NFL
Exclusive: NFL’s International Expansion Plans Won’t Sideline London, League Sources Say
The NFL is aiming to move to an 18-game season with a focus on international expansion, particularly in London. League sources indicate a strong desire to continue playing three to four games a year in London, as it has been well-received by owners and the league. The UK's strong support for NFL games makes London a key location for the league's global ambitions.
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The NFL has much to negotiate with the NFL Players Association in the coming months and years, with a move to an 18-game season paramount for the owners. That will trigger additional international expansion, but league sources indicated that will not reduce the demand to put games in London.
According to those sources, playing three to four games a year in London, as an anchor in the league’s global ambitions, retains strong support among owners and within the NFL’s league office.
“I don’t anticipate that is in any jeopardy of changing,” said one high-ranking NFL team official who has been privy to informal discussions about such manners among owners and top league brass.
London Makes Too Much Sense
The NFL has been very impressed how the UK has continued to embrace the increase in games being played in London and view it as essential to their international designs.
The arrangement with Tottenham in particular, by far the league’s preferred locale to host games, has worked swimmingly and the league believes there is sufficient demand to continue playing there three-to-four Sundays a season.
“From the owners’ perspective, it’s been a great marriage,” the source said.
The league continues to weight new markets to manage, but the logistics and infrastructure in London are sufficient to keep it as a regular destination for NFL games for years to come and a fixture in future collective bargaining agreements between the league and its players.
The league’s commitment to London also comes as its broader calendar expansion plans gather pace. As previously reported, owners, led publicly by Patriots chief Robert Kraft, are intensifying their push for an 18-game regular season, a move the NFL believes would further accelerate international growth. However, resistance from the NFL Players Association remains firm, with players continuing to voice health and safety concerns that the league must address in upcoming negotiations.
Momentum around the sport in the UK has only strengthened the league’s confidence. Ticket sales have remained robust, broadcast audiences continue to trend upward, and the game-day experience in London is widely viewed internally as one of the NFL’s international success stories.
While other cities in Europe and beyond are being explored as part of the league’s broader global push, London’s established fan base, commercial partnerships and stadium readiness give it a significant advantage.
For now, league insiders expect the capital to remain a cornerstone of the NFL’s overseas strategy even as the calendar potentially expands.
La Canfora has covered over 20 Super Bowls and League Meetings and NFL drafts, building a wide network of sources throughout all aspects of the game. He was an award winning print journalist as well, working at The Detroit Free Press and The Baltimore Sun prior to his first stint at The Washington Post. He has covered sporting events around the world, including two Winter Olympics and all of the 2006 World Cup. He attended his first NFL game in 1978, and would soon kindle what has become a lifelong love and appreciation of the sport. La Canfora is also a professional handicapper, specializing in the NFL, creating a daily sports wagering game show - "Wanna Bet?" He also hosts nationally broadcast NFL radio shows in the US, as well as a daily sports radio show in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland.