Chiefs-Dolphins in Germany Sells Out With Over One Million Fans in Queue
Last year, the NFL played its first regular season game in Germany. The Buccaneers‘ 21–16 win over the Seahawks was a resounding success, drawing 69,811 fans to Allianz Arena in Munich on a brisk Central European day in the middle of soccer season.
If possible, Germany may have solidified its American football-loving reputation even further on Tuesday.
The Chiefs and Dolphins‘ November 5 game at Deutsche Bank Park in Frankfurt sold out in 15 minutes Tuesday morning, filling the 48,000-seat stadium. 1,420,587 people were in the online ticket queue within just two minutes—a figure that would represent about 1.7% of the German population.
The number of fans in the queue, in fact, exceeded the population of Frankfurt by well over 600,000.
Germany has long been a hub for American football, hosting five NFL exhibition games in the 1990s five franchises in NFL Europe in the '90s and 2000s. "The league estimates it has several million more fans in Germany than in England," Rodger Sherman of The Ringer wrote in November ahead of Tampa Bay and Seattle's clash.
Kansas City, incidentally, played in the first NFL exhibition game in Berlin in Aug. 1990 shortly before Germany reunified. The Chiefs lost to the Rams 19–3 at the Olympiastadion.
