Having completely conquered the United States and become the biggest source of entertainment media in the country, the NFL is now seeking to plant its flag outside of the 50 states in order to expand. With NFL commissioner Roger Goodell stating point blank that there will be NFL teams outside of the U.S. someday, a few cities are emerging as early ones to keep an eye on.
Michael McCarthy of Front Office Sports wrote on Tuesday that it’s “inevitable” that the NFL expands outside of the U.S. He identified three cities as potential NFL franchise locations: London, Munich and Mexico City.
“It’s inevitable. Hello London, Munich, Mexico City,” McCarthy wrote.
Future NFL Cities
London is the most obvious choice for a foreign expansion city. The English capital has been hosting NFL games since 2007 and there is already a solid NFL presence in the city. It certainly doesn’t hurt that several NFL owners currently have business ties to London. Four NFL owners already have financial ties to English soccer teams based in the city.
Mexico City has had an off-and-on relationship with the NFL, hosting games between 2016 and 2022 before signing on for three more years of games starting this season.
Munich is a relative newcomer to the NFL family but has showed up in a big way. In their two hosted games since 2022, the city has averaged nearly 70,000 fans per game at the famed Allianz Arena.
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Attendance at games in all three cities is high and would rank in the upper half of NFL teams.
The far bigger question when it comes to expansion is how passionate those fans would stay if they weren’t great off the bat. Expansion teams in most sports tend to struggle initially, and team struggles tend to correlate strongly to low attendance.
The NFL would need to carefully balance whether the data shows that fans would continue to show up and support their new teams through thick and thin.
“Eventually” doesn’t mean tomorrow.
