Ireland’s Virgin Media Television has struck a broadcast deal with American football’s elite National Football league (NFL) to showcase its slate of 2025 European international games free-to-air in the country.
The TV heavyweight will air all six international games, beginning with the league’s first fixture in Ireland, the September 28 face off between the Minnesota Vikings and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
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This will continue through October with the league’s trio of annual London, England games, followed by individual fixtures in Berlin, Germany, and Madrid, Spain.
In addition to the six-game slate of international regular season fixtures, Virgin Media will also showcase three post-season playoff games, and the season-ending Super Bowl showpiece fixture, all free-to-air.
This will stand in tandem with the league’s existing primary media rights partnership in the country, the long-running broadcast deal with pay-TV heavyweight Sky Sports that was renewed last month.
The NFL’s new deal in Ireland comes as the league is fresh off a strong domestic viewership showing in week two of the season, headlined by a record-breaking Kansas City Chiefs vs Philadelphia Eagles matchup on the Fox network.
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By GlobalDataThe September 14 game, a rematch of the most recent Super Bowl championship game (Super Bowl LX), saw the Eagles defeat the Chiefs 20-17, with an average viewership of 33.8 million on the Fox Sports channel.
That figure means that the game is the most-watched week 2 NFL fixture in history, overtaking the 28 million average that the Chiefs drew against the Cincinnati Bengals in 2024.
The match was also a regular-season record for Fox, and the joint most-watched NFL regular-season game ever (tied with Patriots vs Colts on CBS in 2007), when excluding Thanksgiving Day games and Monday Night fixtures.
Breaking these records speaks to the continued viewership draw of the Kansas City Chiefs, perhaps the biggest draw in the league with the star power of Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce – with occasional appearances from Kelce’s fiancée, popstar Taylor Swift, to further bump the numbers – as well as the power of the strong Philadelphia sports market coming off a rare championship winning season.
With week one viewership also strong across all networks, the NFL is setting itself up for what could potentially be a spectacular season on the viewership front.
