Sixteen worldwide video games and a franchise abroad: is the NFL’s world ambition good or greed? | NFL

“Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. And they’re getting hoggy.” When Mark Cuban, then proprietor of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, fired that line on the NFL in 2014, he was partly goading and partly gloating.

It felt directionally true. The NFL seemed bloated, smug and susceptible. Decades-long skeletons have been tumbling out of the closet. Crisis adopted disaster: concussions, Colin Kaepernick, sinister homeowners, dishonest scandals and an nearly Nixonian try to institute legislation and order. Youth participation declined. Football felt, if not dying, then a minimum of dated, creaking below the burden of its personal mythology.

The NBA, in the meantime, was ascendant. It was a highlights-driven league designed for the TikTook age. And whereas the NFL was rooted in rah-rah Americana, the NBA had a rising world footprint. It had a brand new breed of householders, who have been youthful, tech-savvier and internationally inclined. The league was a pure export, with a decrease barrier to entry and star gamers from Greece and Cameroon, and shortly from Serbia and Slovenia.

Twelve years on, that benefit – if it ever actually existed – has evaporated. The NBA has an id disaster, trapped in a system that rewards shedding and lurching from gimmick to gimmick. The NFL, against this, has tightened its grip on every part, commercially, politically, culturally.

Live sports activities are the final vestige of the monoculture. In the eye financial system, shortage and occasion programming are the forex. Sports dominate. And no product instructions consideration just like the NFL. It has colonized the calendar. It owns Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays. Not content material with proudly owning Thanksgiving, it came for Christmas, and reportedly now wants a recreation on Thanksgiving Eve. Last yr, 83 of the 100 most-viewed telecasts within the US have been NFL video games. Regular-season matchups outdrew Game 7 of the World Series. Even the secondary programming crushes the competitors. Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time present has greater than 125m views on YouTube. Highlights from final yr’s NBA Finals have barely scratched 1m. The NFL has transitioned rights packages to Netflix and Amazon Prime, turning away from conventional broadcasters to chase a youthful, world viewers. In sports activities leagues, a minimum of, the previous cash has trounced the tech bros.

If that is what “hog” behaviour appears like – relentless progress, world ambition, squeezing each accessible drop of worth out of the product – then the NFL isn’t getting slaughtered. It’s lapped the sphere domestically. And now its sights are set on competing internationally with the Premier League.

“We are serious about being a global sport,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said last year. In 2026, he’s placing his cash and video games the place his mouth is.

International enlargement has been a cornerstone of Goodell’s commissionership. What started as a once-a-year novelty in London practically 20 years in the past has advanced right into a foundational a part of the schedule. Last yr’s slate, the broadest but, took video games to Brazil, Spain and Ireland alongside the established video games within the UK and Germany. Viewership for the International Series rose by 32%.

This yr, the NFL is upping the ante within the world content material race. Nine worldwide video games are scheduled, stretching from Melbourne to Paris: the 49ers play the Rams on the Melbourne Cricket Ground to open the season and can later go to Mexico City; the Cowboys head to Rio de Janeiro; the Falcons go to Madrid; the Lions to Munich; the Saints to Paris; the Commanders and two Jaguars video games fill out a three-game London slate. It is probably the most expansive worldwide slate the league has tried.

Goodell has lengthy pushed for an 18-game common season with an additional bye week. More video games create extra home windows, and extra home windows create extra territory to plant the NFL flag in numerous time zones. When the schedule expands, the league will most likely undertake Robert Kraft’s proposal to have each staff play a minimum of one recreation in a world market annually. It shouldn’t go unnoticed that Netflix receiving $2.8bn to withdraw its bid for Warner Bros occurs to be the estimated worth for a 16-game worldwide rights bundle.

“You can think of expansion as the number of teams, or you can think of expansion as us playing in international markets and reaching in different areas,” Goodell advised Westwood One just lately. It is a revealing distinction. Expansion, in his framing, isn’t about housing a everlasting franchise any extra however constant attain.

