LeRoy Butler on Packers playing in Brazil: Good for team and NFL brand
The Hall of Famer, a guest on Monday’s season-premiere of Clubhouse Live, expects the league to continue to expand its international footprint.
SÃO PAULO, Brazil – Leon Rodrigues first saw it last week. A slice of unmistakable Americana in the middle of South America’s largest city. He was in the back of a taxicab traveling down Viaduto Júlio de Mesquita Filho, a major avenue connecting east and west São Paulo. A city hall photographer, his instincts took over as he glanced out the window passing Jaceguai Street.
On the side of a downtown condominium, Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love was painted with a football in his hand, fingers gripping the laces. Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts was painted above him, white bandana wrapped around his scalp. The NFL’s shield hung in the top, left corner with the words “São Paulo” scribbled across its crest.
Rodrigues recognized the two quarterbacks instantly. His story is increasingly common in Brazil, a nation that worships soccer but has gradually made room for another sport. His brother, Diego, introduced Rodrigues to American football 14 years ago. Rodrigues was 22 at the time. The first NFL game he watched was “the BJ Raji touchdown dance in the end zone.” Formally, it’s remembered as the 2010 NFC championship game. “It was epic,” Rodrigues says. A lifelong passion was born in that moment. Rodrigues moved to New York City briefly in 2012. His wife suggested rooting for one of the local teams, but Rodrigues was hooked.
He’s been a cheesehead ever since.
Now the cheesehead was staring at a larger-than-life banner in his hometown. “It’s just huge,” Rodrigues says. “You can’t miss it.” Rodrigues rolled down his window, asked his taxi driver to pump the brakes, and did what came naturally. He snapped a picture.
Rodrigues promptly posted the photo on social media, tagging a Packers fan account. A fan blog published a post. It went viral from across the world, but Rodrigues couldn’t have imagined how deeply his photo would infiltrate the Packers. A day later, Rodrigues awoke to a notification on his phone.
Jordan Love had followed him on X, formerly Twitter.
“I saw that,” Rodrigues says, “and I was like, ‘This is top-five best moments of my life.’ I was like, ‘This should be a mistake. Why would he follow me?’ I had no idea why it happened.”
‘The Packers are such a lovely story’
It’s less shocking why the NFL decided to descend on São Paulo this week. The world never has been smaller, technology shrinking the distance between fan and team. Geography no longer is an obstacle when the highest-paid player in NFL history can connect with a city hall photographer 5,000 miles away.
The NFL recognized untapped potential nine months ago when it announced the first game not only in South America, but Brazil specifically. If the league’s expanding reach is inevitable, its new handpicked region of influence is no coincidence. São Paulo is a global city immersed in diverse culture, home to 21.6 million people. It boasts the world’s largest population of Japanese people outside Japan. Businesses flock here from across the world. The NFL is just the latest in a long line of enterprises hoping to maximize the windfall this international hub offers.
There’s a reason the Packers were targeted to be part of this South American audition. For 15 years, the NFL has tracked a groundswell of interest in Brazil. The league’s smallest market has taken a leading role. A year ago, an NFL Brazil poll revealed the Packers are the nation’s most popular American football team with a fan base share of 12.25%. More than a full percentage point in front of the San Francisco 49ers, who were second.
The Packers’ bond with Brazil comes from a shared DNA between team and country. Like most things in this corner of the globe, the roots can be traced to soccer. More than 7,000 clubs are scattered throughout South America’s largest nation, each sharing a common anthem. In Brazil, individuals do not own teams. Soccer belongs to the community.
The Packers were a natural fit for a society that appreciates egalitarianism in its sports. All they needed was a spark. Something to fan the NFL flames.
They found it in 2007. When Gisele Bündchen, the world-famous supermodel from Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, started dating Tom Brady, a nation was introduced to American football. Brazilian curiosity followed Bündchen’s new relationship with the folkhero quarterback, not unlike Taylor Swift fans flocking the NFL last season to learn more about Travis Kelce. Back in 2007, most Brazilian fans new to the NFL latched onto the New England Patriots. They were in the midst of an undefeated regular season, taking Brazil by storm.
