Dublin’s Croke Park to host historic NFL fixture

The National Football League has confirmed a first regular season fixture in Ireland.

The Pittsburgh Steelers will be the host team at Dublin’s Croke Park.

Dublin will be one of three new cities to host regular season games next season with fixtures in Madrid and Berlin previously announced, while 2026 will see a game in Melbourne.

“The Steelers are excited and honoured to play in the NFL’s first ever regular season game in Ireland,” said Dan Rooney Jr, the team’s director of business development and strategy at a press conference in New Orleans.

“The Rooney family has deep ties to the island, having immigrated from there in the 1800s, eventually settling in Pittsburgh, PA, where my great grandfather would go on to found our franchise in 1933.

“We’re excited to represent our hometown of Pittsburgh internationally and play in front of a growing number of Steelers fans abroad.

“Today’s announcement builds off our deep connections to the island and charts a path forward to what we feel is a very exciting future for the Steelers in Ireland.”

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The NFL launched the International Series in 2007 when the New York Giants beat the Miami Dolphins at Wembley Stadium.

London remained the sole location until 2016, but since then there has been consistent expansion with Mexico and Germany staging nine games between them despite a two-year interruption due to Covid-19.

The current campaign began with the Philadelphia Eagles overcoming the Green Bay Packers in Brazil in what was the first of five international games this season and first games in Berlin and Spain have already been confirmed for 2025.

To this point, however, Dublin’s focus had been on the college game.

The Aviva Stadium has hosted the likes of Notre Dame, Northwestern and Florida State in recent seasons with two more games already scheduled for 2025 and ’27.

In 1997, the Steelers faced the Chicago Bears in the pre-season ‘American Bowl’ in Croke Park and, in recent seasons, the six-time Super Bowl winners have strengthened their links to Ireland when staging watch parties in Dublin as well as youth camps in Belfast and Cork.

Analysis – Fixture confirms Ireland as key NFL market

In revealing that the Steelers will host a regular season game in Croke Park next season, the NFL confirmed news that at differing points had felt both inconceivable and inevitable.

Pittsburgh have been making noises about a game in Dublin for the last number of years, while college football has found a regular home away from home in the city for over a decade.

Aided in no small part by the likes of Green Bay punter Dan Whelan, and kickers Jude McAtamney and Charlie Smyth, of the New York Giants and New Orleans Saints, coverage of the sport in the country has never been more extensive.

For fans of a certain vintage, however, the news that the iconic franchise will again play on their own doorstep, this time in a meaningful game, would once have been the stuff of fantasy.

The sound of commissioner Roger Goodell being booed by local fans at the NFL draft each April has become akin to an annual tradition, but his legacy outside of the United States will surely be viewed differently.

Growing revenues, a 17th regular season game and the return of not one but two franchises to Los Angeles have all been key points of his lengthy tenure, but the establishment and expansion of the International Series has perhaps been his boldest move.

Far from universally popular stateside when first introduced in 2007, few would have imagined the day the New York Giants met the Miami Dolphins at a sodden Wembley Stadium that in the future we would see so many games in so many different locales each season.

Several months before that first international game, Croke Park, which holds the Gaelic Athletic Association’s (GAA) biggest games of the season, staged its first rugby fixtures with the Ireland national team using the venue, while the Aviva Stadium was redeveloped between 2007 and 2010.

The stadium in the north of Dublin city had previously been opposed to hosting other sports, but it has become increasingly commonplace with Leinster playing last season’s Champions Cup semi-final against Northampton Saints and a United Rugby Championship derby with Munster in October.

Able to house in excess of 30,000 more fans than the Aviva Stadium, the size of the crowd that can be expected in Dublin no doubt appealed to NFL bosses, as would have the city’s proven track record of hosting some of the college game’s biggest teams.