The Green Bay Packers will face the Philadelphia Eagles in a Week 1 matchup in São Paulo, Brazil, in the first-ever regular season game in South America.
The game will take place on Friday, Sept 6 and will kick off the season for both teams. This will mark Green Bay’s second international regular-season appearance, following the team’s game in 2022 in London. The prime-time game will be streamed exclusively on Peacock with the start time yet to be determined. Fans looking to make the trip to South America and see this NFL game in person, can shop for tickets online using VividSeats.
- *New customers who purchase tickets through VividSeats can get $20 off a $200+ ticket order by using the promo code MassLive20 at checkout.*
If you need to travel outside your local area to get to this game, head over to TripAdvisor, VRBO, Marriott, Expedia or Booking.com for deals on everything from car rentals to airfare to hotels.
As of Friday, May 17, the cheapest tickets to the Packers vs. Eagles game in Brazil are $1,159 on VividSeats. Lower-level seats start at $2,669 on VividSeats.
The matchup will take place at the Corinthians Arena which is the home to the Brazilian soccer team the SC Corinthians and where they hosted both the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games. The game will also be the first time the NFL has played a game on Friday night of opening weekend in over 50 years (Cardinals at Rams, Sept. 18, 1970, was the last Friday night game).
The Eagles and the Packers last played in 2022, with Philadelphia winning 40-33 at Lincoln Financial Field. The Eagles and Green Bay previously squared off in a season opener back in 2010 as Philadelphia celebrated the 50th anniversary of the 1960 NFL Championship Team that beat Vince Lombardi’s Packers to win the title. That was the only playoff loss of Lombardi’s Hall of Fame career as a coach.
Who: Green Bay Packers vs. Philadelphia Eagles
When: September 6, 2024
Where: Corinthians Arena in São Paulo, Brazil
Stream: Peacock
Tickets: VividSeats
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LONDON (AP) — Several hundred thousand Irish viewers got a tutorial from Charlie Smyth on the difference between lining up a kick in Gaelic football versus a field goal in American football.
Smyth, who had just signed a contract with the New Orleans Saints, humbly told “The Late Late Show’s” national audience that an NFL kicker has to react quickly.
“You don’t have all day to look at the ball,” the 22-year-old Smyth explained. “You just have to go and kick it.”
Almost as quickly, Ireland has become part of the NFL’s international playbook. With Irish interest in the sport rising, Dublin is under review to potentially join the league’s growing list of international cities hosting a regular-season game.
“We’ve seen in the last 12 to 24 months quite a surge of interest there,” Henry Hodgson, general manager of the NFL’s UK office, said of Irish social media activity, merchandise sales, ticket purchases to London games and Super Bowl ratings.
Last year, the Pittsburgh Steelers struck up a partnership with the influential Gaelic Athletic Association to coincide with the NFL giving the team marketing rights in Ireland and Northern Ireland. The Jacksonville Jaguars also have the same rights, and the New York Jets added Ireland this year.
There’s also a new wave of GAA players getting NFL shots as kickers. Smyth signed a three-year deal with the Saints after coming through the league’s International Player Pathway program in the same class as Louis Rees-Zammit. Jude McAtamney of Rutgers signed with the New York Giants, and Mark Jackson kicked at the Steelers’ rookie minicamp.
To reflect the Irish trend, the NFL changed its UK social media handles to include Ireland. The Steelers, Jaguars and Jets also all went on location in Ireland to announce one of their NFL draft picks last month.
“Having a presence at all is such a massive change from even where it was 10 years ago,” said Stevie Howlin, a software engineer and Jaguars fan who announced the draft pick from Dublin. “Say if you wanted to buy a jersey, you’d have to go all over Cork — where I was living at the time — to try and find it and there was never any guarantee you would find one, whereas now most sports stores have NFL jerseys.”
The NFL will be in Dublin, too, this summer to inspect Croke Park and Aviva Stadium.
Five games will be played internationally in 2024 and the league plans to increase to eight or nine by 2025. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has said he envisions playing 16 games internationally on an annual basis eventually.
The Steelers played the Chicago Bears in the 1997 preseason at Croke Park. The GAA-owned stadium has a capacity of 82,300.
Aviva, which holds 51,700, has been hosting college football games for several years.
“There’s a feasibility study, as we would call it, in a number of different European cities and Dublin is one of those,” Hodgson said. “Looking at the stadiums, taking local meetings … we’ll take away all of that information, digest it and determine what the next steps are.
“That’s something that’s happening in Dublin, it’s happening in Paris for example, and a number of other cities around the world as well,” he added.
GAA spokesman Alan Milton said the organization — which is hugely influential in Irish society — would be “most welcoming of any event here” but added that a regular-season game is the preference as “the next natural step.” It would provide not only a revenue boost for the amateur organization but also international exposure for the stadium, which holds historical significance in Ireland’s fight for independence.
Brazil is hosting its first NFL game this upcoming season, when the league hold three games in England and one game in Germany. Spain will be added to the list in 2025.
As international consumer markets go, Ireland would be by far the smallest of the lot so far.
“At the moment we’re really considering more the depth of fandom and the opportunity to grow the fanbase in the market rather than looking at the revenue,” Hodgson said.
Other European locations will be considered, though Hodgson declined to specify more cities.
“We continue to look at and have interest in all the major cities across Europe. For now, Paris, Dublin — obviously we’re heading into Madrid in 2025 — those are the ones we’re most focused on in Europe,” he said.
The Spain game will be played at Real Madrid’s renovated Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, which includes a soccer pitch that retracts to make way for an artificial turf field that can be used for American football. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium has a similar system.
The Philadelphia Eagles will face the Green Bay Packers at Arena Corinthians in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Sept. 6 — on the eve of Brazil’s Independence Day.
Though the stadium capacity is under 50,000, Brazil offers the NFL a massive market. Research group IBOPE Repucom estimates the NFL has more than 30 million fans in soccer-mad Brazil.
NFLBrasil on Instagram has 903,000 followers — highest among the league’s international accounts on the platform. About 2.5 million Brazilians watched last year’s Super Bowl, according to TV ratings groups.
The NFL had been priming its two latest international destinations — it sent Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson to Brazil last offseason to visit Vinicius Junior, a Brazilian who plays for Real Madrid. It has 4.5 million views on Youtube.
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AP Sports Writer Mauricio Savarese contributed from Brazil.
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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
