One night in October, I was standing on top of a bench, holding a liter of beer while listening to a German band play cover versions of classic ’80s American songs. I was inside the Paulaner tent at Oktoberfest in Munich, enjoying a bit of local color before heading to the Allianz Arena the following day to film the latest installment of Sports Illustrated’s Stadium Wonders series. Beside me was a group of young Germans, one of whom struck up a conversation with me, and, upon learning that I was American, only wanted to talk about one thing: the NFL. He told me about how he came to love the sport, enthusiastically showed me his fantasy team and told me how excited he’d been to secure a ticket to the Patriots-Lions game that will be held in the city this Sunday. 

What are the odds that I’d travel halfway around the world, pay a visit to the most distinctly German cultural event imaginable and find myself speaking with a homegrown NFL superfan? Better than you might think. 

Sunday’s game in Munich between New England and Detroit will be the final one of a record-tying six NFL games in Europe this season. As the league has increased its global footprint in recent years—with games in Mexico, Brazil and Australia—it has focused most heavily on Europe. That makes a certain amount of sense. Europe is wealthy, many people there speak English and it’s easier to travel to than Australia, Africa or Asia. Players have expressed frustration with the added inconveniences of playing abroad during an already difficult season, but from the NFL’s perspective, the venture has been a success. Every NFL game in Europe is sold out (or close to it), with crowds composed of as many as 90% local fans. Plenty of Europeans love the NFL, but can they grow to love this uniquely American sport more broadly? Two upstart leagues on the continent—the European Football Alliance and the American Football League Europe—are betting they can. 

When I reconnected with my new German friend a few weeks later (no big mugs of beer in our hands this time), he told me more about his path to football fandom. His name is Nikolas Teuscher. He’s a 21-year-old student from southern Germany. He got into football because his friends became fans, some of them after having traveled to the United States, and he got more invested in the sport when he joined a fantasy league during the pandemic. 

“Most of us got really deep into the game, also worrying about defensive players,” Teuscher says, explaining how his interest grew beyond the names on his fantasy roster. “I personally started watching college football to get a glimpse of what’s coming in the next draft.”

But even for a hardcore fan like Teuscher, the idea of a European-based football league isn’t all that appealing. 

“I’ve been to European Football League games [and] it’s just not good,” he says. “If you’re used to American football and watch the NFL on TV, you can’t really compare it. It’s just the quality is just so much worse.”

The history of professional American football in Europe is rocky, to say the least. Many Americans will remember the old NFL Europe league, which began play as the transatlantic World League of American Football in 1991 and was the first high-profile attempt to grow the game in Europe. The U.S.-based teams dropped out after the second season and the league reconstituted in 1995 as a solely European venture. It lasted until 2007. 

But that league was European only in name. The rosters consisted primarily of American players, some of whom were under contract with NFL teams and allocated to NFL Europe. Jon Kitna, James Harrison and, most famously, Kurt Warner all played in the league. Teams were required to have a minimal number of European players on their rosters, but it was essentially a tryout league for fringe NFL players.

European players were mostly confined to lower-level domestic leagues (like Germany’s longstanding American-Football-Bundesliga) or the European Football League, which lasted from 1986 to 2018. 

In 2021, a new league emerged: the European League of Football (ELF). By 2025, the ELF had expanded to 16 teams in nine countries. Nearly 37,000 people attended that year’s championship game in Stuttgart, Germany.

And then the league imploded. Teams revolted against what they saw as unfair business practices by the league and its owner/commissioner, Patrick Esume, and left en masse. Some teams folded, while some defectors formed two new leagues, the European Football Alliance (EFA) and the American Football League Europe (AFLE), which completed their inaugural seasons in September. (Both leagues play in the summer, when the soccer stadiums they use for games are available.) 

Both leagues are led by people whose names should be familiar to NFL fans. Jim Tomsula, a longtime NFL assistant coach who spent one season as the head coach of the 49ers, is the CEO of the AFLE, and the president of the EFA is Markus Kuhn, a former Giants defensive lineman who was born and raised in Germany. 

Tomsula’s first experience with football outside the U.S. came nearly 30 years ago in NFL Europe. He coached for nine seasons in the league, including one year as head coach of the Rhein Fire. He returned to Europe in 2022, winning two ELF championships with the revived Fire franchise. He left the team after the 2024 season due to health problems, but he was soon lured back. 

When he was first approached by AFLE founder Joel Nagel, Tomsula took the meeting almost as a courtesy. Nagel, a lawyer specializing in international commercial transactions, is based in Pittsburgh, where Tomsula is from. Tomsula thought he’d have a brief meeting with Nagel, then go visit his parents. Instead, the two spoke for 10 hours. Three days later, Tomsula was on a plane to Europe.

