Watch parties, clinics and Guinness: How the NFL builds a fan base in Ireland

DUBLIN — Shane De Lappe and Stephen Murphy arrived at Dublin’s Croke Park last month about an hour before the stadium gates opened. They weren’t going to see Gaelic football or hurling. Instead, the 30-something dads were there for a sold-out watch party hosted by the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Soon they would be inside, eating wings, hot dogs and Tater Tots and washing it all down with pints of Guinness as they watched a telecast of the Steelers playing the Colts in Indianapolis.

The NFL has played only one game in Ireland — a preseason contest in 1997. So, for now, the next-best NFL experience De Lappe and Murphy can get is attending a gathering with more than 800 other avid fans twirling Terrible Towels. Their dream is a trip to the United States to see the Steelers play in the Super Bowl.

“I would sell a kidney for it,” De Lappe said. “The two of us are Steelers fans, so hopefully we’ll get over there in the next few years.”

Short of that, they would certainly take a regular-season game in Ireland. If the enthusiasm of the fans at the watch party is any guide, the Steelers and the NFL could expect to sell out Croke Park’s 82,300 seats if a game in Dublin were announced. Many of them watch games on the NFL Network’s RedZone streaming service, play fantasy football and travel to London and the United States to see games. Boys are hooked on the Madden NFL video game and watch clips of games on YouTube.

“He got the gear, then the RedZone and that’s it,” said Chris Bull as his 11-year old son, Ruari, wearing a Ja’Marr Chase Cincinnati Bengals jersey, stood nearby. “He took an American football to school for show-and-tell.”

Bull, Paul Keane and Ben Deans, all neighbors in Dublin, brought their sons to the watch party and have held sleepover parties to watch the Super Bowl with their friends.

Despite the demand for all things NFL in Ireland, however, the league is playing a longer game. It is moving at a deliberate pace to ensure that sponsors, media partners and other key pieces — like a critical mass of committed fans — are in place before teams and dates are chosen for a game.

“The goal is not to be the traveling circus and turn up and then go away again,” Henry Hodgson, who oversees the NFL’s operations in the United Kingdom and Ireland, said at the watch party, which featured former Steelers players Willie Parker and James Farrior, and the team’s mascot, Steely McBeam. “It’s about putting roots down.”

The NFL is well established at home, so it has been expanding overseas for decades in search of new fans and revenue. Teams have been playing regular-season games in London since 2007 — the final London game this season was between the Jacksonville Jaguars and the New England Patriots on Sunday — and the league has increased the number of games and locations in recent years to include Mexico, Germany and Brazil. Next year, a game will be played in Madrid for the first time.

The league can increase the number of international games next year to as many as nine, up from five this year. Last month, Commissioner Roger Goodell said the NFL could ultimately play up to 16 games a year overseas, though it might require adding an 18th regular-season game.

But unlike previous international efforts dating to the 1980s, when teams played preseason games around the globe and the league ran a spring league in Europe, the NFL is now relying more on teams to lay the foundations in different countries.

The Los Angeles Rams have focused on Australia, Japan and other Pacific Rim countries, while the Miami Dolphins have forged connections in Brazil, Spain and other countries with ties to South Florida. The Kansas City Chiefs made inroads in Germany because the soccer team FC Dallas, which is owned by Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, has an alliance with Bayern Munich. The Chiefs generate more than 1 million euros ($1.1 million) in revenue in the country.

The Steelers have focused on Mexico, where the team became popular during their heyday in the 1970s, and Ireland, for personal reasons: The Rooney family, which has owned the team since Art Rooney founded it in 1933, emigrated from the island in the 1840s. In 1976, Dan Rooney, Art Rooney’s son, cohelped found The Ireland Funds, a philanthropic group that fosters stronger ties between Ireland and the United States and reconciliation with Northern Ireland. He was U.S. ambassador to Ireland from 2009 to 2012, and hosted flag football games at his residence on July 4 instead of baseball games. (He also found a statue of a raven there and had it buried on the grounds, not wanting any reminder of the Baltimore Ravens, the Steelers’ rivals.)

