Analyzing Possible NFL International Expansion
Of all of the Big Four sports in the United States, football stands alone as the most uniquely - and exclusively - American. Basketball, baseball, and hockey all enjoy reverence around the globe, while football is so domestically focused that you’d have to clarify you’re not talking about soccer when you say the sport’s name almost anywhere else on the planet. In fact, the NFL is unique among the Big Four for being the only league that exclusively has teams located in the United States. The question is, will that be the case forever?
The 2020s have seen the NFL make a massive push to increase its international footprint. Just the last few years have seen NFL regular season games played in nations like Mexico, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Germany. The upcoming 2025 season will have seven regular-season games outside of the United States, two of which will be in countries that have never hosted one before. It is clear that the powers that be inside the league are very much not content with the NFL being an exclusively American product.
It should be noted that this latest push is far from the first or only time that the NFL has tried to expand the game beyond the US. The NFL established the World League of American Football in 1991 as a minor league that saw teams from the United States, Canada, the UK, Spain, and Germany play each other. When that league folded, the NFL relaunched and rebranded it as an exclusively European league known as NFL Europe, which lasted for 12 years and had teams from England, Scotland, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands. The United Kingdom has been of particular interest to the league for decades, as they’ve played at least one regular season game in the UK every single year since 2007, with the exception of the COVID-impacted 2020 season.
There are a number of places that the NFL could expand to if, and when, they decide to do so. If the NFL does indeed plan to one day place an expansion team outside the borders of the United States, it would almost certainly be located in the United Kingdom. The NFL has played an average of three regular-season games a year in London since 2014, a trend that will continue into the 2025 season. The Jacksonville Jaguars have been especially linked to London, playing one game a year there since 2014 and almost always as the designated home team, including this past season’s last London game. With London promoted as the Jags’ home away from home, as well as their owner’s ties to the Premier League club Fulham F.C., rumors have circulated for years that a move from Jacksonville to London could be in the Jaguars’ future. While the recent approval of a massive renovation of the Jags’ home, EverBank Stadium, paints those relocation rumors as incredibly unlikely over the next several years, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the league increasingly use the Jaguars to test the waters of having a team across the pond during the next few years. After all, the league has previously stated that they could see London as a host for not just one, but two NFL franchises.
Logistically speaking, the nation that would probably be the easiest to place a non-US franchise in is Mexico. The NFL had its eyes firmly set on the United States’ southern neighbor through the late 2010s, having planned to host a game a year from 2016 to 2019 in Mexico City. With the exception of the canceled 2018 game, those Mexico City games were tremendous hits with the local fans, posting excellent attendance numbers. Sharing both a land border and the same time zones with another country would make the logistics of expanding outside of the US much easier for the league, compared to having to cross an ocean and face a minimum five-hour time change.
Time will tell where and when, if ever, the NFL will expand. The next NFL franchise could be placed domestically or overseas. A foreign-hosted team could see regular action against American franchises, or it could belong to another uniquely foreign division/league, a la NFL Europe. The only thing that is for certain is that the “National” in “National Football League” is quickly becoming antiquated.