“I’ve already gotten my lottery ticket. You know what I’m saying, dude?” Tomsula says. “I got the house down in Florida. I sit in the ocean. I get out on the pier at night and have a glass of wine and a sandwich. I’m good. I’m lucky. I’m good. I’m fortunate. I’m grateful.

“But what the hell am I going to do? Sit in a beach chair all day? So I get to do this and there’s a pureness to it. And I’m just really excited. It wasn’t like I was looking for a job.”

Kuhn’s background is a little different. He was introduced to football as a 14-year-old on a family trip to Florida and was intrigued by the prospect of a sport where a big guy like him could thrive (when he played for the Giants, Kuhn was listed at 6'4", 299 pounds). Upon arriving back home in southwestern Germany, he joined a local club and eventually progressed to the point that a college career seemed viable. He and his father flew to the U.S. and spent two weeks driving to colleges up and down the East Coast, putting his film in the hands of as many coaches as possible. That led to a scholarship offer from North Carolina State and later a four-year career with the Giants. After retirement, he got an MBA from Columbia. He worked as consultant, including advising NFL teams on their international plans, and is now putting his degree to work as the head of the EFA. 

Kuhn says he was inspired to get involved with the EFA after he saw the issues with the ELF and became “a little upset that the sport that I love and I think has so much potential in Europe is kind of not being treated well in Europe.”

High-level professional football would have a better chance of succeeding if there was just one league, though. Speaking with Kuhn and Tomsula, the tension is palpable. Kuhn never once referred to the AFLE by name. Tomsula said he forgot the name of the rival league but did praise the hiring of Kuhn. 

Kuhn says it “doesn’t make sense” for there to be two leagues in Europe, and also criticized the AFLE’s approach and what he believes his rivals’ motives to be. 

“They want to potentially grow a league and sell it,” Kuhn says. “They don’t want to really establish professional American football in Europe. And that’s what interests me.”

Tomsula does want to use the AFLE to grow the game in Europe, though. Each of the league’s teams is associated with a local club where players from the peewee level up through college age can play football. That includes flag football programs for boys and girls. Unlike NFL Europe, both leagues are almost exclusively for non-American players. The EFA and AFLE have similar roster rules that limit the number of foreigners on each team. This season, teams could have up to four Americans, with additional spots available for players from countries other than where the team is based. Kuhn says he wants the EFA to “add more Americans to increase their level of play relatively fast.” Tomsula, though, wants to keep his league focused on domestic players. 

“They’re talking about bringing in a lot more Americans,” Tomsula says. “I just disagree with it fundamentally.”

Some countries need more help growing the game than others. Football is reasonably popular in Germany, thanks in part to the U.S.’s many military bases in the country and in part to the NFL’s extensive efforts to market itself there. The AFLE’s Germany-based Rhein Fire, for example, averaged 5,035 fans for their six home games. Neighboring Poland and Austria also have solid football cultures. It’s inconsistent, though. The AFLE’s Berlin Thunder averaged 439 fans in the four games for which attendance numbers were published. Attendance data for the EFA is much more incomplete, but the league’s teams in Munich and Frankfurt topped 5,000 fans for multiple games. On the other end of the spectrum, an AFLE game between the Paris Lights and Firenze Red Lions in Florence, Italy, on Aug. 1 had an official listed attendance of just 43. Judging by how empty the stadium looked on the game broadcast, that might have been a generous figure. (The AFLE recently replaced the Red Lions with a different team in Florence called Guelfi Firenze.) 

It’s easy to see, then, why Kuhn and Tomsula have modest goals for their leagues. Kuhn says his hope was that in five years every EFA team would be averaging 5,000 fans per game. 

“I say that in five years,” Tomsula says, “if you have a league and nobody’s losing money and some are making money, that is success in my eyes.”

One of the biggest hurdles is the level of play. Europeans aren’t going to be persuaded to show up if the on-field product is amateurish. And even those involved can’t agree on an assessment of the quality of play. Kuhn said it was roughly equivalent to Division III. Tomsula said it was more like a “high-level Division II” on average, but that teams like the 2026 AFLE champion Vienna Vikings are much better—perhaps as good as FCS or FBS teams. Jadrian Clark, quarterback for the EFA champion Nordic Storm and MVP of the league, says he thought his team was “a top 25 team in college football right now,” with the caveat that that’s partially because the roster consists of players who are older than college athletes. 

