The NFL is expanding internationally once again. This week the NFL owners voted to double their international output of games each season beginning in 2025 from four to eight. Additionally, Brazil has been awarded their first ever game next season. And this doesn’t even count the Jaguars’ annual home game in London so the total will be nine. It’s all steps forward in the NFL’s quest for worldwide domination, but it could have a big impact on NFL scheduling and home fans stateside.
With eight international games, increasing European expansion seems like a layup given the success of games in England and Germany. The NFL could offer more games in those markets or expand elsewhere in Europe with Madrid also being mentioned as a possibility.
What’s the common thread for most of these international games? For the ones in Europe, it’s the possibility of early morning kickoffs. While games in Brazil and Mexico and other western hemisphere locales would match up well with the NFL’s regularly scheduled times, the creation of more European games could allow the NFL to do something that years ago would have seemed impossible – create a weekly Sunday morning showcase game.
Mike Florio at Pro Football Talk sets the scene. With a 17 game schedule and the NFL voting to expand to eight international games, it’s not that big of a leap for the league to go all the way to 16 games in years to come. Given the current schedule constructs, that would mean each team would have eight home games, eight road games, and one neutral site game, which would actually bring more competitive balance than we have now.
The other thing it would do is allow the NFL to televise an exclusive game at 9:30 AM ET from Europe most weeks for the international game window. With the NFL now occupying three windows on Sunday, Monday Night Football, and Thursday Night Football, there aren’t many places to expand in taking over the weekly calendar that could make sense for the league. Except for Sunday mornings, that is. If the NFL were to offer 10-15 Sunday morning games during the year, it could create a whole new television package around the games and sell it to the highest bidder. Just like it’s done with Thursday Night Football, Wild Card playoff games, Black Friday games, and the list goes on and on.
The only catch might be whether the networks would want to play ball on the idea of more Sunday morning football. If there were more games at 9:30 AM ET, it would make the existing pregame shows on league partners like ESPN, CBS, and Fox totally irrelevant. But in reality, if there’s an extra billion dollars to be made from a new rights package, Sunday morning pregame show ratings would be the least of the shield’s concerns. If Amazon, Apple, ESPN+, Peacock, or whoever wants to splash the cash, then those traditional networks will have to deal with it because they need the NFL like everyone else does.
Ironically, this Game 17 international plan has actually been talked about in reverse by the Premier League over the years in hopes of growing their fanbases worldwide but has always been met by widespread opposition. However, NFL fans have slowly embraced Breakfast at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium because there’s no such thing as too much NFL for us to digest, even if it means watching backup quarterbacks square off in dead rubber blowout games at odd hours of the week. And if it means no longer sacrificing a home game overseas? Then even better. And for the NFL, if it’s just another revenue stream that could make the rich even richer, then it’s probably something they will pursue sooner rather than later.