Those who preferred more contrarian rooting interests found a home with the one franchise in North American professional sports structured similarly to a Brazilian soccer club.
“The Packers are such a lovely story,” says Marcus Rovere, the director of a college in Porto Alegre. “Small market. Small city. A team that belongs to the city. There’s no owners. They play for the fans. The fans sold out Lambeau Field every time since forever. This kind of connection makes the Brazilians feel like, ‘OK, I’m a part of this. It’s not a company. I’m a fan of this business that I’m a part of.’”
Rovere is an old-school Packers fan in a country whose love affair still is relatively fresh. On a Zoom chat, he wears a Packers jersey with his own name stitched on the back. Rovere started following the NFL as Bündchen’s relationship with Brady blossomed, deciding to watch the conference championship games at the end of the 2007 season. In the AFC, Brady led the Patriots to the Super Bowl with a win over the then-San Diego Chargers. Rovere was drawn more to the novelty of the NFC title game.
Tom Coughlin’s frozen face. Brett Favre’s overtime interception. A Greek tragedy on the gridiron. “Heartbreaking,” Rovere calls it. He’s been a cheesehead ever since. In 2011, after the Packers won Super Bowl XLV, Rovere founded the Packers Brasil account on Twitter, giving fans in his country a community to call their own. Suddenly, it wasn’t just the NFL spreading throughout Brazil.
The Packers had their own spotlight.
‘Dude, that’s like magic’
No gameday tradition is the same.
In Curitiba, a city of 1.7 million people roughly 250 miles southwest of São Paulo, Reinaldo Mota turns each Packers game into a family affair. “I enjoy cooking,” he says. Game time in the early Sunday slot is 2 p.m. local. By kickoff, Mota fetches fresh advocados for his guacamola. He makes nachos and fried chicken. He’ll wear his special Packers pajamas, his Jordan Love jersey, and watch that week’s game with his mother, wife and kids.
Rafael Nunes, a doctor in São Paulo, watches each game alone. It’s bad luck not to, he says. Nunes has experienced too many devastating defeats in the company of others. His wife and kids can make their own plans for gamedays.
In Brusque, a town of 137,000 residents about 400 miles south of São Paulo, Fernanda Flores meets each week with her brother, Gustavo. Their father died a few years ago, but Mom still joins them, even though her football knowledge is rudimentary. “She always says it’s too violent,” Gustavo smirks. The siblings start each gameday with a Brazilian barbecue, slow cooking steak or lamb with lemon, onions and cornflakes sprinkled on top. Gustavo’s beverage of choice if Coca-Cola. Fernanda, a lawyer and part-time English teacher, drinks beer.
She’s the rowdy fan. Catch her after a bad play, and she’s prone to scream at the television. Even if Gustavo is the only one who can hear her.
“Sometimes,” Fernanda says, “I am just at the edge of the couch, the edge of my seat, waiting for it. And my brother just looks at me and goes, like, ‘Chill.’ I’m like, ‘It’s fine. It’s fine.’ He’s like, ‘No, you’re not fine.” He gets way more chill.”
It’s the common experiences of being a Packers fan in Brazil that bring fans together. Each has their own origin story, but they often blend into one. Interest in the team spread mostly through word of mouth, like a game of telephone. A brother. A friend. A neighbor. Everyone learned to follow the Packers by following someone else.
The love story between team and community was irresistable for fans who previously couldn’t tell the difference between field goal posts and yard lines. Madden NFL offered a tutorial for the game, teaching positions, schemes, plays.
“I took like three seasons to understand most of the things,” Mota says. “What is a shotgun? What is under center? What is play action? I started to understand all that when I played Madden.”
