The landscape of the NFL’s international games for next season continues to take shape. The league announced on Friday that Dublin will host a contest in 2025. 
To little surprise, the Steelers will serve as the designated home team for the NFL’s first regular season game in Ireland. Croke Park – which hosted a preseason contest between the Steelers and Bears in 1997 – will be the venue. Dublin was known to be a strong contender to host a game in 2025 with the league having done extensive background work to explore staging games there.
“We are very excited to be the designated team in the first regular season game to be played in Ireland this upcoming season,” a statement from Steelers owner Art Rooney II reads in part. “The opportunity for the Pittsburgh Steelers to play in Ireland is truly special, not only because of the Rooney family history there, but also to play in front of the growing number of Steelers fans in Ireland.”
The Rooney family’s ties to Ireland include the fact that Rooney’s father Dan served as the U.S. Ambassador to the country from 2009-12. The Steelers are among the teams with international marketing rights in Ireland and Northern Ireland; they also have a formal partnership with the Gaelic Athletic Association. As a result, the Steelers represent an obvious choice to take part in the 2025 contest, their opponent in which will be unveiled at a later date.
Next season will see three London games on the international schedule, with the Jets, Browns and Jaguars known to be participating. 2025 will also see the league’s first game in Berlin (featuring the Colts) and Madrid (featuring the Dolphins). It was announced yesterday that Melbourne will begin hosting games in 2026, while a long-term arrangement with Sao Paulo is being considered. Paris is known to be on the NFL’s radar, and it will be interesting to see if games are scheduled there in the near future. In any case, Dublin will look to join the growing list of regular host cities for NFL games.
As Longshanks stated many moons ago…..Irish…..
It’s not his Island
At this rate, eventually they’ll be playing games everywhere but here.
It’s going from 5 out of 272 this season to a maximum of 8 out of 272. At that rate, we’d all be long dead before that happened.
On the bright side, we still host the pre-season games!
I’m sure this is good for the NFL, but it’s not good for the fans of the NFL. Maybe less on the announcements, fans aren’t typically overjoyed their team is playing half way across the globe. It’s not like we get anything out of it.
If there were Martians, the NFL would play on Mars.
To make it fair
Can we have more
Ronaldo & mbappe soccer gms in US?
The EU may ban American travel by then in response to Trump’s trade wars and humanitarian crimes.