The NFL reiterated Tuesday that all plans for playing its inaugural regular-season game in France remain on track and that the league is confident in its “operational and security plans,” despite civil unrest that has made headlines in the country over the past week.
“[We’re] obviously being very vigilant in everything we do and all of our planning on an hour-by-hour basis, working closely with our two teams,” NFL executive vice president for Club Business and International Peter O’Reilly said Tuesday.
“We’ve got confidence in the plans both from an ops and security standpoint.”
NFL MONITORS FRANCE STREET VIOLENCE BEFORE SAINTS-STEELERS GAME NEAR PARIS WITH BIG DECISION LOOMING
O’Reilly acknowledged that the NFL has contingency plans for every game, including moving it to another location or postponing it. However, he said discussions about those options for this particular game are nowhere near a critical stage.
“We have never been close to that point,” he said. “As you know, we’ve always got contingency plans for every game, every single one of them. But no, we were not at that point at any point in the conversation.”
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So where does all this confidence come from that a gathering of roughly 81,000 fans, two full teams, politicians and others will be safe when cars have been burned and stores looted less than 20 miles away in central Paris?
“Our team’s been on the ground, security team’s been on the ground, and obviously, working in close partnership with Stade de France, which is a world class stadium, hosted world class events, most recently the Olympic Games,” O’Reilly said.
“But not just on game day, all of our events we have going on we’ve got, we always have a very strong security presence, as you know, around all of those events. And that presence will be heightened with local authorities making sure that there’s nothing more important from our standpoint than the team security, the fans’ security, everybody involved with this game.
“So extremely vigilant as we always are. As I said, confident in all of those plans as we head towards Sunday.”