Penn State, UCF, and a brief history of football in Ireland

Dublin will again host an American football game between Penn State and UCF this weekend at Croke Park. This game comes following the much needed financial success of 2012’s game at Aviva Stadium between Navy and Notre Dame. The city has been the sight of several failed attempts to bring the sport to Ireland in the 1980’s and 90’s before the 2012 game. Croke Park has long been associated with Gaelic games, serving as the main venue for Gaelic football, hurling, Gaelic handball and rounders for over a century. The iconic Dublin arena will now welcome the two collegiate teams this Saturday in what will be the fifth college game ever played in Ireland. According to TiqIQ, the average secondary market price for UCF vs Penn State football tickets at Croke Park is $146.44, just above Penn State’s 2014 season average of $145.54 at Beaver Stadium in State College this year.

Under the newly constructed Aviva Stadium, the last game to be held in Dublin was in 2012 when the Midshipmen played the Fighting Irish. The game proved to be the first American football event in Ireland that had positive attendance rates as well as a surplus of media coverage. Held on September 1, 2012, the average price for the game was $489.30 on the secondary market, over 234% more expensive than this year’s game between Penn State and UCF. Though the secondary ticket average won’t reach the astronomical numbers of 2012’s game, Saturday’s Croke Park Classic is slated to find success in both viewership and attendance and sold nearly 38,000 tickets in June alone.

Lansdowne Road was the first venue to host American college football when Boston College played Army in 1988, known as The “Emerald Isle Classic”. With the hope of attracting some 40 million Irish Americans back to their native roots, the game proved to be a commercial failure when poor attendance numbers followed. The next year, the annual game was discontinued at the now-demolished stadium. A revival of American football in Dublin occurred seven years later in 1996 when Notre Dame played the United States Naval Academy at Croke Park, fittingly called the “Shamrock Classic”, but the event saw even lower attendance numbers than the previous game in 1989. This ushered in a period of indefiniteness as to whether the sport could find popularity in Europe and the game remained suspended until 2012.

With the welcoming success of 2012’s game, the Croke Park Classic is destined to be another commercial success this year when the Penn State football schedule brings them to Ireland to face UCF on Saturday. If the success continues this year, the international fandom of American football will be yet another step in expanding the game beyond U.S. soil and into the backyards of European countries.