Newsletter

American football lands in the Basque Country with an NFL star in its international expansion strategy

It is the king of sports in the United States. The audience figures speak for themselves: 120 million people watched the Super Bowl (the final of the national championship) in that country on February 13, which faced the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles and which ended with Patrick Mahomes raising his second Lombardi Trophy, the third for the Missouri franchise. The number is ten times greater than the audience that the average of the games of the NBA finals had a few months before. After becoming the most watched sport in its own country (baseball used to be), the National Football League, better known by its acronym NFL, has been working for years to expand to the rest of the world and popularize a sport that is rarely practiced in other countries. To do this, they have played several regular season games outside their borders for years (in Mexico, the United Kingdom and more recently Germany) and organize different activities in other countries to bring their sport closer. In this context, the star of the New Orleans Saints Cameron Jordan will visit the Basque Country in the near future.

Bilbao and the Basque Country activate the countdown to the 2023 Tour: “They’re going to fall in love”

Further

The ‘defensive end’, popularly known as the ‘quaterback hunters’ because that is their role on the pitch, to prevent the rival quarterback from being able to connect a pass with one of their receivers, will be in the Basque Country in the Easter week to record some programs with the official channel of the NFL as part of the league’s strategy to get closer to the public in other countries. This will be the first time that the NFL makes content in Spain and for this it has chosen one of its main stars as the protagonist, who will soak up Basque sport and culture for a week accompanied by local figures.

As reported in ‘100 yards’, an American football podcast from Cadena Ser that will collaborate with the NFL in preparing content in the Basque Country, Jordan will visit the three Basque capitals. In Bilbao, he will go to San Mamés on Saturday, April 15, to see the men’s (associated) Basque football derby between Athletic Club and Real Sociedad, where he will have the opportunity to talk with some rojiblancos players. Beforehand, he will experience the atmosphere prior to a football match on Licenciado Poza street in the Biscayan capital and on Sunday the 16th he will eat at the Eneko Atxa restaurant to immerse himself in Basque gastronomy. In Vitoria and Donostia he will record a program to get to know traditional sports from the Basque Country. Thus, he will attend an exhibition of ‘harrijasoltzailes’ and ‘aizkolaris’ in the capital of Álava and will learn to play football (soccer for the Americans) and baseball in Donostia with Mikel Merino and the pelotari Erik Jaka, confessed follower of the NFL. In turn, Jordan will teach both of them some basic notions about American football.

The landing of the NFL in Euskadi occurs thanks to an agreement between this league and the Basque Government, which will sponsor the series of content that the American football league will produce through the ‘Basque Country’ brand, according to Presidency sources at this newspaper. The two programs that will be recorded in the Basque Country will be broadcast through the NFL’s social networks, which have millions of followers, as well as on the ‘Game Pass’ platform, the league’s official channel. “The commitment is that in their media and networks they disseminate what is being done here with the ‘Basque Country’ brand”, they added from the Presidency.

Euskadi –all its institutions– thus continues with its commitment to major sporting events. 2023 is the year of the departure of the Tour de France from Bilbao and with a tour of one hundred of the around 250 municipalities. There have been international rugby championships and the pandemic prevented part of the soccer Euro Cup from being held in San Mamés. In the 2013/2014 season there was already a similar approach to the NBA, with a friendly between the Philadelphia 76ers against Bilbao Basket as a prelude to the World Cup that had one of its venues in Barakaldo and in which Stephen’s United States played its matches. Curry, among other stars.

basketball/api/img/player/coverimage/5/5084/159886/980/462" width="1.77" height="1" layout="responsive">

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Trending