As tends to be the case in September, numerous sports leagues have restarted since the summer break. For fans around the world it is a chance to dream once again, at least for a few weeks.
The National Football League (NFL) – American Football to many in Ireland – is no different, and it kicked off its new season on Thursday. Some 67,000 fans packed into Lincoln Financial Field outside Philadelphia to see the defending champion Philadelphia Eagles take on the Dallas Cowboys.
Many thousands of those fans took the train to the stadium which, like many newer sports grounds, sits outside the city itself.
This time though, many of those fans were on trains that had been paid for by Ireland’s own Flutter. The main US brand of the Paddy Power owner, FanDuel, reportedly forked out about $80,000 (€68,000) to ensure the trains ran after the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) slashed its special sports event services for the game.
“As an official team partner of the Eagles, we are proud to collaborate with SEPTA to make that planning easier by providing fans with free and reliable transportation after the game,” FanDuel sports president Mike Raffensperger said in a statement, according to the New York Times.
Forget, for the moment, the fact that a private enterprise is paying for public transport in a wealthy US city. The fact that a gambling company was able to do this tells us a couple of things.
One, it speaks to how much money Flutter is making in the US that it has a spare $80,000 to throw at the issue. It also gives us another example, if it were needed, of how important the US market is to the company these days, and how competitive it is.
Pennsylvania is one of the more mature states when it comes to gambling, and competition between the big betting firms is fierce. If dropping $80,000 on a few trains earns FanDuel an edge, then it will have been money well spent.
Given the complaints about train service and transport in general for fans travelling to the All Ireland finals this summer, maybe we could do with a private firm paying for more trains to Dublin for big matches. Given the size of the gambling market in Pennsylvania versus Ireland though, it’s probably unlikely.
