Teams from the ACC and the American Athletic Conference will meet in The Fenway Bowl beginning in 2020, Fenway Sports Management (FSM), ESPN Events, and the City of Boston announced on Tuesday.
The game will be played at Fenway Park in Boston, Mass. Fenway Park, the home of Major League Baseball’s Boston Red Sox, has a seating capacity of 37,755.
The inaugural bowl game will be played in December 2020 and it will be televised nationally by ESPN.
“We’re proud to announce that Fenway Park will host this prominent new addition to the NCAA bowl lineup that will provide New England sports fans with the opportunity to experience first-hand all the excitement, glory, pageantry and top-flight competition that embodies the college football bowl season,” said Red Sox President & CEO Sam Kennedy. “Producing dynamic events of this caliber is precisely what our ownership group envisioned when they made the commitment to reestablish the ballpark as a year-round venue that showcases the very best in competitive sports and entertainment. We look forward to working with the American Athletic and Atlantic Coast Conferences, ESPN Events and Mayor Walsh and his team to ensure these games are a memorable experience for the student-athletes, the coaches, and our fans.”
Football has been played at Fenway Park for at least 100 years. Most recently, the ballpark hosted the Harvard-Yale game in 2018 and a trio of college football games in 2017 — Brown-Dartmouth, UMass-Maine, and UConn-Boston College.
The Fenway Bowl is one of three new college football bowl games that will debut in 2020. Other new bowl games include the Myrtle Beach Bowl, matching two teams from Conference USA, MAC, and the Sun Belt at Brooks Stadium in Conway, S.C., and the Los Angeles Bowl, which will be played at the new SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., featuring teams from the Pac-12 and Mountain West.
With three new bowls added, there will be a total of 43 bowl games following the 2020 season, plus the College Football Playoff National Championship. Of the 130 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams, 86 will play in a bowl game (66%).