Steelers Now
PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Steelers have a new content and marketing partnership with German soccer club Borussia Dortmund, the team announced on Thursday.
The Steelers and BVB, as the club is known, have many ties, including their black and gold color schemes. BVB played a preseason friendly at Acrisure Stadium in 2018. Now the clubs will deepen their ties.
“The partnership with Borussia Dortmund, the first-of-its-kind for the Steelers organization, builds off the deep connections both of our teams have with the communities we represent, as well as our shared values, rooted in our industrial pasts, of hard work, determination and a winning spirit,” Steelers director of business development Dan Rooney said in a press release. “We look forward to what’s next as we support each other’s success in reaching fans in new markets and raising the profiles of the cities we call home.”
Dortmund is in the Ruhr Valley of Germany, a former steelmaking hotspot that, like Pittsburgh, has revitalized itself in the 21st century by focusing on technology and research.
“Borussia Dortmund and the Pittsburgh Steelers share more than colors – we share the commitment to bring sports and culture together through the power of our brands,” BVB Americas managing director Marc Lingenhoff said in a press release. “We are rooted in history, and bonded by tradition. When exploring various expansion opportunities for BVB in the United States, we saw the Steelers as the ideal partner with tremendous success on the field, as well as a legacy of excellence off the field. Known for its resilience and community-first approach, the Steelers are a cornerstone of Pittsburgh’s identity – and the same can be said for BVB in our Dortmund community as well. We are proud and excited to bring this synergistic partnership to life on the global stage, with the fan at the center of everything we do.”
The Steelers hold NFL international marketing rights in Germany, and Steelers president Art Rooney II said he hopes for the team to eventually play a game there. They also hold international marketing rights in Ireland, where the team will host an international game for the first time in 2025, and in Mexico.
“We’d love to play a game in all of those places,” Rooney said in 2024. “Not sure how quickly that can happen. It will be a while before we get to all of them. But yeah, we’d love to play in the markets where we have that opportunity.”
The NFL has held games in Munich and Frankfurt, and will be heading to Berlin for the first time in 2025, but has never played a regular-season game in the North Rhein-Westphalia region — Germany’s most-populous state that includes Cologne, Dortmund, Düsseldorf and Essen.
BVB plays at Signal Iduna Park, a stadium with a capacity of 81,365 that is the largest in Germany and sixth-largest in all of Europe.
