The league wants to expand its global footprint.
National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell is talking again about someday in the future some city or cities will be home to an NFL franchise. The NFL is trying to establish a global footprint with a sport that is not really played much around the world. The National Basketball Association is trying to establish a European league to compete with the Euroleague. The National Hockey League is playing Monday afternoon games in the United States and in Canada to create a Monday night European video package. Soccer is omnipresent. There are competitive baseball leagues in Asia. The NFL has none of these things. The league keeps dropping one off games in various European cities. But Goodell keeps pitching the notion that franchises are coming to Europe and one day a Super Bowl will be played in some international location.
“At some point, there will be NFL teams outside the USA. I have no doubt that this will happen one day,” Goodell told former NFL player Markus Kuhn who grew up playing football in Germany and played for the New York Giants. As far as the Super Bowl, Goodell saying “there are definitely international cities that could host something like that. But we would like to see an NFL team in such a city first.” The likelihood of Congress and a President of the United States allowing the NFL to stage a Super Bowl outside of America is extremely slim. Congress created the Super Bowl by allowing the 1966 merger of the American Football League and National Football League which skirted antitrust laws. Putting a Super Bowl in London, England, in Berlin, Germany, in Melbourne, Australia or in Madrid, Spain would be a nonstarter in Congress and create a political firestorm and Goodell knows that. Goodell has to keep pushing an international narrative to find international revenue.
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