The Green Bay Packers have kept the top spot in the NFC North going into playoffs, despite losing the regular-season finale. | Wikilmages/Pixabay
The Green Bay Packers have kept the top spot in the NFC North going into playoffs, despite losing the regular-season finale. | Wikilmages/Pixabay
The Green Bay Packers are set to host the New York Giants in London this October in a first-of-its-kind battle for the longtime NFL franchise.
While Green Bay has played three preseason games overseas, the Week 5 encounter will be the first regular season matchup for the Packers outside of the states. The Packers are slated to act as the home team in the matchup at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which first hosted an NFL in 2019
“It will be great to reconnect with them, as well as to see the stadium and how it operates,” Packers President Mark Murphy told Packers.com.
While a total of 30 NFL games have been played in London overall, only about one-fourth of the teams involved in those games made the playoffs.
With the Packers and MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers now part of the mix, there is hope for that pattern will soon become a thing of the past in terms of the level of excitement it generates, despite the 8:30 am CST kickoff time that brings viewership down.
Still, with the game stamped as an international contest at a neutral site, the Packers have been given just a limited number of tickets and as a result, have sent out an email to season ticket holders interested in attending informing them of a drawing the team will be having that offers a chance to win tickets. If fans opt into being entered in the drawing they might win the chance to purchase the tickets at a later date.
With the league’s expanded 17-game schedule, Green Bay will not be losing a home game due to their London appearance and are still set to play at Lambeau Field eight times this season, the same number of home games they’ve had every year since the strike-shortened season of 1982.
“The games in Green Bay are so important to the local economy that we’ve always been reluctant to give up a home game,” Murphy told SI.com back in February when the game was first announced. “The other side is, in terms of when we’re the visiting team, we travel so well that teams that would be hosting us are reluctant to give up a home game against the Packers. But with the league move to the 17-game season, we knew this was a possibility and we’re really excited about it.
When Miami and Jacksonville played there last season, 60,784 fans were in attendance.
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