Will Bundesliga Stadiums Host The NHL Winter Classic In The Future?

Will the future of the NHL Winter Classic lie in Europe? “What if you play it at Manchester United or something like that,” Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman said on the recent 32 Thoughts: The Podcast on the backs of the 2025 Winter Classic in Chicago. “Or Wembley, or one of the great soccer stadiums in Germany. Because they really do want to start on the German market.”

It is unlikely that the Winter Classic will ever be played at Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United, at this time of year. Like NFL and college football arenas in the United States, Old Trafford and any other soccer stadium in the United Kingdom will be extremely busy in the winter hosting games.

However, the same limitation doesn’t apply to Bundesliga stadiums. While the Premier League has its busiest period over Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year, the Bundesliga shuts down at the end of December through mid-January, leaving those stadiums empty to host other events.

One of those events took place this weekend at Eintracht Frankfurt’s Deutsche Bank Park. On Saturday, 45,110 spectators packed into the stadium to watch the Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL) Winter Game between Löwen Frankfurt and Adler Mannheim (5-1). It was the sixth iteration of the Winter Game, which has drawn between 25,000 and 50,000 spectators in various venues throughout Germany.

“It was a great spectacle,” DEL CEO Gernot Tripcke said about the event to German magazine Kicker after the game. “We have to give a big compliment to the organizers. The event shows the importance ice hockey has in the two cities [Mannheim and Frankfurt]. But such an event goes beyond the borders of those two cities, and we hope that it attracts attention. You can tell that the overall trend of the league is positive, and this underlines it.”

The DEL Winter Game isn’t the only example to follow for the NHL. Indeed, the NFL has been playing regular season games with significant success in Germany over the last few years, including at Deutsche Bank Park in Frankfurt.

In fact, the NFL has signed a partnership agreement with the Bundesliga to facilitate games in Germany. With the Bundesliga on board, the NFL has played games at Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena (2022 and 2024) and two games in Frankfurt in 2023. Next year, the NFL will play a game at Berlin’s Olympiastadion, home of 2. Bundesliga side Hertha Berlin and the venue of the DFB Pokal final.

This partnership agreement has helped both sides grow in their respective markets. Gegenpressing reported that Bundesliga sides Eintracht Frankfurt and Bayern Munich have earned in the region of $10 million from hosting those games at their stadiums.

For the NFL, playing those games in Germany has also led to significant inroads in Europe’s biggest and most powerful economy. “When I discuss that with the NFL management, the club owners are pushing the NFL massively to enlarge the numbers of matches abroad,” Bayern Munich board member Michael Diederich said as part of a media roundtable in November. “Because they have recognized that the NFL in the US has come to a certain limit.”

The NHL, too, has recognized that it has reached its limits within North America. Furthermore, while the sport is popular in Europe, it is mostly in smaller markets like Scandinavia, Switzerland, and the Baltic nation Latvia. The sport is also hugely popular in Russia, but that market is mostly off-limits for the NHL.

That leaves Germany, a country with a strong history in hockey but, despite significant funding available, a perennial underperformer in the sport—even if the German national team has improved significantly in recent years. Furthermore, while the German soccer Bundesliga boasts some of the best attendance numbers in European football, the DEL, too, has grown and now averages 7,655 spectators a game.

For hockey to become a true global sport, the NHL needs Germany. And for hockey to become a success in Germany, the Bundesliga, with its large stadiums and amazing reach, could open the door to the market the same way as it did with the NFL. Additionally, it would benefit the DEL and German hockey overall.