The World Bowl was the annual

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

championship game of the World League of American Football/NFL Europe. The World Bowl was played each year from 1991 to 2007 (except 1993 and 1994). The game was conceived as the final of the NFL-related spring league, the World League. The first World Bowl was played in 1991 in London. With the 1995 relaunch of the World League with the North American teams removed, all subsequent World Bowls were played in Europe between European clubs. The only World Bowl to take place outside Europe was

World Bowl '92 World Bowl '92 (also referred to as World Bowl II) was the second championship game of the World League of American Football (WLAF), played on Saturday, June 6, 1992 at Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. 43,789 witnessed the matchup betw ...

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

, Canada. The World Bowl

trophy A trophy is a tangible, durable reminder of a specific achievement, and serves as a recognition or evidence of merit. Trophies are often awarded for sporting events, from youth sports to professional level athletics. In many sports medals (or, in ...

was a

globe A globe is a spherical model of Earth, of some other celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but unlike maps, they do not distort the surface that they portray except to scale it down. A model globe ...

made of

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measuring 35.5 cm (14 inches) in diameter and weighing 18.6 kg (41 lbs).

Overview

When the World League of American Football (WLAF) was founded in 1991, with teams in North America and Europe as well as expansion plans for Asia, the name World Bowl was appropriate. The name was kept after 1995 when the league limited itself exclusively to Europe. From 1995 to 1997, the World Bowl venue was decided by the standings after five weeks of the 10-week season. In other years, the sites were predetermined before the season. The 2002 World Bowl was hosted in

Rhein Fire Rhein may refer to: Places * Rhine, a major river in Europe (german: Rhein, link=no) * Rhein, a village in the municipality of Morsbach in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany * Rhein (Ostpreussen), a former name of the town Ryn in Poland Ships * SM ...

's hometown of

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...

as a farewell to the old

Rheinstadion The Rheinstadion () was a multi-purpose stadium, in Düsseldorf, Germany. The stadium was built, near the Rhine, in 1926 and held 54,000 people at the end of its life. It was the home ground for Fortuna Düsseldorf from 1953 to 1970 and 1972– ...

. After the new

LTU Arena Merkur Spielarena (stylized as MERKUR SPIEL-ARENA), previously known as the Esprit Arena (until 2 August 2018), the LTU Arena (until June 2009), and as the Düsseldorf Arena (during the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest), is a multi-functional footbal ...

(now Merkur Spiel-Arena) was completed, the 2005 World Bowl was hosted there again. It would return in 2006, the first time that the game was played in the same site in consecutive years. As the city's

Fortuna Düsseldorf Düsseldorfer Turn- und Sportverein Fortuna 1895 e.V., commonly known as Fortuna Düsseldorf (), is a German football club in Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, which competes in the 2. Bundesliga. Founded in 1895, Fortuna entered the league ...

team spent much of this time in lower tiers of the German soccer pyramid, Düsseldorf was the rare NFL Europe city in which American football held an arguably competitive position. Nine World Bowls were played on Saturdays and six World Bowls were played on Sundays (1991, 1996-1999, 2000).

World Bowl (WLAF, NFL Europe, and NFL Europa Championships)

*Note:

Roman numerals Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, eac ...

were not officially used by NFL Europe until World Bowl IX. Before 2001, the games were titled with the current year, such as

World Bowl 2000 World Bowl 2000 (also referred to as World Bowl VIII) was the eighth championship game of the NFL Europe League. It was held at Waldstadion in Frankfurt, Germany on June 25, 2000. The match-up was between the 6–4 Scottish Claymores and the 7–3 ...

Team records

Results by country

Hosting cities

While the Olympic stadiums in Montreal, Amsterdam and Barcelona hosted World Bowls, the league never selected Berlin as a host town, though the city's Thunder played in the

Olympiastadion Olympiastadion is the German, Finnish and Swedish word for Olympic Stadium and may refer to: * Stockholm Olympic Stadium, the host of the 1912 Summer Olympics (though mostly referred as simply ''Stockholms Stadion'') * Olympiastadion (Berlin), the ...

from 2003 to 2007.

Other uses of "World Bowl"

The former

World Football League The World Football League (WFL) was an American football league that played one full season in 1974 and most of its second in 1975. Although the league's proclaimed ambition was to bring American football onto a worldwide stage, the farthest t ...

, a short-lived 1970s competitor to the NFL, was the first to name its championship game the World Bowl. In World Bowl I, the only WFL World Bowl contested, the

Birmingham Americans The Birmingham Americans were a professional American football team located in Birmingham, Alabama. They were members of the four-team Central Division of the World Football League (WFL). The Americans, founded in late December 1973, played in th ...

defeated the

Florida Blazers The Florida Blazers were an American football team who played in the World Football League in 1974. The team moved to San Antonio in 1975 and became the San Antonio Wings. History The Blazers began in 1974 when oceanographic engineer E. Joseph W ...

22–21 on December 5, 1974 at

Legion Field Legion Field is an outdoor stadium in the southeastern United States in Birmingham, Alabama, primarily designed to be used as a venue for American football, but occasionally used for other large outdoor events. Opened in 1927, it is named in ho ...

Birmingham, Alabama Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama's most populous county. As of the 2021 census estimates, Birmingham had a population of 197,575, down 1% fr ...

. The game had been scheduled to be played at the

Gator Bowl Stadium The Gator Bowl was an American football stadium in Jacksonville, Florida. Originally built in 1927, all but a small portion was razed in 1994 in preparation for the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars' inaugural season; the reconstructed stadium became Jac ...

Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the seat of Duval County, with which the ...

, but after the

Jacksonville Sharks The Jacksonville Sharks are a professional indoor football team based in Jacksonville, Florida, playing their home games at VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena. Beginning in 2017, the Sharks began play as charter members of the National Arena Leag ...

folded mid-season, the league decided that the team with the better record would host the game. The proposed

World Indoor Football League The World Indoor Football League was an indoor football league that was to begin in 1988 to compete with the Arena Football League, which was playing its second season in 1988. Some of the teams in the league ran into financial trouble before th ...