Roger Goodell Expects NFL To Play 16 Worldwide Video games ‘In The Very Close to Future’

Should you’re following the Steelers to each recreation, you higher have a passport, as a result of NFL worldwide video games are staying. In reality, not solely are they staying, the NFL has each intention of increasing worldwide play, and really, very quickly.

Commissioner Roger Goodell lately mentioned this topic with CNBC. The NFL is embarking on a broader slate of worldwide video games this season, and that’s simply the tip of the iceberg. “I do see 16 regular-season video games, and I do suppose that can occur within the very close to future”, he stated, by way of Jessica Golden. “Inside 5 years, in all probability”.

If the NFL performs 16 worldwide video games per season, that almost ensures each group will play internationally yearly. There are, in any case, 32 groups, and also you want two groups to play a recreation. In fact, some groups can play a number of worldwide video games, which the NFL is making the Vikings do that yr. The Steelers will host them in Eire in Week 4, after which Minnesota performs the Browns in London the next week.

Previously, the league has talked about even beginning a franchise abroad or shifting a franchise just like the Jaguars over there. The NFL is utilizing worldwide video games, very clearly, to try to increase its market. That’s the reason the homeowners unanimously accepted a proposal permitting NFL gamers to take part within the Olympics, the world’s preeminent sporting occasion.

The NFL is the most important American group sport with the least quantity of cultural cache all over the world. Exterior of, arguably, Canada, there isn’t a different nation with a significant American-style soccer league. That has made model enlargement extraordinarily tough for what’s in any other case the juggernaut of American sports activities. The NFL hopes that enjoying extra worldwide video games will construct that viewers.

“Worldwide is an open marketplace for us”, Goodell stated in regards to the NFL’s improve in video games abroad. “We’re enthusiastic about our potential”. The league has even assigned worldwide areas to varied groups, the Steelers, naturally, having Eire.

As Golden famous, sports activities journey can also be “an enormous income driver, with sports-related journey representing greater than $50 million yearly and 10 p.c of world tourism”. And the NFL simply so occurs to have a partnership with Marriott, which might present lodging for all of these worldwide video games. Wink, wink.

The NFL hasn’t had the Steelers play any worldwide video games earlier than this season since 2013. That yr, they traveled to London to play the Vikings, who promptly embarrassed them. Within the intervening years, gamers criticized the group’s itinerary for contributing to their struggles. Cameron Heyward, who was on that group, mentioned it once more following the current announcement. He stated gamers and coaches had been falling asleep after touring late within the week.