More than three-quarters of NFL teams now have some kind of international business. Four more joined the league’s Global Markets program this week. Eighteen of 32 teams joined at the program’s launch in December 2021, and seven more have joined since then. However, seven are still on the outside.
Interest has increased since the NFL tweaked the rules to give clubs more rights and expanded the number of possible international games from five to nine annually, making it more likely teams would get to play a game in their designated markets. Before those changes, some team execs said it was just too hard to make the pro forma work out.
NFL EVP Peter O’Reilly says the program is now in a good place. “It will continue to move quickly,” O’Reilly said. “There are more teams than we announced today who are in the consideration process and the timing wasn’t necessarily just right. ... I don’t think it has to do with the structure -- it has to do with them determining where and when.”
For my money, the most interesting new club and market combo is the Browns and Nigeria, which is the sixth-most populated country in the world. It’s only the 32nd largest by GDP, so economic expectations should be measured, but no country outside of North America has created more NFL players. The fan base there is potentially massive.
The remaining Global Market holdouts are the Bengals, Ravens, Commanders, Chargers, Bills, Titans and Packers.
