The NFL’s ambitious play to captivate the International audience

The NFL has made it a constant goal to keep growing the league and its audience. They plan on making this league enjoyable no matter where in the world you are, and the latest steps to grow internationally seemingly help them achieve that goal. 

In 2023, the NFL announced that five games would be played outside the United States. They kicked things off in Wembley Stadium, with the Atlanta Falcons taking on the Jacksonville Jaguars. Later this week, we’ll see the Jacksonville Jaguars taking on the Buffalo Bills in Tottenham Hotspur. After these two games get played, the following week will see the Baltimore Ravens take on the Tennessee Titans in Tottenham Hotspur, too. Once this game ends, there are a couple of weeks before the league goes international again. It’s not until Week 9 that the Miami Dolphins will play the Kansas City Chiefs in Deutsche Bank Park. Week 10 will have the Indianapolis Colts take on the New England Patriots in the same location. These are both located in Frankfurt, Germany. 

The NFL isn’t satisfied with just these locations and has even more plans to get different areas involved. They’ve already given the green light to start marketing campaigns down in Mexico, Switzerland, Canada, and Austria in an effort to ramp up their fandom to want to show up at these games. However, the next real goal for the NFL is to play a game in Spain and Brazil. The league has reported that they plan on having those two places host an NFL game as soon as 2024, with league executive vice president Peter O’Reilly saying that those countries have “a lot of interest in the NFL.”

If a game were to be played there, it might feature one of the Miami Dolphins or the Chicago Bears. Brazil and Spain have marketing rights to the Dolphins, while Spain has additional marketing rights to the Bears. The NFL will likely push those teams to the forefront of their international campaign in 2024 to try and convince those countries to host a game. If they can succeed in this goal, we’ll likely see the league push towards some other countries we named earlier. Countries such as Canada, Austria, and Switzerland. The NFL has spread into many places lately, playing games in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Mexico. 

And it’s not just the location that has seen the league grow internationally. The NFL has added multiple programs to the actual rosters so that international players with the inspiration of making it into the NFL can have an increased shot of doing so. They also added an extra practice squad spot on each team’s roster for another international player, allowing them an even greater possibility of sticking around. From top to bottom, the league is doing a wonderful job incorporating other countries into the sport that we all know and love.