INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 NFL commissioner Roger Goodell confirmed Tuesday that Amon-Ra St. Brown\u2019s strong popularity in Germany directly influenced the league\u2019s decision to have the Detroit Lions play internationally in 2026.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, the NFL announced that after more than a decade, the Lions will play a regular-season \u201chome game\u201d abroad this season at FC Bayern Stadium in Munich, with the date to be announced at a later time.<\/p>\n
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Over the past several months, reports have surfaced that the Lions were potentially gearing up for international play in the 2026 season. One of the more obvious landing spots was Germany, due to the ball club\u2019s strong fanbase there, primarily because of St. Brown, who is both German and American.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, during an appearance on the St. Brown Brothers podcast<\/a>, Goodell confirmed this theory.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, a lot of that success in Germany is because of you and your family, each one of you,\u201d Goodell said, speaking to St. Brown and his brother, Equanimeaous. \u201cAnd I think there is a level of sophistication of our fans, not just in Germany, but I think internationally, where when you expose the game, they understand it, they learn it. And it\u2019s hard to tell when you\u2019re at these international games, whether you\u2019re watching a game in an international city or whether you\u2019re back in the States watching one of our 30 stadiums. So this one was pretty easy.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026And because of your popularity, because of your support in Germany, the Lions have a tremendous following in Germany, and that is something that we built off of, and it\u2019s a focus for the team to continue to build there. So it was like a marriage made in heaven. And so for us it\u2019s perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Currently, the Lions\u2019 opponent and game date remain unknown, and Goodell claims he doesn\u2019t have answers to either yet.<\/p>\n With the Lions playing nine home games this year, including the international game, Goodell said he understands that some fans might feel the NFL is \u201ctaking a game away\u201d from them.<\/p>\n Still, he sees a significant opportunity for St. Brown to perform and represent his community in Germany.<\/p>\n \u201cWe like to say football does bring people together and it plays a bigger role than just coming to a game,\u201d the NFL commissioner said. \u201cIt\u2019s an event, and it\u2019s a chance, it actually is a diplomatic tool in some ways because it gives people a chance to understand one another\u2019s culture, and something that\u2019s important to at least one country.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n \u201cBut in this case, both, and how we can work together in a positive way and not let anything else get in the way other than this, is a great experience. I think we\u2019ve changed the way people look at sports. You guys would know better, but they don\u2019t look at this game. They look at this as an event. They want to see the pregame, they want the halftime shows. They\u2019re interested in the pageantry, too. And one of the greatest moments that I\u2019ll remember in my 45 years in the NFL was when we first played in Germany, three years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n Detroit last played internationally on Nov. 1, 2015, facing the Kansas City Chiefs at Wembley Stadium in England. The team also played the Atlanta Falcons there on Oct. 26, 2014.<\/p>\n The game in Germany this fall will be Detroit\u2019s first international one since then.<\/p>\n Latest Detroit Lions news:<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Read the original article on mlive.com<\/a>. Add mlive.com<\/a> as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 NFL commissioner Roger Goodell confirmed Tuesday that Amon-Ra St. Brown\u2019s strong popularity in Germany directly influenced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2071],"tags":[4566,254,146,113,2506,7,15718,110,147,6,1902,27844],"class_list":["post-776961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-detroit-lions","tag-amon-ra-st-brown","tag-atlanta-falcons","tag-detroit","tag-detroit-lions","tag-detroitlions","tag-football","tag-germany","tag-kansas-city-chiefs","tag-lions","tag-nfl","tag-roger-goodell","tag-st-brown"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116135434067051147","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}