American football this week

Where to watch sport in the world’s best cities: matches, fights and race days worth the ticket

A match is the quickest way into a city. Twenty thousand locals, a song you don’t know the words to, a pie or a bratwurst at half time, and an hour of walking back through streets that suddenly all belong to one team. The cities on Togoist hold most of the world’s great stadiums and arenas, and a season that never really stops: football from August to May, ice hockey and basketball through the winter, tennis and cycling in the summer, a fight night or a race weekend somewhere every month. Below is how sport works in each city, with the grounds to know, and what tends to be on when.

Football in London, Madrid, Munich and Milan

London has more top-flight clubs than any city in the world, and on a weekend from August to May there is always a match within reach: Arsenal at the Emirates, Tottenham at their new ground, Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, West Ham at the London Stadium, with Fulham, Brentford and Crystal Palace the easier tickets. In Madrid, Real Madrid at the rebuilt Bernabéu and Atlético at the Metropolitano share the weekends; Barcelona plays at the Camp Nou; Munich’s Bayern fills the Allianz Arena, and Milan’s two clubs share San Siro, one of the last great old grounds. Tickets for the biggest fixtures go through the clubs first, so the ones on sale here are the ones that made it to the open market.

Ice hockey, basketball and American football in New York, Boston and Los Angeles

New York has an NHL and NBA team at Madison Square Garden (the Rangers and the Knicks), the Nets at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the Islanders at UBS Arena and the Devils across the river in Newark; the Yankees and the Mets play from April to October. Boston’s Bruins and Celtics share TD Garden, and the Red Sox play at Fenway Park, the oldest ballpark in the country. Los Angeles has the Lakers and Clippers, the Kings, the Dodgers at Chavez Ravine, and the Rams and Chargers at SoFi Stadium on Sundays in the autumn. American seasons overlap, so there is a home game in these cities almost every night from October to April.

Tennis, cycling, racing and fight nights

The tennis calendar visits Paris (Roland-Garros in late May), London (Wimbledon in July and the ATP Finals in November), New York (the US Open in late August) and Madrid, Rome and Stockholm on the tour; the Tour de France ends on the Champs-Élysées in July, and Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Berlin host six-day track cycling in the winter. Boxing and MMA fill arenas from the O2 in London to T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, and motor racing has Formula 1 in Las Vegas in November and Monaco in May, a short drive from Nice.

Football and handball in Copenhagen, Aarhus and Stockholm

FC København plays at Parken, the national stadium, and Brøndby across the city; the derby between them is the biggest fixture in Danish sport. Aarhus has AGF at Ceres Park, and the Danish handball league, one of the strongest in the world, plays through the winter in arenas across the country. Stockholm’s two big clubs, AIK and Djurgården, share the Friends Arena and Tele2 Arena, and the Swedish hockey league runs from September to April.

How to buy, and what to check

Tickets on Togoist are sold by Ticketmaster, the official seller for most of these clubs and arenas, so the price you see is the face value. Check the kick-off time against your travel; matches move for television, and a Saturday game can become a Sunday one. Family and away-end sections are marked on the ticket page, and most grounds bar bags larger than A4.

Sport tonight and this weekend

The listings above are the live version: every match, fight, race and game on in each city tonight, tomorrow and this weekend, with kick-off times, prices and tickets, updated every hour. Pick a city to see its fixtures.