I was in my favourite city centre watering hole early last Monday evening, enjoying a few final night stouts before catching my flight back here when a pleasant Floridian couple, Kevin McArdle (yes, he was) and his wife Lynette, sat down in the space beside me.
We began chatting, and they told me it was their first time in Belfast, but they had been to Dublin City and the West Coast of Ireland twice before. They told me that this time they were in town as they were in Ireland for an American Football ‘game’ in Dublin (!!) and had used this opportunity to head North and visit Ireland’s second city. In what seemed like no time at all the bar was heaving four deep at the bar with Yanqui peeg dogs. It was then that I learned that they were all in Ireland for ‘the ball game’ in Dublin on Friday (yesterday). I was told told that it was a ‘college ball game’ between Florida State University and Georgia Tech at the Aviva Stadium. I was pretty surprised that an American college football match was to be played in Ireland and asked them why? No one coulld tell me the reasons why but they assured me that it wasn’t the first time it had happened, that they had known about it this fixture since last year, had been saving all year for it and that they were excited as hell about it.
I was a bit intrigued by this so I decided to do a bit of looking around, (alright, I looked up Wikipedia), and it seems like there’s a bit of a history of American college football being played in Ireland from the late 1980s.
The match took place Friday night at a sold-out Aviva Stadium, with some 27,000 US tourists arriving in Dublin to watch the opening fixture of the US college football season. It was televised to 3.5 million and was expected to generate at least €115 million for the Irish economy. The match last year was the largest ever single movement of US citizens outside the US for an individual sporting event and it generated a record €180m for the Irish economy with many supporters speaking about the unique atmosphere of attending an American football game in Ireland and explaining that the hospitality and the beauty of Ireland were a key part of their experience.
Yes, you read that right. €115 and €180 million, respectively, were injected into the Irish economy for two single sports events.
Folks, why can an international standard Casement Park not tap into this?
Can you imagine what an annual injection of even €50 million over, say, five years into the local Belfast economy would do for the city and its surrounding areas?Really, this seems to me like a no-brainer. Every local politician, sports club, supporters club, community group, business, hostelry, and entertainment association should cop themselves on, recognise the potential of this, and get 100% behind it.
Let’s get it done.
Hugh is a West Belfast native and recovering legal scholar who spends lots of time in his spouse’s native Basque Country
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