Having planted its flag in every corner of the United States and built its infrastructure as high as it can go, the NFL’s only remaining direction is to expand beyond the 50 states. And in the wake of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stating point-blank that there will be an international NFL team someday, the league is starting to look into which city will be the first.
On Wednesday, ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler published a feature highlighting the “most likely non-U.S. cities to add a team” and included the reasoning based on a series of interviews with league executives and top personnel.
Taking the top spot was London, England, which Fowler found to be the “overwhelming favorite among league executives.” One executive said that traveling to and from London has become so streamlined that teams barely need to take a bye after games there anymore.
“Traveling there is pretty turnkey at this point, and they have developed the infrastructure in place over the last decade,” he quoted an AFC executive saying. “You almost don’t need a bye week after playing there.”
What’s not to like?
Fowler also found that NFL personnel were “impressed” by London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, comparing it to current, new stadiums.
“It’s got the facilities, a large economy and the population,” another AFC executive told Fowler. “The fanbase there is passionate.”
The downsides include travel, which takes at least seven hours to reach from New York and half a day to get there from Los Angeles.
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Three other cities made the list: Mexico City, Toronto and Berlin.
NFL fans have expressed a lot of opposition to games being played outside of the United States. But these plans aren’t meant to satisfy them, they’re to grow a larger audience beside them.
As big as the Super Bowl is in the United States, the NFL’s biggest game doesn’t hold a candle to the FIFA World Cup. The only way the NFL can change that is to build it up for an international audience.
