It’s no secret that I love the sport of football, even if there are some anti-capitalist parts of the NFL that I feel could be reformed. Although it is still early on in the 2023 NFL season, the league has entered the part of the schedule where games are being sent overseas. This season will feature games in both London (which has been a consistent site for games for several years now) and also Frankfurt, Germany. Today I’ll propose some other cities that could play host to lesser-important NFL regular season games. For each locale, I’ll go over my reasoning for its selection. Furthermore, I’m operating under the assumption that the local government is at least open to the idea of hosting these games and is open to having American’s visit their country.
However, we first need to address the elephant in the room; the purpose of these games to begin with. The NFL is not seriously going to set-up shop across the pond. The demand on logistics, long-term fan support and jet lag on players based in Europe would simply be too great to overcome (shout out to Wendover Productions for highlighting these issues in depth). Truthfully, if the NFL wanted to expand across the borders, it would only be too easy for them to buy the Canadian Football League (CFL). Don’t believe me? NFL revenues were nearly $19 billion last year and the CFL is literally less than a rounding error at $240 million. Factor in the ease of travel/visa approvals between the two nations and the fact that everyone involved already speaks English and it would be a no-brainer solution. The fact that the NFL hasn’t made this move yet shows that they aren’t truly serious about expanding abroad. In my speculative opinion (Gasp!), I think that the NFL is hosting trans-Atlantic games as a positive public relations campaign, similar to what the NBA does. If we can strip away all pretenses of using these games as a test market and acknowledge the traveling circus for what it is, then we can start plotting out some more exotic spots to host an NFL game.
The first one of my recommendations is hosting a game in Dublin, Ireland. Dublin was a pretty easy choice for a few reasons. Firstly, the median (ahh, I love math class) Irish family has plenty of disposable income, so they can afford to go to the game. This is important because the bar for being able to support a professional sports team is lower than you might think; just ask Cardinals fans or Raiders fans. Secondly, there isn’t a language barrier between the United States and Ireland, so the NFL would be fighting less of an uphill battle than other cities I’m going to suggest. Ireland has a vibrant culture of attending sports games, as rugby and soccer are both popular within the nation, so this wouldn’t be a particularly hard sell. There are already stadiums readily available to host a game in Dublin as well, and some might even be close enough to public transit (hmm…why can’t we do that?) for the locals to attend the game. The key for marketing an NFL game to an Irish audience is leaning on the large crowd and passionate environment aspect of the NFL. All of this combined with the easier visa approval process thanks to friendly relations between the United States and the European Union (EU), this idea is at least a feasible one.
Another suggestion within the US-friendly EU is Stockholm, Sweeden. While Sweeden’s native language is obviously Swedish, the language barrier is basically nonexistent. Stockholm has many of the same public transit advantages that Dublin would have, not to mention the Swedes are packing enough disposable income to go to a game. However, let’s not falsely believe that the same marketing tactics that would work in Ireland would work in Sweden. The marketing pitch most likely to work on the Swedes would be the violent collision nature of the game itself. This will give the Swedes a chance to feel smug and superior to Americans regarding their health care system after they watch TJ Watt blindside a quarterback.
Tokyo, Japan is another city that could host an NFL game. The average (grrr) Japanese household has enough disposable income to support going to a game. While Japanese short-term work visas are admittedly a bit harder to obtain than EU or Canadian ones, this still shouldn’t present a roadblock, if the game is scheduled later in the regular season to give enough time for processing. Similar to the other cities listed, public transit is a clear strength that Tokyo has going for it; in fact, some say it’s among the best in the world. A unique cultural quirk will throw the players on the field for a loop though, as the Japanese are known for not making crowd noise (seriously, crowd noise was a factor in some high school games I played in!). The key to marketing an NFL game to a Japanese audience is presenting how uniquely American it is and playing up the foreign novelty aspect of the game. That marketing pitch will need to be balanced out with strong U.S.-Japanese alliance messages, but it could definitely work.
My final suggestion is my most unorthodox one: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Now that a pitchfork-wielding mob has seemingly teleported to my front door, let me explain. The Saudi government has already spent large sums of money to bring American and other Western sports into the kingdom in recent years. Everything from Formula One racing, to the lower-octane world of professional golf, to heavyweight championship boxing matches, and other various gimmicks such as WWE events have taken place in Saudi Arabia. “Dan, it’s unethical to do business with the Saudi’s!” a reader may protest; however, that Pandorra’s Box has already been opened and only a fool would deny that. I mean seriously, we even sell them weapons. Admittedly though, this will be a hard sell in the medium-to-long term, as one could expect a lot of resistance from the player’s union during the next collective bargaining agreement-the long flights, high temperatures, and the culture shock being the most likely factors. Luckily, I’m not claiming that any of these venues listed are spots for future franchises; these are merely one-off occurrences.
“Dan, this many foreign games in a season is bad! What about the economies of the team’s city?” an angry reader will ask. Fortunately, I’ve explored before that professional sports are the result of a healthy economy and not the cause of it. However, to mitigate the effects of whatever impact may occur, teams from healthier economies could be more likely to be sent abroad, such as the New York Jets, Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers and so on. If Roger Goodell has enough charisma and smooth negotiating skills, he could work out a partner deal with the State Department in which [insert foreign nation here] hosting an NFL game would be a diplomatic milestone, akin to a cultural exchange with the United States. This of course assumes the host nation is safe and financially healthy enough to host one; it could even give a developing nation an economic and public safety goal to shoot for. If you think this blatant diplomatic-branding bundle is a ridiculous idea that would never work, then try asking the Thai government how it’s worked out for them.
It’s just crazy enough to work…
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