The issue, Clark says, is that there’s a wide talent gap between the best players on the field and the worst. Clark played college football at the FCS level with Weber State. Storm tight end Roberto Miranda, a native of Germany, played at Arizona. Safety Maceo Beard-Aigret, from France, is currently on the Minnesota Vikings’ practice squad. Quarterbacks in both leagues are almost exclusively American, and include former FBS starters like Ethan Garbers (UCLA), Jaylon Henderson (Boise State) and Hank Bachmeier (Boise State/Wake Forest). 

“The craziest thing about playing in Europe is you’ll have guys that were either minicamp invitees or had a couple years in the NFL coming over, and then you’ve got a guy that’s like a kindergarten teacher on the side,” Clark says. “There’s a higher level of disparity between players in Europe than there is in the NFL. But, I would say the top teams in Europe are top 50 schools in the FBS.”

Competitive balance is also an issue. Clark and the Storm went 9–1 in the regular season en route to their championship. The Munich Ravens also went 9–1. The four other teams in the league all finished below .500—two at 4–6 and two at 2–8. It was a similar story in the AFLE, where the Vienna Vikings went 11–1 in the regular season with numerous blowouts and then won the championship game 68–5. 

“The first year was rough for both leagues. The fans were all pissed off because things got splintered,” Tomsula says. “And then you had competitive imbalance. We’re on the competitive imbalance thing right now. We’re pondering that thing pretty good. We got to get the product on the field [better].” 

The biggest issue, though, is money. You don’t have to be a financial wiz to realize how difficult it is to run a sports league when some teams are only selling a couple hundred tickets per game. Asked how he quantifies success, Kuhn was blunt: “Asses in the seats.” But even strong attendance numbers and a winning record can’t guarantee steady cash flow. The Fire went 10–2 this season and led the AFLE in attendance, but still went broke. Days after their season ended, they announced that the franchise was being taken over by the league after it had been “facing a serious financial situation, stemming from years of accumulated losses under the previous league structure, that put its future at risk.” 

The Fire now are one of several AFLE teams that are owned by the league. That’s by design. Tomsula points out that it’s similar to the model that Major League Soccer uses in North America and says that league ownership makes it easier to replicate processes and pool resources. The EFA, on the other hand, is structured more like the NFL, with individually owned franchises operating under a league umbrella. 

Tomsula stresses that AFLE teams are still operating independently, but part of his job is to standardize the way they’re run. With a mix of upstart and existing teams from a variety of countries with differing sporting cultures, their organizational structure was inconsistent. 

“Every team has a different structure. They’ve got a different thing,” he says. “We’re structuring it like pro football. I mean, what the hell is a sporting manager? What the hell is it? They’ve got a sporting manager, a team manager. When you go team to team, you don’t know what the hell [the hierarchy] is. I talked to one team manager, he’s the guy that has the keys that opens up the gates for practice and then locks them and turns the lights out. I talked to another team manager and he’s running the budgets. I talked to another team manager and he’s picking the players. So there was nothing unified.”

Football isn’t unified in Europe either. The competition between the AFLE and the EFA means each league is less stable than a single league would be. It also dilutes the quality of play. 

“It’s unfortunate that some of the best teams we have in Europe—I think two of them are in the other league—are not playing against the best teams that we currently have,” Kuhn says. “I think that would be the best for the sport, it would be the best for the athletes. So it’s kind of unfortunate and unnecessary, to be honest, to have that.”

The competition between the two leagues was ratcheted up a notch when the defending EFA champion Storm announced last week that they intended to leave the league and join the AFLE for the 2027 season. In response, the EFA said in a statement that the Storm are “bound by contractual agreements that apply equally to all EFA franchises” and that the league “expects these agreements to be honored.” It also took a shot at the AFLE’s organizational structure. 

“The EFA is built on the model that made the NFL the strongest league in the world: independent teams, each with its own owners and its own capital, building the league together,” the statement continued. “Every team carries its own risk and shares responsibility for the whole. That is what makes a league last.

“We have deliberately chosen not to place a single investor at the center. In such a model, teams depend on that investor’s money season after season, carrying no risk of their own and no responsibility for each other. Europe has seen how that ends: when the money at the center stops, everything stops.”

The fight over the status of the Nordic Storm is part of a more consequential battle. Will one of the two leagues emerge victorious and become the stable, high-quality football league that the continent has lacked since NFL Europe folded two decades ago, or will the rivalry between them drag them both down? Or perhaps building a successful football league outside the U.S. is too tall a task for anyone. History isn’t on the leagues’ side.