STEELERS CANCEL THEIR PARIS FAN PARTY

The Steelers and Saints play Sunday at Stade de France in the first NFL regular season game ever held in France, and to warm up the crowd Pittsburgh booked a Steelers House fan party at a bar in the Bastille neighborhood. There is an authorized march scheduled to begin at Place de la Bastille on Saturday. The team pulled the plug Thursday, citing "recent events in the Bastille neighborhood" and calling it a precaution in an area that has seen recent disruptions, which is how a billion dollar franchise says somebody finally looked at a map. The game is not moving. NFL exec Peter O'Reilly said it was never in danger and pointed out that PSG hosted Barcelona on Tuesday without the city tipping over. Goodell said Wednesday that he's made all the preparations and that he spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The league's own fan house is still running Friday and Saturday, so officially every party in Paris is safe except the one the Steelers were throwing. TJ Watt's wife Dani already asked publicly why the game hasn't been moved. The scale depends on who's counting. Police logged 855 arrests in the Paris region after last Saturday, with national totals reported in the thousands. The government put nationwide turnout around 550,000, organizers said closer to 800,000. Police deployment goes up 20 percent this weekend, and Stade de France sits in Saint-Denis, about five miles from the bar nobody is drinking at now.

Why you should give a shit: Global expansion is a great business right up until the host country schedules a march at the bar you rented, and the NFL's answer is keep the game, dump the beer.