(Reuters) – The city of Munich has been selected to host the first-ever National Football League regular-season game to be played in Germany during the 2022 season, the league said on Wednesday.
Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich’s stadium, known as Allianz Arena, will host two of four games being played in Germany over the next four years while the other two will be held at Frankfurt’s Waldstadion.
“We are very pleased to welcome Munich and Frankfurt to the NFL family and are excited to reward our fans in Germany for their passion by bringing them the spectacle of regular-season NFL football,” said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
The NFL estimates it has 19 million fans in Germany.
The first game in Munich will be one of five international games staged by the NFL during its 2022 season, a lineup that also includes one in Mexico and three in Britain — two at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and one at Wembley Stadium.
“It is a great honour for the state capital Munich to be the first German city to stage a regular-season NFL game,” said Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter.
“Many Munich residents are big football fans and they will be thrilled that this spectacular sporting event is coming to their city.”
The NFL said the selection process for games in Germany began last year with initial expressions of interest from nine cities from which Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich were invited to participate in a full evaluation.
Home teams for international games will be announced in the coming weeks, with both the dates and matchups to be confirmed in conjunction with the release of the 2022 NFL regular-season schedule announcement later this year.
(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
