Minister for Sport Patrick O'Donovan has defended the government's financial support for September NFL's fixture in Croke Park and said they were intent on bringing more major international sporting events to Ireland in the future.
The Irish government committed €9.95 million in funding towards the hosting of the first ever NFL game in Ireland, between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Minnesota Vikings on the final Sunday of September.
According to a report from the Bank of Ireland, the arrival of the game resulted in a surge in consumer spending, with social spending jumping by 17% in Dublin city centre with pubs reporting a spending hike of 57%.
"I got a bit of criticism over this when I decided to sign up to it. It's a lot of money that we put down on the table," O'Donovan told RTÉ Radio 1's Inside Sport.
"But the reality is, and we knew this, 600,000 people went into the waiting room to try and buy tickets.
"Half a million people watched it in Ireland. But the real one was almost eight million people watched it in the United States of America. It's the second most watched NFL game abroad ever.
"It shows that this kind of money does come back.
"And while we haven't full figures yet with regard to the economic return,we are expecting one to seven. In other words, for every euro we put in, we get seven back out."
O'Donovan told cabinet this week that the department were engaging with the NFL around the holding of another fixture in 2026.
Beyond that, the department had allocated a budget for the holding of international sporting events.
Alongside the 2027 Ryder Cup in Adare Manor and the seven matches due to be held at the Aviva Stadium at Euro 2028, O'Donovan reiterated the government's desire to bring the Open Championship at Portmarnock.
"We are in discussions with NFL around the future," he said.
"And obviously, we will do that in collaboration with the GAA. But anything that we do will require a government decision. And it'll be on the basis of the metrics and the numbers.
"I suppose golf is the obvious one. We're hoping to get to a situation where the Open - the Royal and Ancient - we will be able to get to Portmarnock.
That's an aspiration of mine and it's an aspiration of the government. We want to build on the legacy that we're going to have from the Ryder Cup.
"We want to broaden the relationship with the NFL. We will have the European Championships in terms of soccer.
"I was out in Abbottstown today with Sport Ireland and they're very conscious of the smaller sports as well, in terms of Europeans and worlds, whether that's in relation to [hosting] athletics or cross-country or whatever.
"We're going to do more and more of this. We have a designated budget now for major international sporting events, which we never had before.
"We're not going to do everything. We're obviously not going to try and do everything either, because if you try and do everything, you make a mess of it.
"But we'll pick and choose what we feel is right fit for the island of Ireland and for the size of the community that we have."
Elsewhere in the interview, O'Donovan spoke about the upcoming round of sports capital funding, saying the government would seek to prioritise multi-sport infrastrutural projects over single-use facilities.