In the last two years, his grandson, Dan Rooney III, and his operations team have made a half-dozen trips to host watch parties and flag football clinics in Ireland, and Newry, the Rooney’s ancestral home in Northern Ireland. He has also forged relationships with business leaders, sponsors and media partners in the country.

“It’s about growing the game of football and growing the Steelers brand,” Rooney, the team’s director of business development and strategy, said in Dublin in September.

American football is barely played in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, but according to league estimates, 350,000 fans on the island follow or watch NFL games out of a combined population of about 7 million. The NFL has grown in popularity because of easy access to streaming packages, fantasy football and game clips on YouTube. NFL games are shown on Sunday nights when few other sports are being played, though given the time difference, viewership drops for the late games. Interest jumped this year after Charlie Smyth, a Gaelic football player from Northern Ireland, was signed as a kicker on the New Orleans Saints’ practice squad.

“The internet makes the world smaller,” said Michael McQuaid, a host of the Irish Steelers Podcast, who started a Steelers fan group. “There’s been a real shift now that there are many more fans here. The discussion now is how to create a Super Bowl-style event.”

The Steelers, who last played overseas in 2013, are eager to play in Ireland. Last month, Goodell quipped that a day doesn’t go by that he doesn’t hear from the Rooneys about the possibility of a game in Dublin.

“I have no doubt we will be playing in Ireland,” Goodell said last week. “I don’t know if it’ll be next year but it’s coming soon.”

Peter McKenna, who runs Croke Park, the home of Gaelic sports, said he was sure that tickets would sell out quickly if a game was announced in Dublin. Many of the ticket buyers would probably be Steelers fans from the United States, using the chance to see their NFL team as an excuse to visit Ireland. College teams have played in Dublin for decades and drawn sizable crowds, including in August, when 27,000 fans flew across the Atlantic to see Florida State play Georgia Tech.

But McKenna, Irish business leaders and the Steelers acknowledge that many steps large and small remain. The airport must make space for charter jets. The teams will need buses, hotels and training facilities, as well as additional security. The stadium locker rooms would need to be expanded.

“The NFL player is a massive man,” McKenna said, adding that league officials toured the stadium this summer.

The government is also trying to determine the economic benefits of an NFL game and whether they outweigh the costs. Local authorities would have to provide technological services and power for broadcasters, among many other services.

“We’re still in the exploratory stage,” said Paul Kelly, CEO of Failte Ireland, the national tourism authority running that analysis.

“To bring any major event, you are looking at the fees and support services, and it’s a multimillion-euro investment. But they bring significant benefit in return through taxes.”

In addition to the travel and game day logistics, the league wants to ensure that playing in Ireland accelerates business. The Steelers have been producing localized content on social media and bringing alumni to visit Ireland. The team has two media deals in Ireland, including one that broadcasts their preseason games. A game could draw even more lucrative deals.

“I don’t think you need to be laser-focused on a linear return on your investment,” said Paul McCann, CEO of a Dublin-based technology services company, Ergo, that is exploring a potential sponsorship with the Steelers. “The buyers of our services are C-suite and IT people who are usually sports crazy, so it’s a good connection” to be linked to the Steelers.

The Jacksonville Jaguars and the New York Jets are also making entrees into Ireland on top of their marketing efforts in Britain.

Like the Steelers, the Jaguars have taken former players to Ireland and hosted football clinics, and in April, they had an Irish fan announce one of the team’s draft picks.

“It’s definitely a growth market, and it’s famous for its love of football,” said Sarah Brookes, who represents the Jaguars in London. “Soccer is incredibly popular because it’s a global sport, but there is a huge proportion of fans who follow NFL football instead of soccer.”

The Steelers, though, with their deep ties to Ireland, appear to have the inside track to be the first team to play a regular season game here.

“They’ve taken a long-term sustainable approach,” said Mick O’Keefe, CEO of Irish operations for Teneo, a firm helping the Steelers with their strategic planning and communications in Ireland. “They didn’t come in wham bam and say, hey, we’re here and do a smash-and-grab. The foundations are now in place.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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