Large crowds of American fans at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday for Notre Dame against Navy, as well as at Donnybrook, Parnell Park and Navan for the supporting high school international tournament show the power American football has to draw support from across the US.
The NFL season proper starts this week and will continue to dominate US sport to an enormous degree.  Revenues for the franchises as well as income from TV and endorsements stand head and shoulders above other American staples like Baseball, Ice Hockey and Basketball.
A major part of the way in which fans have been kept onside is the enormous popularity of Fantasy Games based around player performance.  The Premier League in soccer runs a very popular game with more than 250,000 Irish fans and 2 million around the world but that is dwarfed by the NFL which claims around 35 million players of its various fantasy games.
Gambling on sport is illegal across most of the US but recent court cases determined fantasy games for cash to be games of skill and therefore not bound up by gambling legislation.
This has encouraged the NFL to launch a jackpot style element to its competition where players can win a weekly jackpot of $1 million if they select on paper the players in any given week that perform the best on the pitch.
The prizes are substantially smaller but Sport for Business is supporting a long standing NFL forecasting game among the Irish business community that you can sign up to for free today.  You can find out all the details on how to participate, and what little knowledge of the sport you need to be a player, by clicking here.
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