It’s a savvy ploy. There are echoes right here of the Premier League’s ill-fated push for a thirty ninth recreation, an additional gameweek with each staff taking part in abroad. That concept collapsed below cultural resistance as a lot as logistical pressure. The NFL doesn’t face that friction. Exporting video games is now embedded within the tradition, and by allocating one further recreation per staff, native followers will return to a full slate of residence video games. As enlargement goes, it’s a minimum of a coherent plan.

The NFL’s present collective bargaining settlement caps worldwide video games at 10. To attain Goodell’s goal, the league wants the NFL Players’ Association to agree. Given current turmoil within the union, the probabilities of a CBA extension earlier than 2031 have diminished. Landing these further worldwide video games is probably going six years away.

There can also be the persistent query of participant welfare. Players complain about the travel and lopsided schedules. “Every player hates it,” Pat McAfee has stated. Coaches grumble even more. Consider the Chiefs’ schedule in 2025: Brazil to open the season, a Monday evening recreation earlier than a brief week to play Buffalo, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas Day. “You fly 12 hours to Brazil, and then on gameday you have to drive three hours just to get to the site,” Chiefs guard Trey Smith stated just lately. International assignments don’t fall equally. They tilt the aggressive stability, and the gamers realize it.

No quantity of moaning, nevertheless, will gradual the NFL down, definitely not with a union caught up in its own inter-personal squabbling. If playing in Abu Dhabi will increase the general pie, the union will most likely log off.

The enlargement isn’t stopping there. The 2028 Olympics, set to incorporate flag soccer for the primary time, will provide one other on-ramp to the game. The league continues to flirt with the thought of a Super Bowl in London, and Goodell has teased a European-based franchise or division. “I don’t take international expansion off the table,” Goodell stated at this yr’s Super Bowl. “I think that’s very possible someday.”

In the brief time period, a stand-alone franchise stays out of attain. Goodell has lengthy stated {that a} division could be wanted for worldwide enlargement to work. It would additionally imply negotiating with the union, navigating worldwide tax legislation and hoping gamers are prepared to relocate.

And what if the franchise staff stinks? Or free brokers choose out of taking part in in Berlin, Mexico City, Riyadh or Seoul full-time? Why anchor in a single place while you may be in all places? Better to have a worldwide footprint each week, taking the weekly carnival as far and vast as doable, than pin your hopes on the London Jaguars. With a touring roadshow, each market will get a chunk of the spectacle with out one needing to hold the complete burden.

But the thought of a future abroad franchise nonetheless lingers. The most consequential growth there will probably be know-how. During final yr’s International Series, staff executives persistently introduced up the prospect of supersonic journey. The league workplace has been carefully monitoring Boom Supersonic, the American aerospace startup making an attempt to construct the primary business supersonic plane because the Concorde retired in 2003. Boom has damaged the sound barrier with a prototype and secured pre-orders for 130 business planes, with passenger flights focused for 2030. Cut transatlantic flight instances roughly in half, and probably the most cussed impediment to a everlasting abroad franchise will disappear. At a minimal, it is going to offset the union’s issues about journey instances for the long run worldwide schedule. The resolution isn’t right here but, however it’s coming.

There is an irony in all of this. In the America First period, probably the most highly effective sports activities property within the nation is aggressively going world. A league that wraps itself within the flag is taking Niners-Rams, one of the consequential video games of the season, to an Australian cricket floor … on a Thursday evening … pushing the league’s season opener to a Wednesday. The NFL is increasing its calendar and geography concurrently, whereas promoting the thought again residence that there’s nothing higher than waking up with soccer.

Last yr, Cuban bought his controlling stake within the Mavericks. The NBA he championed is caught in a rankings and character quagmire. The NFL he warned about getting hoggy is scheduling video games in Melbourne and Paris and plotting supersonic enlargement. The hogs, it seems, are wonderful.