Welcome to The Signal, Box Score's Wednesday newsletter. This week, we are looking at NFL’s international ambitions and what a global game means for the business of football, the teams, the players and the fans.
As part of the NFL’s plan to grow global interest in football, nine games will be played across four continents and seven countries in the 2026 season. The San Francisco 49ers, who start their season on Thursday against the Los Angeles Rams in Melbourne, Australia, will travel a league-record 38,105 miles over their 17-game regular season schedule. The Niners will cross 58 time zones, topping the record of 42 set last season by the Los Angeles Chargers, according to Bookies.com.
With the shortest schedule of any major professional sports league, all NFL games are weekly spectacles that impact so much of our daily lives from what we eat on game day, to how goods and services are marketed to us, to how we use our disposable income on team merchandise, sports gambling and stadium tickets.
These weekly fall spectacles that have transformed communities like Chicago, Green Bay and New York for more than a century are now becoming traditions around the world. Since the NFL began its international series in 2007 with the Dolphins and the Giants at Wembley Stadium in London, the league has played games in Mexico City, Toronto, Munich, Frankfurt, Berlin, São Paulo, Madrid and Dublin. This season, the NFL is bringing games to Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro and Paris for the first time.
“We believe that the next 50 million fans will not come from the United States,” said Gerrit Meier, Head of NFL International. “They will come from international markets.”
What is the NFL’s strategy to build international interest in football?
Projected to surpass $25 billion in revenue by 2027, the NFL is the biggest sports league in the world by revenue, dwarfing the NBA, MLB and Premier League soccer. And now it wants a bigger chunk of an international market that is responding to “American football.”
For example, the Jacksonville Jaguars have made London their second home, playing in London every year since 2013 (except for the 2020 pandemic season). This season, the team will play two back-to-back “home” games in the city. Controlling everything from merchandise to ticket sales, the Jaguars say their games in London account for between 11% and 15% of their local revenue.
The Jaguars benefit from a league-wide Global Markets program that gives owners like the Jaguars’ Shahid Khan the power to do their own deal-making for commercial and marketing programs with international cities and organizations. Khan is also the owner of Premier League soccer club Fulham FC.
Which international city is most likely to get an NFL franchise?
Hardly a New York or L.A. market-sized team, the Jaguars drew 86,152 fans to Wembley Stadium for their October 2025 game against the Rams, and NFL regularly fills Wembley and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium during its London visits.
That’s why league insiders believe that London will be the first international city to get a team, but there are skeptics.
