA and Ireland enormous visibility for a game which is likely to attract up to 25m live viewers in the States, and a total audience of up to 117m people, who catch NFL broadcast action each week.
The value of the event itself could have a direct economic impact for Ireland of €300m, as tens of thousands of overseas visitors pour into the country for the fixture.
More than 50,000 international fans could make the trip to Ireland for the game, bringing with them an enormous economic impact to the country.
Last year 40,000 Americans travelled to Dublin for the historic Aer Lingus College Classic game at the Aviva Stadium between Notre Dame and Navy resulting in an economic impact of €180m.
With the 82,000 capacity of Croke Park set to be slightly reduced due to the erection of temporary seating on Hill 16, the approximately 75,000 who will attend the game represents a significant increase on the college game numbers.
Currently it’s not known who the opposition will be, but the New York Jets have a traditional link with Ireland, as well as marketing designations established here also.
Getting the Government’s formal support through an MoU between the Irish state and the NFL will be one of the most urgent first actions for the incoming cabinet once a new Government is formed and the new Ministers for Tourism and Sport are in place.
The NFL designation of one of its games to Croke Park is as big as it gets in world sport with significant works set to be achieved at GAA HQ in advance of the Steelers arrival at what is Europe’s third biggest stadium.
As well as seating on Hill 16, modular dressing rooms will be constructed ahead of the match to cater for the huge numbers who make up playing, coaching and additional staff for both teams.
The Irish football squad uses one coach to ferry its teams to the Aviva Stadium for each game, while NFL sides use up to eight coaches to bring in players, coaching staff and support teams for each match adding a logistical scenario for the GAA.
However, Croke Park satisfied all of the criteria that will be required for the event when Steelers and NFL operational teams visited the stadium this year.
While the value of the Pittsburgh Steelers brand currently sits at $5.3 billion (Forbes), playing in a league which generated more than $20bn in revenue last year, the NFL won’t be a hugely significant cash generator for Croke Park – coming in at less than €1m.
There will be some costs associated – like the seating, temporary dressing rooms and additional hospitality facilities – however the overall value to the country and to the economy will be hugely significant through hotel and accommodation, food and beverage spend and ongoing tourism spending.
An added boost is that the game will come in the tourism off-season generating hundreds of millions of euros extra that otherwise wouldn’t be achieved in a ‘normal’ year.
Future values based on visibility to US audiences will be most significant in the medium to long term, although these figures are impossible to predict but will add value if the game becomes a regular fixture here.
While a one-off game in Croke Park is an incredible achievement the consistent value is an ongoing return, something we don’t get with Ryder Cups, Opens or UEFA football finals.
The relationship developed by the GAA with the Steelers and the NFL marks a major strategic success for Croke Park, its Stadium Director Peter McKenna and Secretary General Tom Ryan.
The venue has hosted two ‘Watch Parties’ in recent times – events where fans come and watch the Steelers in action on screens while enjoying food and beverages, with these also being attended by those involved with the team.
Key to the NFL coming to Ireland has been the relationship with the Rooney family, owners of the Pittsburgh franchise, since the team’s foundation in 1933 by Art Rooney, whose family emigrated to the US in the 1840s.
Dan Rooney, the colourful US Ambassador from 2009 to 2012, and founder of the Ireland Fund philanthropic trust has been canvassing NFL Commissioner Goodell regularly to bring the Steelers here.
His own son Dan Rooney III, who was in Croke Park for the September Watch Party, told the New York Times: “It’s about growing the game of football and growing the Steelers brand.”
The elevation of the Steelers brand here appears locked in, as is Croke Park and Ireland’s brand reputation as a serious player on the international sporting events stage.
Before last week’s announcement by the Department of Sport that it will continue to fund the Football Association of Ireland for another four years, that figure had already reached €67.5m.
In its new arrangement with Abbotstown the Irish Government will see its bailout of football rise to €91m, with an extra €6m in public funding per year, up to 2028.
€33m of this total was paid through the Covid Resilience Scheme with almost €34m handed over through a series of bailouts, designated through a multitude of grants and schemes to keep the association afloat.
Meanwhile the criminal investigation into the cause of the 2019 FAI collapse appears stalled with no findings so far by the Corporate Enforcement Agency.