Global games are a success for NFL
League will continue going to Europe, Mexico
The most-watched sport in the United States continues to be a growing hit worldwide.
No NFL season has ever been as international as this one. Three games took place at two different venues in London last month alone, featuring six different teams. Last weekend, the NFL went to Germany for the first time, playing a regular-season game in Munich that will be the first of four games played in Germany over the next four seasons.
And on Monday night from mammoth Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, the Arizona Cardinals are the home team against the San Francisco 49ers in what will be the fourth game to be played in the Mexican capital.
The Cardinals won the first game there, 31-14 over the 49ers on Oct. 2, 2005, in the first regular-season NFL game held outside the U.S. At the time, it set a regular-season single game attendance record of 103,467 fans.
“You look at the tremendous demand that we saw for the Buccaneers and Seahawks game in Munich. When tickets went on sale for this game, there was an online queue of more than 800,000 fans looking to buy a ticket,” said Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s executive vice president of club business & league events. “And Ticketmaster, our partner, estimated that if demand was unlimited, we would have sold more than three million tickets.”
Soccer is king in England, Germany and Mexico. All of the stadiums the NFL has used for international games are home to some of the top soccer clubs in the world, including Azteca, where powerhouse Club América plays its home matches.
But it’s clear that when the NFL comes to town, people want to be there. Arizona and San Francisco are among the nine teams that have international home marketing area rights in Mexico, as designated starting this year by the NFL, the most teams aligned with any country.
The game represents an in-person, full-team opportunity for the Cardinals and 49ers to build a stronger foothold in Mexico, where the sport of fútbol americano continues to grow.
“We know the game in Munich was a success for the National Football League. You had great excitement around it. And we know that this game in Mexico is going to be even heightened because you actually have a fan base that knows what they’re looking at, so it’s going to be a great environment,” Cardinals offensive lineman Kelvin Beachum said this week.
“I love it. I think the National Football League is really starting to expand. You know, you had NFL Europe (developmental league from 1991-2007) a couple of years ago and it didn’t pan out in the way in which we wanted it to. And I think this new expansion and the way in which we’re going about it is really good for the National Football League, is really good for football as a whole.”
Beachum made note of the growth of youth flag football in the different countries and opening up the sport to boys and girls from varying socioeconomic backgrounds, part of the NFL’s initiatives abroad.
Other pro leagues have made forays into Mexico for exhibition or regularseason games. The NBA has been a hit in Mexico City for the Suns, who played there as recently as 2019, and the league will hold games in Mexico City and Paris later this season.
The Diamondbacks have played regular-season and spring-training games in Mexico. But the demand and buzz the NFL creates is unmatched wherever the league plays games.
There isn’t much foreign representation in the NFL, but there are a lot of players with roots in other countries. Cardinals players Max Garcia (Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage), Will Hernandez (Mexican descent) and Bernhard Seikovits, a native of Austria who was allocated to Arizona in May 2021 as part of the NFL’s International Player Pathway Program, can be big inspirations to youth of similar backgrounds who might seek an NFL future.
“I think it’s just going to take, as the game progresses and we reach more countries, I think more people will get involved,” Garcia said.
“The London games are nice, but all of central Europe is big in football. Everybody wants to see more of it,” Seikovits said before the Seattle-Tampa Bay game in Germany. “It’s special to see NFL games over there, and not everybody has money or time to go to London, so having it in Munich, which is pretty much right in the middle of Europe, is perfect.”
Expansion to a foreign country makes sense in a variety of ways, but won’t be easy logistically. For now the NFL seems content to send its teams overseas or to Mexico to play until such time, if it ever comes, the league is ready to commit to actual expansion. NFL Europe was a daring venture to bring the game to the continent and use it a developmental league for the NFL, but the league lost a great deal of money.
There was talk of possibly relocating the Jacksonville Jaguars to the UK, but the team has squashed those rumors. Instead, the Jaguars agreed to continue trading one home game in Florida for one in London through 2024, extending a streak that dates back to 2013 except for 2020 during the pandemic, when all international games were canceled.
“I know we learn something every game we play about the capacity we have to play games there (in Europe and Mexico). And should the opportunity arise in the future, this makes these games and everything that’s around us makes us smarter and better regarding the possibility of potentially a franchise outside the U.S.,” O’Reilly said. “Clearly, that’s a hugely complex topic and issue that requires, one, an owner willing to move or a lot of analysis on many fronts. But what I will say is that, just these games and that conversation is simply a testament to the passion that we have in these markets.”
Seikovits said most NFL games shown in Europe are available on free television. Soccer games are on first on Sunday, then fans can watch an early NFL game at night after that. The Austrian football league lacks funds, but the play level is comparable to a Division II or III college team in the U.S., he said.
The path to expansion might be to align with a soccer club with a worldwide brand, such as Bayern Munich, América in Mexico City or any of the club giants in London. Mexico City is one of six cities worldwide that will host an official FIFA Fan Festival, which will host live match broadcasts from the FIFA World Cup in Qatar that begins Sunday.
Soccer still might seem like an impenetrable barrier for American football, but consider how far things have come since the Cardinals and 49ers started it all just 17 years ago.