Bolder than ever, the NFL is serious about global domination

You accept this – the schedule has been this way for as long as you can remember and late finishes in prime-time games, completing a Sunday viewing experience which began about 10 hours earlier, are baked into your fandom. This is a weekly marathon in which you gladly participate over the course of 18 weeks between September and January. And that is before the play-offs begin.

Now, imagine being told that some of those football marathons are about to become much longer – games starting over breakfast, or before the sun has come up – as the NFL sets its sights on expanding into new territories across the globe. This season marks two firsts: the debut of NFL games in Dublin – a 24-21 victory last week for Pittsburgh Steelers over the Minnesota Vikings, in front of a crowd of more than 74,000 at Croke Park – and in Madrid when the Miami Dolphins “host” the Washington Commanders at Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in November.

Last year, the NFL played a game in Brazil for the first time, and while both that game and this year’s win for the Los Angeles Chargers over the Kansas City Chiefs in São Paulo have been successful, things are about to go up a level in 2026 when the famous Maracanã stadium hosts the first NFL game to be played in Rio de Janeiro.

New ground has also recently been broken in Germany, which is set to host its fifth game in four years this November, while there have been four games in Mexico City.

But the NFL’s boldest and biggest adventure yet? That is coming next year when for the first time ever an NFL game will be played in Australia, hosted by the Los Angeles Rams. Picture that imaginary supporter searching on their phone “What is the time difference between Melbourne and New York?”, trying to guess how early, or late, they may need to be up to see the NFL make its debut at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The NFL does not merely land in a country at the start of each game week and set up a temporary stall. The groundwork that goes into each international fixture is extensive, with former players turned ambassadors hosting events months in advance including flag football tournaments (think touch rugby) or, in the case of former Rams running back Todd Gurley, holding koalas at Australia Zoo.

Back in May, the NFL announced that each of the 32 franchises are now part of their Global Markets Program, which awards teams international marketing rights on five-year terms.

There are fan events, commercial opportunities, flag football tournaments and visits to the zoo to build up the team’s fan base in new countries. Two teams, the Rams and Chiefs, have rights in seven countries.

Games in London have been happening since 2007. Once a unique quirk in the NFL schedule giving viewers back in the US an excuse to start their tailgate festivities in the morning, now the majority of London games are held on specially designed retractable field at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

The upcoming slate of three games in London – two at Tottenham, one at Wembley – will include the 40th NFL game to be played in the capital when the Minnesota Vikings host the Cleveland Browns today.

The players involved, some making their first trip outside of the United States, tend to fall into two camps. The first is the camp of “it fucking sucked” – as expressed by cornerback Rasul Douglas recalling his experience with the Philadelphia Eagles back in 2018, while the other goes full Joey from Friends, wearing Union Jack hats and posing outside Buckingham Palace when they are not contained inside the team hotel.

In fairness to Douglas, those comments referred to the monotony of the travel and practice schedule paired with adjusting to a new time zone, rather than the atmosphere created at each game. The most common remark about an international NFL game tends to be that each event has the same atmosphere as the Super Bowl. Any previous assumptions that the sport is too complicated for audiences outside of the US to understand have been debunked.

The long-held theory has been that eventually the NFL would permanently have a team in London, but the logistics of drafting and signing players to live and play for a franchise based outside of the US are complicated.

As a result the NFL’s international focus has shifted. Currently the NFL can schedule eight international games per season, but the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is dreaming a little bigger.

“We would like to get to 16 games, so everyone’s playing one game a year internationally,” Goodell said last week, before identifying Asia as the next market the NFL wants to crack. That’s a continent we would like to be playing in. We are serious about being a global sport.”

And the more successful international events the NFL stages, the more untapped markets want a piece of the action.

Global domination for the NFL is not just about financial success. Having a greater presence means more ability to entice young athletic talent from all over the world, a process which is already yielding results through the International Player Pathway.

The recruitment program gives players from other sports a crash course in American football before potentially being signed by one of the NFL teams.

The crown jewel of that initiative is still Jordan Mailata, the Eagles’ offensive tackle and now a Super Bowl winner, who made the switch from the rugby league. Coincidentally, Mailata is Australian. Do not be shocked if the Eagles, who also have Australian market rights, are the Rams’ opponent in Melbourne next year.

Which is all to say this: for the NFL, a sporting juggernaut that generated $23 billion (£17bn) in revenue last year, international games in new markets such as Dublin, Madrid and soon Melbourne are far from the end of their lofty ambitions.

And for the average fan in the US trying to hold it together on their sofa? They are another step closer to 24-hour football.

Photograph by Gary McCullough/AP