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Roger Goodell isn’t hedging anymore. The NFL commissioner says he’s certain the league will have a franchise based outside the United States – and he’s not talking about just one team.
“At some point, there will be NFL teams outside the USA,” Goodell told Germany’s RTL/ntv during an interview with former NFL player Markus Kuhn. “I have no doubt that this will happen one day.”
Notice the wording there. Teams, plural.
The international push isn’t new
The NFL has been playing games outside U.S. borders since 2007, and that footprint keeps expanding. Next season alone will feature nine international games, with stops in Melbourne, Paris, Mexico City and several other host cities still being finalized.
That number could climb even higher soon. Owners already voted this year to allow up to 10 international games per season starting in 2027 – basically clearing the runway for the league to keep pushing its product overseas.
So where does a Super Bowl fit into all this? Could the league’s biggest game ever land on foreign soil?
Goodell thinks it’s possible, but he’s not ready to skip steps.
“There are definitely international cities that could host something like that,” Goodell said. “But we would like to see an NFL team in such a city first.”
That’s a pretty clear signal about sequencing. Get a franchise established abroad first, then worry about hosting the championship game there. Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s executive vice president of club business, downplayed the idea back in May, calling an international Super Bowl “not a front-burner issue” for the league right now.
Still, Goodell keeps bringing this topic up, and not just in passing interviews. Ahead of Super Bowl LX, he said a non-U.S. franchise wasn’t “off the table,” adding that he believed it was “very possible some day.” That’s the kind of language commissioners don’t use unless something’s actually being discussed behind closed doors.
And it turns out something is. Reports surfaced earlier this year that the NFLPA (the players’ union) has been examining the pros and cons of international teams – travel logistics, competitive balance, roster rules, the whole picture. Goodell himself acknowledged that league officials have discussed the concept of an international division, not just a random team scattered somewhere overseas.
Whether that means London, Germany, Mexico or somewhere else entirely gets a franchise first is anyone’s guess. But between the expanded international schedule, the league’s own admission of internal discussions, and Goodell’s increasingly direct comments, it’s looking less like a hypothetical and more like a matter of when, not if.
