On a day that marked the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was wonderful to see the glamor of America’s sport on show in the German capital.
The Indianapolis Colts defeated the Atlanta Falcons 31–25 in overtime. Fishing out of a tortilla cannon, singing Country Road, watching Jonathan Taylor run 83-yards to make franchise history, hearing DJ Scooter in the endzone — Olympic Stadium was full of live entertainment and German clichés, but the 72,203 fans in the renovated Olympic Stadium loved every minute of it.
Bernhard Reimann, the Austrian tackle for the Colts, later said, “The Olympic Stadium in Berlin was crazy, what a great place to play football.”
A lot of work has been done to make the NFL’s return to Berlin possible. The two locker room areas were merged into one to accommodate the larger squads of NFL teams. Ten new sinks were added, as well as 11 toilets and 18 urinals. Four doors in the changing room area were widened, and the amount of hot water was increased.
A lot of work was done on the field to make the game possible, mainly where a plastic surface was laid down and then a new hybrid turf mat was sewn over it. Two pole vault runways were also destroyed.
According to the Berlin Senate, €5 million of funding will be available between 2025 and 2029 for the renovation of Berlin’s Olympic Stadium as well as other public sports facilities in Berlin. The fee is included in the total €12.5 million earmarked by the Senate for NFL games. Reportedly, the league is also investing around €50 million.
Olympic stadium prepared for the future
But now, Berlin is set to host NFL games without any changes for the next four years.
“We are now a multifunctional arena for soccer, track and field and American football,” Christoph Meyer, director of events and communications at the Olympiastadion, told DW.
“The renovation has been coordinated with the NFL and is designed with the future in mind for further games in 2027 and 2029. We are talking here about so-called ‘legacy measures’ that would avoid a temporary renovation in the future,” Meyer said.
These legacy measures certainly give this historic stadium the opportunity to become home to even more memorable sporting moments. After all, this is where Jesse Owens won four gold medals in front of Adolf Hitler, where Usain Bolt ran the 100 meters faster than any man (9.58 seconds), and where the great Zinedine Zidane inexplicably head-butted Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final. It is a place linked to the history of the city and indeed the country.
Modern stadium leaving Germany behind?
And yet, even this excellent stadium would not be able to keep up with the inevitable progress of modern arenas.
When Germany hosted the World Cup in 2006, many of the country’s stadiums were renovated or upgraded to modern, typical facilities for the time. The upgrades during Euro 2024 were welcome but investment in German stadium infrastructure, as many other regions can also attest, has been lacking in recent years.
In a recent interview with a German newspaper FaizArchitect Bianca Binder confirmed that Germany is an interesting market but she did not talk specifically about stadiums. Binder works for Populous, a global architectural design firm, and was the on-site project manager of the now famous Tottenham Stadium.
The Premier League club’s stadium is also one of the main venues for NFL games in London as it has a retractable pitch system that provides an artificial turf for American football. The new Bernabeu, home of Real Madrid and where the first NFL game in Spain will be played later this month, has an even more elaborate retractable pitch system where more surfaces can be managed and even maintained.
Admittedly, both Tottenham and Real Madrid have taken huge loans which will reportedly take more than 20 years to repay to build such stadiums. Such steps are not possible for all clubs or stadiums, especially in Germany where the operational framework is more complex.
Still, with the NFL now fully established in Europe and reports that the NBA is taking steps to create a European league in 2027, these investments appear to be smart choices for those interested in making the NFL a regular guest for years to come.
But what Berlin does have is history. Stadiums in Germany are cultural monuments, none more so than the Olympic Stadium in the capital.
“It’s very humbling,” Colts running back Jonathan Taylor said afterward. “It’s a historic place. To have people who have accomplished amazing things here, it’s great to feel like I’m part of that lineage.”
Teammate Zaire Franklin felt the same way. “Playing in Germany, I can’t say enough about the country, the hospitality and the historic venue, where we all know what Jesse Owens did years ago. Being in the crowd, we just said to each other: ‘Where would you rather be?'”
But with other European hosts offering more comfortable, familiar, modern stadiums, it’s fair to wonder how long teams, and perhaps even the NFL itself, will remain content with patchwork pitches and historic football venues, no matter how good the atmosphere and how rich the history.
Edited by: Sam Dusan Inayatullah