NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says foreign-based teams are coming — plural — and he won't rule out shipping the Super Bowl overseas to make it happen.
"At some point, there will be NFL teams outside the USA," Goodell said in an interview with German outlet RTL/ntv. "I have no doubt that this will happen one day." He doubled down on the prospect of an international Super Bowl: "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 NFL is an American game built by American fans. Now the league office wants to trade that foundation for a "nearly-limitless fountain of money" available in foreign markets, as Fox News characterized the motive. Follow the dollars: owners in May voted to expand international games to ten per season starting in 2027 and stripped individual clubs of the ability to block their home games from being shipped overseas. Goodell's stated goal is 16 international games per year.
The 2026 season alone features nine games outside U.S. borders — Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro, London (three times), Wembley, Paris, Madrid, Munich, and Mexico City. That's nine American communities losing a home game so the league can test-market foreigners who haven't spent a dime on the product.
NBC Sports framed Goodell's comments as a signal that expansion — not relocation — is the most likely path, noting the league hasn't added a franchise since 2002, the longest drought in NFL history. The outlet speculated that two London-based expansion teams would be the logical starting point, with both dropped into the AFC East and NFC East divisions. The long-term vision, NBC Sports reported, could be a 40-team league with entire international divisions spanning Europe, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, and Australia.
Fox News, meanwhile, highlighted the obvious logistical nightmares the league would rather gloss over: 10-to-12-hour flights for West Coast teams traveling to London or Paris, jet lag, time zone chaos, and the sheer absurdity of a Super Bowl kicking off at 11:30 p.m. local time in London — or forcing American fans to watch at noon on a workday. NBC Sports noted the NFL is reportedly monitoring advances in supersonic travel, as if a commercial technology that doesn't yet exist at scale is a serious answer to the travel problem.
NFL.com, the league's own in-house outlet, kept its coverage predictably sterile — reporting Goodell's comments straight and burying any mention of the disruption to fans or the logistical hurdles.
The Jaguars, long speculated as a relocation candidate, just signed a new long-term lease and are renovating their stadium, according to NBC Sports. That leaves expansion as the realistic path — meaning the league would dilute its product and add franchises in cities with no fan base, no history, and no American tax dollars funding their stadiums.
Goodell treats the crossing of an ocean as inevitable. The only question, per NBC Sports, is when — not if. That's how corporate executives talk when they've already made up their minds and just need the rest of us to catch up.
The question no one in the league office is asking: what do the fans who built this sport actually want?
