College football has been around the world since Ireland first hosted a game more than 30 years ago, with locales as disparate as Tokyo and Toronto staging games.
Australians loved the touchdowns and halftime theatrics, not to mention the hot dogs and beer, the latter of which ran out during California’s 51-31 win over Hawaii in 2016. Fordham and Holy Cross have taken their rivalry abroad twice, the second time before not quite 2,500 fans in Bermuda in 1995.
Now, college football takes the leap again when Nebraska faces Northwestern in Dublin on Saturday in the first regular-season international game in five years.
”We intend to kick off the season every year in Ireland,” said John Anthony, founder of Anthony Travel and Irish American Events, the game’s organizer.
Ireland has a five-game deal in place for the series dubbed the Aer Lingus College Football Classic. Notre Dame was set to headline the first one, against Navy, in 2020 but it was called off because of the pandemic. Last year’s Nebraska-Illinois game was moved to Champaign for the same reason.
Notre Dame and Navy will now play at Aviva Stadium in next year’s opener. Based on the 2020 figures – 40,000 tickets sold in the U.S. – it should sell out with capacity near 49,000.
The Big Ten showdown Saturday will have attendance in the ”mid-30s,” Anthony said, including 13,000 fans coming from the United States.
Organizers were expecting 18,000 Americans and 5,000 Europeans with an economic impact of 63 million euros ($63 million) on the Irish economy. Besides the U.S. travelers, only another 3,000 are coming from outside Ireland. The economic impact has been downgraded to ”at least” 40 million euros ($40 million), Anthony said.
International ticket sales were hurt by COVID-19 concerns, and local fans have not seen an American football game live since 2016 when Georgia Tech beat Boston College, 17-14. It probably didn’t help, too, that both Nebraska and Northwestern are coming off 3-9 seasons.
Still, it’s providing the largest inbound tourism event of the year for Ireland. And as a Northwestern home game, it figures to draw more than the average attendance of 30,679 at Ryan Field last season.
Ireland Minister for Sport Jack Chambers sees it a long-term investment by government partners.
”The COVID backdrop obviously had an impact, but this is about getting it back and growing it over the next number of years,” Chambers told The Associated Press. ”It’s something we’re committed to. We’re…