MEXICO CITY (AP) — Wearing red jerseys and shirts, Kansas City Chiefs fans are doing the tomahawk chop. Not entirely unusual, except this scene isn’t anywhere near an NFL stadium. It’s not even in the U.S.
Nearly 200 Mexican fans of the Chiefs gathered last weekend on the floating gardens of Xochimilco, located south of Mexico City, to throw a fiesta on the canals on board traditional Trajinera boats adorned with the red and white colors of the team just to celebrate the arrival of a new season.
The Chiefs open their season Thursday night hosting the Baltimore Ravens.
The NFL awarded Kansas City the marketing rights for Mexico in December 2021 and since then the Chiefs have been actively working on expanding their fan base in a country where the league’s popularity has been growing for years.
That is part of the international home marketing areas initiative launched by the NFL that allowed clubs access to international territories for marketing, fan engagement and to build their brands.
In Mexico, eight other teams are part of the initiative besides the Chiefs.
“We wanted to do something beyond getting likes on social media and doing watch parties and we started to do things with a little bit of the Mexican touch,” said Omar Ramirez Luckie, the content manager for Samba, the agency that handles the Chiefs’ social media accounts for the Mexican market.
Last year, the Chief’s fans held a tailgate party at a drive-in movie theater in Mexico City and, alongside other NFL teams with marketing rights in Mexico, they celebrated the Day of the Dead on Nov. 2.
“I think that if you just want to watch a game you can do it at home, if you attend a watch party just to get a gift you can get it and go back home, but it’s very different to have an experience like this, to come to a Trajinera, to dance, eat and drink with other fans like yourself,” Ramirez said.
During a nearly three-hour tour around the canals and around the gardens known as chinampas that were constructed by the Aztecs, the Mexican Chiefs fans danced to music blasting from boom boxes and sang along with music from a mariachi band known as the ‘MariaChiefs’.
“It was a great party, a lot of people showed up and you can see how the Chiefs kingdom is growing up real fast in Mexico,” said Reynaldo Rosado, a 46-year-old who has been a fan since 1988. “Before I used to think that I was the only Chiefs fan, but there were a few others. I remember for our first meeting, 10 to 12 people showed up.”
In Mexico, traditionally, the most popular teams were the Dallas Cowboys, Pittsburgh Steelers and San Francisco 49ers. The New England Patriots became popular during their dominant run with Tom Brady.
“I became a fan watching (running back) Christian Okoye, we had a good run when Joe Montana came along, but after that it was hard to watch our games because not many Mexicans liked them,” said Rosado. “Most of the time I had to settle just waiting for the score of their game to appear at the bottom of the screen when another game was on.”
That changed dramatically after Patrick Mahomes won the first of his three Super Bowl rings in February 2020.
“Just like other fans, I felt alone rooting for the team,” said José Castro Salinas, who has been a Chiefs fan since 1992 and who started the meetings seven years ago. “I went through a two-win season, it was tough being a fan then, but now it’s hunky-dory.”
Kansas City’s interest in Mexico is not new. The team played in Monterrey in 1996 in a preseason game against the Cowboys and then returned to play the Los Angeles Chargers at Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca in 2019.
That, alongside three Super Bowl wins and the international initiative launched by the NFL, has helped the Chiefs grow south of the border.
“I have just been a fan since Mahomes came to the team,” said 37-year-old Andrés Guzmán. “I know that in the past they used to suffer but now we are on a good run, I like to think that we can win three (Super Bowls) in a row, maybe more.”
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