SBJ Football: Inside the NFL’s all-fronts hunt for more avid German fans

All 10 NFL clubs with commercial rights in Germany are taking over beer houses in Munich this week ahead of Sunday’s Giants-Panthers game at Allianz Arena. League strategists believe those teams sit at the center of their plans to turn casual and NFL-curious fans in Germany into avid fans, the sort most likely to buy merchandise, streaming packages and tickets.

About 19.6 million Germans call themselves NFL fans, with about 3.6 million of them identifying as avid fans, according to 2023 figures. Both those categories are up since the NFL first played a regular season game there in 2022, 18% and 13%, respectively. The game itself is great at growing the top of the funnel, but team fandom is a critical step toward avidity, said NFL EVP Peter O’Reilly.

“As we learn about fans, as they become deeper, they start to have a favorite team. We can customize a message to that person based on their favorite team, and then the clubs can engage too,” O’Reilly said. “That piece is part of going down the funnel, choosing who you’re going to fully get behind.” 

Germany is tied with Mexico for the most teams in any one foreign market. The 10 teams active there are the Falcons, Giants, Panthers, Lions, Colts, Chiefs, Patriots, Steelers, Seahawks and Buccaneers.

Those teams, challenged by a saturated market at home, see something in the Germany plan: A rare greenfield for fan development. “This is really a massive untapped potential,” said NFL Germany head Alexander Steinforth. “When in the U.S., obviously everyone already has their favorite teams, here you have a big pool of NFL fans, but only 50% -- or even slightly less than this -- have picked a favorite team.”

About 700,000 people registered some kind of interest in attending Allianz Arena on Sunday. With a capacity of 70,000, that means the NFL got more than 600,000 other contacts in the sales process; those who didn’t attend will be offered discounts on GamePass, merchandise or more details on how to follow the teams. Critically for the NFL, Steinforth said, it’s not all the same people as last time -- there’s a “healthy six-digit number” of net new additions to the database with each game so far.

“The proof of the success of these international games from a data capture perspective is that we’re still seeing a lot of new names coming into the database through that process,” Steinforth said.

After the NFL road show departs, Steinforth said, the NFL office in Düsseldorf, the 10 teams and German media rights holder RTL will continue the ground game, so to speak, of building NFL fandom year-round through flag football, content and events. Unlike the U.K. and London, strategists see Germany as a true full-country play, where every major population center is (potentially) commercially relevant.

When Ben Ruiz considers the 1,700 active members of NFL rosters, he doesn’t see a large, unwieldy group of football players. He sees a customizable, one-stop shop for authentic brand spokesmen across every category of consumer product you can imagine.

That’s how he’ll go to the market as the new VP/consumer products and strategy at NFL Players Inc., the for-profit licensing arm of the NFLPA.

“What’s so cool is that, with this subset of guys, in every single consumer base, every single consumer passion point, we have guys who are authentically in these worlds and are living those lifestyles,” Ruiz said, mentioning fashion, weightlifting and farm equipment as examples.

Historically, rank-and-file football players have been challenged commercially because of the sheer volume of names in the game, helmets that block their faces and the consolidation of economic power among the tiny cadre of cultural crossover stars. While that may have been true in the macro-culture world of yesteryear, Ruiz thinks today’s personalized, social media-driven culture has empowered niche brands and micro-influencers.

In that world, the diversity and depth of the NFLPA’s membership dovetails with a need for an authentic connection between a spokesman and brand, Ruiz said. “There’s a subset of guys, they’re not necessarily the biggest names to casual fans, but they’re an authentic voice in that subset, and that’s where we have a lot of space to explore in our entire portfolio,” he said. 

Ruiz joined NFL Players Inc. in September, but then went on paternity leave after his child was born, and his appointment was announced this week. He spent the last eight years at CAA Brand Management, handling licensing for clients such as Ford Motor Co., Anheuser-Busch InBev and Kodak . He reports to NFL Players Inc. President Matt Curtin, who joined in March (Ruiz is also a former SBJ intern).

NFL Players Inc.’s player services division is well-staffed to handle his vision, Ruiz said, but they will need to spend more time on consumer products than in the past, when they mostly worked on sponsorship deals. Of the players, he said, “We’ll treat this the same way an agency would treat a celebrity roster, or the way Disney treats its superhero roster.”

Missouri voters’ narrow vote to legalize sports betting triggered a contractual revenue boost for the Chiefs, team President Mark Donovan told me today. The Chiefs’ deals with BetMGM and DraftKings, signed when neighboring Kansas legalized sports betting in 2022 , included escalators that would go into effect if their businesses became legal in Missouri. The size of the escalator is unknown, but somewhere between 50%-60% of the metro area population is on the Missouri side.

Also, those contracts allow the Chiefs to sign a third sportsbook sponsor.

Donovan said it was too soon to say precisely what the Chiefs might do with the new sports betting law. The Chiefs are currently exploring options for either renovating Arrowhead Stadium or building new in the region, but their lease doesn’t expire until 2031. “We’ll look at the opportunities this creates in our stadium plans, but also in the near term, what can we do in the near term at GEHA Field.”

Donovan continued: “You’ve got to figure out exactly what you can do with this, and how you can leverage it, and maximize the opportunity. Today we don’t know what that is. We have a lot of learnings about what has been done in other states, and some of that has proved to be successful, and some of that has proved to be less successful today than it was then.”

Missouri will have 14 online sportsbook skins -- one for each of its six pro teams, my colleague Mike Mazzeo reported yesterday , one for each of its six casino owners and two untethered licenses, which will presumably go to DraftKings and FanDuel. There are also 19 retail sportsbook skins -- one for each of 13 land-based casinos, and one for each of the six pro teams.

• Under a new sports agency arrangement for Verizon, Genesco will handle the brand's NFL work, reports SBJ's Terry Lefton. Verizon has been a corporate sponsor since 2010 and recently splashed its brand on coaches’ headsets.

• The Panthers will host a private flag football clinic on Friday for 120 local kids and teachers in Munich, notes SBJ's Trevona Williams. At the end of the clinic, players will join in, giving locals a chance to meet the team and learn more about the sport. Panthers Director of Marketing Kalen Karahalios said they want to create opportunities for locals to connect with the team and make a real impact within the community.

• Fox Sports analyst Tom Brady will not be punished for his comments criticizing NFL officials Sunday because he didn’t meet the threshold for action, NFL VP/Communications Brian McCarthy told me.