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
I loved that actor too who played that character
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.
You could spend a small fortune to follow your team and see the world while you’re at it. Ireland would be a decent road trip.
When I was living in Georgia, I waited for the cycle to come around when the Lions would play in Atlanta. 2014 was finally the year, then the league announced that game would be played in London. So, we went. We had a great time and the Lions won on a late field goal. Flying back to Atlanta the next day with a plane full of disappointed Falcons fans was icing on the cake.
For 2025 the AFC gets the extra home game, look at the 6 announced International games “home teams”: Colts, Steelers, Browns, Jets, Jaguars, and Dolphins. For those teams their 9th home game is an International game. With the weird arrangement the Jaguars have, they only had 7 home games this past year.
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.
You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?
What humanitarian crimes?
The Ravens need to get them marketing rights in Northern Ireland, keep that Irish rivalry going.
Do teams have a choice in this nonsense or does the NFL pretty much pimp out the players and teams to the highest bidder? Seems like these games disrupt the players leading up to the game and the following weeks. If I were an owner, I would not volunteer for this crap.
It is my firm belief that neither the commissioner or players union really give a rats butt about the players. The last thing these players need is to jump on a plane in the middle of the season and travel thousands of miles, do countless personal appearances, and then play a game, and jump on another plane back to the US. These men are already beaten up, concussed, have muscle strains and pulls and the commissioner and the owners force them to travel overseas, then after the game jump on a plane back. The actual players should be asked about their preference, not the owners and Roger. Jet lag, lack of sleep from being in a strange place, and all the press conferences and personal appearances have to reek havoc on a players ability to perform. In my opinion these international games are a waste of time and energy. Focus on fielding the best team possible, and stop trying to grind these players down to nothing for the sake of money.
I disagree …. Players are compensated very well. Deal with it. Plus I would venture to guess that most the players enjoy a free trip over seas where they otherwise would never see. If our bosses asked us if we’d like to take a company trip to Ireland, Germany , London etc… all expenses paid , I bet the vast majority of us would be all over it. I would.
Unless you are a hockey player, a boxer, or maybe a professional field hockey player you have no idea what it’s like to have the ever loving $h*t beaten out of you and then have to travel across 6 or 8 time zones, just get adjusted to that, then turn around and go the opposite way. Money doesn’t cure everything my friend. Since you want to compare. Try having a car wreck (not a fender bender), getting on a plane to France, take a walking touraround Paris, spend two days at Euro Disney walking around the park for 12 hours, all the while doing your job also, having a boxing match with Jake Paul, then 2 hours after that you’re on a plane back home for a one day respite before heading back to work, and while you’re driving there you wreck your car again, but you have to show up and do your job. I played football in college, and traveling (even just to the west coast) after 3 or 4 games wasn’t much fun, because you were beat all to heck and didn’t feel much like going out to see the sights because you still had to practice for hours and do your “job”. You may have an opinion on a “free” vacation, but I would much rather go after the season when I had gotten some rest and healed up so I could enjoy my trip. It’s my opinion, but it’s an informed opinion, and you are more than entitled to yours.
You make it sound like the new coast to coast College Conferences might be a bad thing.
Changing time zones is hard on people. If you got up at 7am on the east coast and that’s been your schedule forever then when you’re on the West coast suddenly your eyes pop open at 4 am. You’re starting your day 3 hours earlier, so if your schedule sent you to bed at 11 pm now you’re body is ready for bed by 8 pm. Trying to change to your new schedule messes up your sleep which messes up your body’s ability to heal itself. Then in a week you have to turn around trying to go back to the other schedule. I worked for a manufacturing company that switched shifts every week. You started on third shift 11pm to 7 am, the next was 2nd shift 3pm to 11 pm, then to first shift 7am to 3pm. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night wondering if I just got home or if I had to get up in 2 hours. Switching like that is hard on your mind and your body. And yes, just switching coasts gives an advantage to the home team, but in most cases the reverse is true the next week. Why do you think most NFL conferences are regional? Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cleveland for example. Not Miami, Dallas, Seattle and Chicago for instance. Play each other twice a year would really screw with people’s sleep rhythms. So yeah, I’m not sounding like it’s a bad thing, I’m saying it is a bad thing.
The NFL rewarding the most anti-Semitic country. Disgrace
Why are they going to Ireland?
“Seems there are Irish people everywhere, or people who want to be”. – Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris / Million Dollar Baby
a.) to sell jerseys and other merch
b.) to sell subscriptions to streaming services to allow the Irish to watch pre-season games
c.) to sell advertising rights to target the new audience that’s a fraction of the size of the one they’ve been abusing for 75-years but has now been conditioned to accept anything