The Global Playbook
The NFL didn’t wake up one day and decide it was time to start selling out stadiums in Germany. The league’s international strategy has been a multi-decade slow-build shaped by small experiments, logistical lessons, and a growing sense inside the league that football can be a global sport. After years of testing and adjusting, the league now has a system it trusts… and it’s beginning to push forward with a much bigger plan.
Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, the NFL played a number of preseason games in places like Toronto, Mexico City, Berlin, Tokyo, and Sydney. These games weren’t about building fanbases so much as answering the baseline questions of international play… Can teams travel that far and still perform? Can foreign stadiums handle NFL broadcast setups? Can the league move equipment, medical staff, and everything else it needs without running into any consistent issues? Those games didn’t create much momentum because they were only preseason, but they did prove the operation could function outside the United States. A regular place to play was still something the league lacked… until 2007.
The New York Giants and Miami Dolphins played the first international regular‑season game at Wembley Stadium in London, England on October 28th, 2007. The stadium was modern and the fan interest was strong enough to justify a real regular season game. Over the next decade, London became the NFL’s continuous international testing ground. A place where the league learned how to run multiple games a year, manage travel, and keep teams competitive despite the extra miles involved.
London continued building its footprint with the opening of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in 2019, a stadium with features that were very NFL-specific. The retractable pitch, the locker rooms, the broadcast setup… Because the stadium was built with football in mind, international games didn’t have to be treated as special events anymore. They could simply become part of the routine.
The most overlooked factor in the league’s international growth is the 17‑game schedule becoming a reality in 2021. Every team now gets a ninth home game every other year, and that extra game ends up being the perfect slot for international play. With that extra game, the league can sell to the owners that no team is losing a home game which means (1) no one is losing revenue and (2) competitive balance will remain intact.
The next phase began in 2022 when the NFL launched the Global Markets Program, giving each team the right to market in specific countries. It established a framework for how franchises can build a presence abroad in a way that makes sense and opens new growth potential. Because instead of the league trying to grow internationally on its own, the thirty-two teams can now (1) extend the league’s reach uniquely and directly, and (2) build their own identities in their assigned markets.
The Global Markets Program has introduced a new way for franchises to connect with fans, sponsors, and partners overseas. And the league plans to sustain that growth in these markets with more games annually plus new markets on the horizon…
So what does the future look like?
The international slate we see today is the starting point for a future where these games are a normal part of the schedule. The eventual move to an 18‑game schedule will assist pushing everything forward the same way the 17-game schedule did. With nine home games every year, the league can again designate the added game as an international slot without touching the domestic revenue. That’s the structural piece that will let the NFL scale the slate even further.
A decade from now… assuming global conditions remain stable… my prediction is for the NFL to have somewhere between 16-20 games played internationally each season, with every team playing a minimum of 1 game, sometimes 2 games per season. This would come with the guarantee that each team would lose at least one home game every two seasons to an international game.
In order to create a 16-20 game international slate with all 32 teams involved, I’d expect the schedule to become more strict with when games are scheduled to play in certain cities to avoid some of the complexity down the road. Ideally, international games will not be scheduled the same weekend, or at least on the same day. Finding the right dates for each city, however, could be quite a puzzle… one that won’t be clear until more pieces fall into place. Some early examples: England has taken shape in early to mid October, other European games have taken shape late October and early November, Mexico City is a November night game, and Brazil has remained in September. It feels like each of these patterns is settling into a long-term rhythm, and I can’t imagine any of them changing too drastically, if at all.
The other side of this topic is placing the right matchups in these locations. With all 32 teams involved and only so many slots to choose from, you can’t stack every game with top-tier matchups. The league will have to balance team quality, market fit, and existing international presence… and that’s where things might get tricky. As someone who’s filled out their fair share of mock schedules, creating the first few matchups in a specific week is always easy and the most fun part. But it’s the final few matchups in the puzzle that builds the pressure of making sure everything fits, and usually leaves you wishing the board had at least one more clean fit. Per my experience with the NFL schedule, I believe this obstacle will become more noticeable and much more of a focus mainstream once the international slate reaches 12+ games.
This is just a small glimpse of what the NFL’s new normal will look like. People will complain. But if you’re among the complainers, it means you’re no longer the league’s marketing target. You’ve already been reeled in… and they know that you aren’t going anywhere.
CONTINENT
Countries the NFL has played in
Other countries I could potentially see the league traveling to in the future
NORTH AMERICA
United States, Canada, Mexico
None
SOUTH AMERICA
Brazil
Argentina
EUROPE
England, France, Germany, Ireland, Spain
Greece, Italy, Scotland, Switzerland
ASIA
None
China, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates
OCEANIA
Australia
New Zealand
Each team’s international game history can be found at https://progrid.org/football-international
