By Amy Tennery
NEW YORK, Oct 20 (Reuters) – A game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New Orleans Saints in Paris on Sunday will go ahead as planned with ramped up security, the NFL said on Tuesday, after a weekend of violence that engulfed the French capital.
French officials will mount a “massive” security operation for protests planned on Saturday, with troops reinforcing police, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said on Tuesday, after rioting and looting swept through Paris and other French cities on October 17.
“We always have a very strong security presence,” said Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s executive vice president of club business, international and league events.
“That presence will be heightened with local authorities (as we are) making sure that there’s nothing more important from our standpoint than team security, fan security (and) everybody involved with this game.”
The Steelers-Saints game will take place at the Stade de France. It is the first regular season game that the league has ever held in the French capital, part of a record nine-game slate of international matches this season, as the NFL eyes lucrative global markets.
O’Reilly said that the NFL is considering adding a 10th international game to the season beginning in 2027.
The violence over the weekend, some of the worst unrest France has suffered in years, followed weeks of largely peaceful student demonstrations over school conditions and the cost of living. French authorities instituted curfews in several cities on Monday.
NFL officials have been on the ground in Paris for 10 days, O’Reilly told reporters.
“We feel confident that we would not have any impact on the broader resources needed,” he said. “That’s always top of mind for us and we feel confident that we wouldn’t be depleting resources in a negative way around this game.”
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
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