110,000 Protest in Paris, but NFL Fans Call Steelers-Saints Trip a Success

PARIS — The National Football League's first regular-season game in France went ahead Sunday at Stade de France, with American fans telling reporters that nationwide protests drawing hundreds of thousands of people into French streets a day earlier did not interrupt their trip, according to interviews conducted by NBC News.

How large were the protests ahead of the Steelers-Saints game?

More than 400,000 people took part in demonstrations across France on Saturday over educational funding and the cost of living, according to figures French authorities compiled nationwide and reported by NBC News. At least 110,000 of those protesters were concentrated in Paris, the French Interior Ministry said, a day before the Pittsburgh Steelers and New Orleans Saints met roughly nine miles north of the city center.

Did the demonstrations turn violent in Paris?

The protests were largely peaceful, but clashes broke out in several cities, prompting French security forces to deploy tear gas and water cannons, NBC News reported. Paris prosecutors said 64 people were arrested in the capital on Saturday, mostly on suspicion of weapons offenses or participation in a group preparing violence or property damage, according to the prosecutors' account relayed by the outlet. The scale of the unrest — more than 400,000 marchers nationwide against 64 arrests in the capital — underscored how contained the disorder remained relative to the turnout, though NBC News did not report arrest totals outside Paris.

Was the NFL game affected by the unrest?

No game disruption was reported. The Steelers faced the Saints at Stade de France on Sunday as scheduled, a day after the demonstrations peaked. Fans who traveled to Paris for the matchup told NBC News they never believed it would be canceled because of the protests, and the network's reporting team — Richard Engel, Marc Smith and Doha Madani — described fans arriving at the stadium in Saint-Denis with chants, smiles and what the outlet called high energy.

How did American fans describe their time in Paris?

Saints supporters Sindhu Pandit, Shruti Menon and Pramod Menon, identified by NBC News as lifelong friends, said everyone they encountered in the city had been welcoming — what the network characterized as a rare compliment for Parisians' reputation abroad. Pandit told NBC News the group relied on outside information to plan their movements through the city rather than avoiding it altogether. "I think we were all given quite a bit of good information from the different platforms that we were subscribed to," Pandit said, according to NBC News, "and as well as, you know, staying on local news as well — the concierge services at the different hotels were quite good at keeping us informed."

What helped visiting fans navigate the demonstrations?

Pandit credited hotel concierge staff and continued monitoring of local news coverage for helping the group sidestep disruptions tied to the weekend's unrest. NBC News reported that supporters gathered outside Stade de France ahead of kickoff appeared largely unaffected by the demonstrations that had unfolded elsewhere in the capital the previous day, with the mood among visiting fans described as upbeat rather than cautious.

Is this the NFL's only scheduled game in France this season?

Sunday's matchup marked the league's first regular-season game staged in France, according to NBC News. The report did not specify whether additional French fixtures are planned for the remainder of the season, and NBC News did not provide attendance figures for the contest itself. The juxtaposition of the two events — a nationwide protest movement over education funding and living costs, and an American sports league's debut regular-season outing on French soil within 24 hours of each other — drew attention mainly for how little the two intersected, based on the accounts fans gave to the network.

The French Interior Ministry's protest tally and the Paris prosecutors' arrest figures were the only official numbers cited in NBC News' reporting; the network did not publish comparative figures from prior demonstrations in France, so no year-over-year context is available from the sourcing reviewed.