NFL continues to grow internationally with most games ever in Europe this season.
American football is synonymous with the United States, being by far the most popular sport in the country and deeply interwoven in the fabric of the culture of the red, white, and blue. Despite the overwhelming popularity in the States, American Football has still yet to reach that magnitude anywhere else in the world, with traditional football or as we call it soccer being the rest of the world’s favorite sport, and other sports such as basketball, cricket, and hockey catch the interest of other countries more than American football. The NFL is looking to change that, with their international series in Europe reaching new heights in the 2023-24 season. The NFL has played regular season games in Europe for years, looking to grow their fanbases and expand the outreach of the game, but this season the league has reached new records in Europe and is a promising sign for international interest in our favorite sport. The NFL is hosting five games in Europe this year, with three in London and two of them in Germany, the most ever in a single season. Those games reach 158 million fans across 8 primary markets and are broadcast in 200+ countries/territories in 25+ languages. The fans in Wembley Stadium, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, and Allianz Arena have notably brought high energy to each game, with the UK and Germany markets each having over 3.3 million ‘avid’ fans and as much as 17 million ‘casual’ fans (according to AP News) who are bringing European soccer-like atmospheres to NFL games. With the growth of the NFL’s fan base overseas, commissioner Roger Goodell has hinted at the possibility of an NFL franchise or even multiple of them being located in Europe in the future. The Jacksonville Jaguars have been the team to play in Europe the most often, and the NFL is using them to test different strategies to see how plausible a team permanently located overseas would be. Jacksonville played two weeks straight in London this year and stayed there in between games. Along with the UK and Germany games this year, the NFL also has an ongoing international series in Mexico, being played at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City and they have looked into the possibility of games in Brazil in the future. The NFL is one of the most popular leagues in the world purely due to the devotion of the United States to football, and with international growth the league could see unprecedented numbers in the near future.