Tourism Ireland plans to use this weekend's American Football game in Dublin to encourage more US visitors to the island.
The Aer Lingus College Football Classic takes place in the Aviva Stadium on Saturday – with Kansas State University’s 'Wildcats’ taking on Iowa State University’s ‘Wildcats’.
A Grant Thornton report estimated the game will generate €130m for the Irish economy. That will be boosted by the more than 24,000 people that are expected to travel to Ireland for the game – the majority of them coming from the US.
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"They are very valuable visitors… what we know from the college football is, once our US visitors, cross the Atlantic, they will usually stay for seven days and travel around," said Alice Mansergh, CEO of Tourism Ireland. "So you’ve got businesses right around the regions seeing the benefits."
However the game is also being seen as an opportunity for Ireland to showcase itself to potential future visitors.
It is due to air live on ESPN in the US, with an expected TV audience of 4.5 million people.
Tourism Ireland has partnered with the sports broadcaster to showcase Ireland during that broadcast – with video segments about the country and on-screen prompts for people to plan a visit.
"There’s an incrementality or a new audience that you’re winning," Ms Mansergh said. "If you’ve got Kansas and Ohio visiting, those are visitors that might not have come otherwise… so it’s very significant in introducing us to new audiences."
Earlier this month the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation said there were worries that the country had become over-reliant on US visitors – and called for Budget 2026 to include measures to diversity the market.
Ms Mansergh said US visitors are important to Ireland – not least because they stay for longer and spend more money. However she agreed it was important for the country to attract visitors from as many locations as possible.
"Tourism Ireland is active in 14 markets around the world – we’ve got partnerships all over the world," she said. "If you take last year, for example, yes we saw growth from the US – but we also saw double-digit growth from places like Canada, as well as from Northern Europe – places like the Nordics and Netherlands.
"We want to keep a healthy mix going and that’s always our focus."
Data from the Central Statistics Office has shown that the number of inbound visitors to Ireland has been down every month of the year so far, up to and including the important month of June.
Ms Mansergh said that still represents millions of visitors coming to the country – but she also highlighted the challenging global context for that fall off.
"That is a softening compared to 2024 – and it actually puts our visitor numbers and revenue more in line with the performance we saw in 2023," she said. "We had the Dublin Airport cap limiting numbers in the first three months of the year – that’s now on hold under legal review – there’s also been a lot of the change in the macroeconomic environment and that impacts confidence.
"When we survey visitors overseas, two-thirds say they value their international travel but 41% say they will take fewer or shorter trips this year because of the cost of living – and 25% are saying things are too uncertain for them to book travel right now.
"So that’s the environment in which Ireland must win hearts, minds and trips for the future."