The 2014 NFC championshp game was a milestone moment for Brazilian fans. They still wonder aloud why Brandon Bostick tried to recover the onside kick. “I chose the Packers,” Nunes says, “without knowing the end was going to be tragic.” There was something about the vulnerability of defeat, the admiration of picking themselves up and starting over, that was endearing.
In a country where patriotic pride runs deep, Brazilians see something of themselves when they watch Packers games. Green and yellow are more religious symbols here than generic hues, adorned by the national soccer team. They also saw something foreign, impossible to understand, almost extraterrestrial. Chat with a Packers fan in Brazil, and eventually the conversation will arrive at what it was like watching Aaron Rodgers throw the football.
“It was beautiful,” Fernanda Flores says. “Some of the plays, you’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s never going to happen.’ That can’t be. It’s too far. No one is ever going to get that. Then the ball just goes, and someone catches it, and it just works.
“At the time, I remember looking at it like, ‘Dude, that’s like magic.’ No joke.”
It requires more than time commitment to follow a team across the world. Local broadcast preferences don’t exist in Brazil. To never miss a snap, fans invest in a subscription service. Rovere’s Twitter account has almost reached 25,000 followers. He’s since opened an InstaGram account that has more than 6,000 followers. For some, a generic connection isn’t enough. There’s an inner sanctum of about 60 fans who pay dues for a more immersive experience.
The diehards go beyond surface level. They build their Sunday, or Monday, or Thursday – or, this week, their Friday nights – around kickoff.
‘It’s too emotional to put into words’
Gabriel Rebelo watches every Packers game with his dad, Fabiono. A student in Goiás, more than 500 miles north of São Paulo, Rebelo grew up a soccer fan. His local team has a big block-G logo. When the NFL entered Brazil’s national consciousness, the entire state of Goiás naturally flocked to the most easily recognized symbol. Rebelo and his father root for the Packers because, as he explains it, “everyone around here is a Packers fan.”
Atop Rebelo’s wish list is a trip to Green Bay, where he can someday watch a Packers game inside fabled Lambeau Field, soaking in the unfamiliar cold. Bringing the Packers to Brazil is the next best thing, he says. When tickets for Friday’s game became available on a pre-sale, Rebelo wasn’t quick enough to grab any. So he hopped a flight to São Paulo that week, where he has family. On a midweek night, he and a buddy brought beach chairs to the shopping mall where tickets went on sale. They sipped on Heinekens and waited through the night, buying tickets in person.
“I spent all night sitting there waiting for the sale to start,” Rebelo says. “Because it was impossible to get those tickets online. And I wasn’t alone. There was a huge line.” Rovere says the line of Brazilians waiting to order tickets online was 200,000 people. Only about 27,000 pre-sale tickets were sold, he says.
Rebelo considers what it will be like Friday night when he and his dad sit in the stands at Corinthians Arena instead of their couch. “I might cry,” he says. “It’s too emotional to put into words.” He isn’t the only one. For one night, Nunes will drop his rule against watching Packers games with other people. He’s attending with his neighbor. When Nunes thinks of what Friday night will be like, he releases the familiar bravado that can be heard before every game the Packers play on the road.
“I just want to make very, very clear,” Nunes says, “you are going to be a home game here.”
Mota, a Palmeiras soccer fan, isn’t just attending Friday night. “I will proudly wear my all-green T-shirt,” he says. Soccer is never far from the mind. The Flores siblings will have to finally watch a game apart. In the bedlam to secure tickets, Fernanda did. Gustavo didn’t. When the dust settled, Fernanda had second thoughts about attending a Packers game without her brother.
“But,” Gustavo says, “I told her, ‘You go for us. You’ve got to go.’”
This is a night Packers fans in Brazil can’t miss. A night that is years in the making. A night with memories that will live forever. And if São Paulo ever needs a reminder, Leon Rodrigues knows just where to look.
There’s a condominium with a lasting image of what the NFL has come to mean in Brazil.
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Publish date : 2024-09-04 23:06:00
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