Imagine a Super Bowl Sunday in the not-too-distant future where you settle down to watch the Big Game. Before kickoff, there’s a performance of “God Save The King” — this year’s contest is in London’s Wembley Stadium, after all, it’s just polite — and then it’s time for the Paris Berets to face the Madrid Matadors. As you get comfortable on the couch, maybe you spend a moment thinking about when the “N” in “NFL” stood for just one nation … and then it’s game time.
Now, before you freak out at the prospect of escargot and bangers n’ mash elbowing chicken wings and pigs in a blanket off your Super Bowl spread, don’t worry. The NFL isn’t going full international anytime soon. Yes, the league is playing nine games overseas this season, and could up that number to 10 in 2027 and beyond.
But … like it or not, the NFL will expand its reach overseas, and soon. Take it from a guy who knows:
“At some point, there will be NFL teams outside the USA,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told Germany’s RTL/ntv in the course of an interview with Markus Kuhn, a German-born former defensive tackle with the Giants. “I have no doubt that this will happen one day.”
That’s a statement bold enough to inspire headlines, but also general enough to be defensible in an infinite-monkeys-typing-forever-will-write-Shakespeare kind of way. There’s no doubt that the NFL, on its current trajectory, will one day place teams in international markets — and, in all likelihood, send a Super Bowl overseas, too.
The NFL’s ever-increasing international presence doesn’t even register as surprising anymore; we’ve all grown to accept that most of the league will be playing a game outside of the country in any given season. At every single one of those games, the NFL will create a multi-day citywide festival, spreading the gospel of American football to the streets, parks and pubs of the world. You win hearts and minds over to NFL football the way a relentless run game advances down the field, one yard at a time.
Keep an eye, too, on the way the NFL promotes flag football in the two seasons leading up to the sport’s Olympic debut in 2028. Flag football is a low-physical-impact, high-influence way to give the sport of American football a toehold in international markets. Get kids worldwide playing flag when they’re young, and they’ll connect with the helmets-and-pads version when they’re older, the thinking goes.
The logistics of posting NFL teams overseas are daunting but ultimately manageable. Games in Western Europe can kick off in the early afternoon local time to air in the 9 a.m. ET slot. For other nations, the NFL could adopt an F1 approach: gear games to the timeframe of the host nation, and the rest of the world, including the United States, can just set their alarms.
Which brings us around to you, the loyal American NFL fan. While the league’s expansion is wonderful news for newly-created fans in host countries and, of course, the NFL’s bottom line, what does international growth mean for American fans who have followed their teams for generations?
Well, there’s the jingoistic “football’s an American game, dammit” take, but let’s be honest: when you’re watching a game on TV, it doesn’t matter if that game’s in Munich or Miami. Yes, you might have to get up a little early to watch your favorite team when they go international, but — sadly — we all understand now that the NFL viewing experience in the 2020s requires a bit of homework, and probably a new subscription or two.
The real question going forward will be just how much the NFL alters itself to appeal to the desires and customs of its coveted nations. We’re not saying that VAR will become standard practice in NFL games, or that NFL players will start flopping like Premier League soccer players, but we’re not not saying that either.
And then there’s the possibility of an overseas Super Bowl. That’s where the logistics really start to bite; keeping the game at its traditional 6 p.m. ET start is virtually impossible in an international destination. (That’s late at night in Europe, early in the morning in Australia.)
Before you scoff at the idea that international demands would affect the National Football League, consider this past summer’s North American World Cup. FIFA altered the entire structure of every match by implementing “hydration breaks” in each 45-minute half, breaks that supposedly benefited the players but gave sponsors the opportunity to cram in more ads. The World Cup had flourished as the planet’s most popular event for nearly a century with one format, and in a matter of weeks, FIFA and North American broadcasters changed it on a fundamental level.
Maybe that’s in the cards for the NFL, and maybe the league will export its particular brand of Americana intact. Either way, get ready for a world in which the Patriots travel to Paris, the Lions to London, the Steelers to Sydney. Like it or not, we’re soon going to be sharing our teams with the entire planet.
All except the Browns. Seriously, we should probably keep them quarantined for everyone’s safety.