What Makes Allianz Arena an NFL Destination? | Stadium Wonders

If you're a soccer fan, you know this place. And if you're an NFL fan, you're getting to know it. This is the Allianz Arena in Munich, Germany, home of Bayern Munich, one of the biggest soccer clubs in all the world. They won 35 Bundesliga championships, 21 German Cups, six UEFA Champions Leagues, truly one of the greatest teams in all of sports. And on November 15th, it'll host the NFL for the third time. When the league played here in 2022, it was the first time the NFL had played a game in Europe outside of the UK. And since then, it's become kind of a regular fixture on the league's schedule abroad. Let's go check it out. This is the home of one of the biggest clubs in all of soccer, Bayern Munich. It's one of the great venues in all of Europe. You can see why a stadium this magnificent might host so many big, big events. It's hosted World Cup, UEFA Cup, NFL, Bayern Munich. It's been truly one of the sites of great sports in all of Europe. It opened in 2005, directly before Germany hosted the 2006 World Cup. Hosted many matches during that tournament, including a semifinal game here as well. Hosted the UEFA Champions League final in 2025, and will have it again in 2028. It's the first time since Wembley Stadium hosted in 2011 and 2013 that the same stadium hosted two UEFA Champions League finals so close together. It's not just soccer, many, many concerts as well. Just this summer, big acts like Foo Fighters, Linkin Park, BTS, Oasis coming next summer for three shows. It's gonna be a really big event for the whole city of Munich. Behind us you see the really signature feature of the Allianz Arena, these lighted panels. So they're made of LED lights, There's nearly 3,000 of them all around the stadium. They're lit up every night for a couple of hours, and they're lit up obviously for events, but not just on event day. There's a highway behind us, also a metro line, and so fans and just commuters going by can see the stadium all lit up in various colors. It's 60 million colors they're able to do. It's an incredible piece of technology. They can do everything from the German flag, local team colors. When the NFL was here, it lit up like an American flag. They do all these different kinds of things to change the view of the stadium on a daily basis, depending on what they're doing. What's going on either in the stadium, in the area. The shape of these panels, kind of a diamond shape, looks a little bit familiar if you know the Bavarian flag. If you look in the center of the Bayern Munich crest, right, that blue and white kind of checkered pattern, reminiscent of the pattern you see behind us here. This area here, known as the Franz Beckenbauer Platz, which is named in honor of Franz Beckenbauer, whose statue you see behind us, truly the greatest player in German soccer history, an FC Bayern legend, a German national team legend, won the World Cup as a player, later as a manager, truly one of the greats, and he's really honored all around here with the statue you see here, his name on the plaza, inside the stadium his jersey number retired up in the rafters, just another way that they're honoring this legend of the game here. A few quick facts about the stadium. Seats 75,000 people. It's the second largest in all of Germany. The only bigger stadium is the stadium that belongs to Bayern Munich's arch rival Borussia Dortmund. But you won't see 75,000 people here for the NFL. One reason for that is because the seats below us here are actually not really seats, it's a standing area for the really hardcore Bayern fans known as Ultras. So standing on these areas, they can really pack them in during a soccer game, but for the NFL and for concerts, they'll swap it out and they'll add actually seats there, which reduces the capacity a little bit, makes the environment though a little more comfortable for the average fan. One of the features you see above us here is an interesting roof. So in the United States, there's not a lot of stadiums that are built this way, where they're partially enclosed. There's room for the sun to come in and for the elements to affect the players on the field, but the fans, they're all covered by the roof. And then when that rain comes, they stay dry. The climate here in the south of Germany, you can get quite wet, especially in the wintertime. NFL fans coming here for the game in November, they'll be able to have a little more comfort than they might back home. One of the features of the stadium you see behind us, the words written in the sands there, Mia San Mia, means we are one. It's kind of like a club motto. It's one of the ways that the Bayern fans identify themselves and really build their club identity. When the NFL started expanding its international reach in 2022, it's natural that it started here. Germany has a long history with American football, thanks to the U.S. military's continued presence in the country after the end of World War II. It even has a 14-team football league that has existed since 1979. This year's game will be the sixth NFL game played in Germany, more than the rest of the countries in mainland Europe have hosted combined. In addition to the three Munich games, the NFL has also played twice in Frankfurt and once in Berlin, with return trips to Berlin set for 2027 and 2029. Add in the scheduled 2028 game in Munich and Germany will have hosted nine games in an eight-year period. When the Patriots and Lions play here on November 15th, it'll be the third time the NFL has played in Munich. In 2022, the Buccaneers and the Seahawks played in what was the first game played in Europe outside of London. Then in 2024, you had the Giants and Panthers, and the NFL is going to come back two years from now for another game. Every other year, it kind of seems to be the sequence that the NFL is playing here. One of the first things I noticed when I got here was how short the grass is, right? Obviously, soccer and American football, much different playing surfaces. So that's one of the things the organizers here are going to have to deal with. When the game here was played for the first time in 2022, a lot of complaints about the quality of the field. Players and coaches of both sides complaining it was slippery and chewed up. Things like this. We saw similar complaints when the NFL first began playing in London. They figured things out there. 2024, not as much of a problem, but you see again here, it's set up now for soccer as we see it here today. But the NFL and the organizers here at Bayern Munich have to figure out ways to make sure the grass is as high quality as possible. They were saying maybe it's more likely that the grass will Stay in place until the match with the NFL, but then afterwards they're going to tear it up because obviously you have big football players running around and it's a lot more pound and pound style than soccer, which is more fleet of foot. The grass will get too chewed up to then play soccer on it afterwards. And the difficulty there being Bayern has a match just the weekend after the NFL game here. So a really quick turnaround to get everything back into playing shape for world-class soccer. There are challenges associated with playing NFL games in Munich. The playing surface, the arduous travel, and the question of squeezing games in around Bayern's schedule, to name a few. But Germany's appetite for football is real, and the Allianz Arena is an incredible venue. No wonder the NFL has made Munich a regular stop on its World tour