MADRID — César Ruiz was born and raised in Madrid, but he left for America as a teenager to major in economics at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. After finishing his degree, he realized he wasn’t cut out for that industry, returned to Spain and pursued a culinary career. Ruiz, 56, went on to become the head chef for the “Jose Luis” group, which manages more than a dozen restaurants in Spain and other countries.
MADRID — César Ruiz was born and raised in Madrid, but he left for America as a teenager to major in economics at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. After finishing his degree, he realized he wasn’t cut out for that industry, returned to Spain and pursued a culinary career. Ruiz, 56, went on to become the head chef for the “Jose Luis” group, which manages more than a dozen restaurants in Spain and other countries.
A few days before the Washington Commanders and Miami Dolphins were set to play the NFL’s first game in Spain at Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid on Sunday, Ruiz was in a meeting with others in the restaurant industry, planning how to maximize this event from a business perspective. Someone passed out a 30-question quiz about the NFL. Ruiz answered about five questions right. He believes that level of knowledge is reflective of where most people in Madrid stand.
“They don’t know much about it, but it’s exciting,” Ruiz said. “But you learn. It’s always good to be open-minded.”
Though rare, there are die-hard NFL fans in Spain. Antonio Lopez is from Alicante, a city about 250 miles southeast of Madrid. He got hooked on the NFL by watching it on television. He’s not attending Sunday’s game — tickets were too expensive — but he came to Madrid with his wife to be in town for the festivities. He feels like the general awareness of the NFL in Spain is growing, but the in-depth knowledge is still lacking.
“They know about the sport, but they’re not really into the sport,” said Lopez, who previously lived in Germany and saw the popularity of the NFL surge there.
The NFL is all-in on expanding globally. When Melbourne, Australia hosts in 2026, the league will have played regular season games in seven countries outside the United States. Beyond that, all 32 teams have been granted marketing rights in 21 international countries. The league’s aim is to create more avid spectators such as Lopez, increase its reach and get more people to play football.
An example: a woman who stood outside Bernabéu taking pictures Thursday. She didn’t speak English or feel comfortable identifying herself, but she said she has played both flag and tackle football in Spain for years.
“It’s indescribable to me,” she said in Spanish, when asked about how she reacted to the NFL coming here. “It’s always been a dream to be able to go see them in the United States. Having them come here is great.”
The woman believes her home country already has plenty of NFL fans — and the league agrees. The NFL estimates it has 11 million fans in Spain. She expects that to show Sunday.
“Having played American football, I have met a lot of people who are into the sport,” she said. “… I think people will fill Bernabéu.”
When selecting an international location, the NFL typically has plenty of interested cities.
“It’s a tough choice,” said Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive vice president of media distribution. “There’s a lot more demand than there are probably games we can play internationally.”
The NFL’s commitment to Spain goes well beyond Sunday’s game. The league’s official presence in the country is called “NFL España.” The NFL hired Rafael de los Santos as its general manager last month and opened a permanent office in Madrid. He’ll hire a team that helps him build the NFL’s presence in the country year-round.
In many ways, it’s a bet on potential. It’s a hope to convert more of the country’s population of nearly 49 million — and also to spread wider globally.
“Spain is a market that is such a core important market in and of itself,” said Peter O’Reilly, an NFL executive who deals with international events, “But then it also has this halo effect and impact across the broader Spanish-speaking world.”
The Dolphins, Chicago Bears and Kansas City Chiefs have marketing and commercialization rights in Spain. The NFL has 18 sponsorship partners who advertise in-market. The NFL partnered with TV network Mediaset’s free-to-air platform to broadcast the Madrid game, other regular season games and postseason games. NFL España posts daily content focused on the league across its social media platforms and holds fan engagement events centered around marquee contests such as Thanksgiving Day games and the Super Bowl.
Throughout game week in Madrid, the NFL has attempted to create what O’Reilly called a “mini Super Bowl” atmosphere. The Dolphins held a three-day fan fast at Plaza de España and painted their team colors throughout the city. There’s an NFL Shop at Bernabéu where fans can purchase merchandise for all 32 teams.
The NFL Academy, a student-athlete football development program based in the United Kingdom, had games scheduled for Friday and Saturday against teams from Mexico and Madrid. On Saturday, there’s a national flag football tournament. All the programming and events aim to educate and garner interest from the locals. Translating that into results will take time.
“This is generational work,” said Jon Barker, NFL senior vice president and global head of major events. “I don’t think at this point that we have any idea 100 years from now what football is going to look like on a global scale.”
Santos, a Madrid native who previously worked as an executive for Real Madrid CF and FC Girondins de Bordeaux, knows attempting to supplant soccer is a fool’s errand. Nonetheless, the NFL still views the market as fertile.
“We know that futbol is the king here,” Santos said, “but we really see that there is a lot of space for football to become a big sport.”
Madrid’s response to the NFL has been resounding. The league released tickets for the Commanders-Dolphins game in batches, and they never lasted long. When the first batch of tickets were released in July, there were around 700,000 digital devices waiting in the queue to attempt to purchase a ticket. Bernabéu Stadium’s capacity is 84,000.
“Every time we release a new batch, it sells out within hours,” said Gerrit Meier, NFL managing director and head of international. “We have seen incredible demand.”
The league estimates 90 percent of attendees at international games are from that market, and it seems Madrid will follow that trend. Once the initial novelty wears off, though, the league knows it will have to generate genuine fandom to maintain interest.
The NFL is hopeful Madrid could follow a similar path to London, which has hosted NFL games annually since 2007 (aside from 2020 because of the pandemic). The demand from fans in the U.K. was instant, too, but it has evolved over the years.
“A decade ago, it was awesome because it was a rainbow of jerseys, but it also wasn’t really a home team crowd at all,” Schroeder said. “You look now at a game in London, and you see 80 percent of fans wearing the jersey of the home team.”
The NFL’s ambition to replicate that interest in other markets — and its push behind flag football ahead of its debut as an Olympic sport in 2028 — is clear: It generates broader interest in football, which translates to more dollars, euros and pounds.
“We have taken a very careful approach over the last few years to selecting what markets we think can provide long-term interest in the sport. Growing the game, for us, is at the center of everything,” Meier said. “And not every country provides that opportunity, so we went through an exercise of looking at the population, the affinity for sport, participation and engagement.”
Spain was the next obvious target, and it almost certainly won’t be the last.
The post As the NFL lands in Madrid, the league hopes Spain will fall for football
appeared first on Washington Post.
