What’s next for the NFL’s International Game Series?

The San Francisco 49ers defeated the Arizona Cardinals 38-10 on the international stage in Mexico City on Monday, in the the fifth regular-season NFL game to be played in Mexico and the first since 2019.

The match may have been framed as a Cardinals home game, but the raucous crowd of almost 80,000 fans heavily favoured the 49ers inside Estadio Azteca.

Jimmy Garoppolo threw four touchdown passes in the win, with the 49ers announcing themselves to the world as genuine Super Bowl contenders.

The game marked the end of the NFL International Series for another year. But after the success of the 2022 games, with more fixtures than ever taking place abroad, the future is bright for prospects of more games heading abroad.

After 33 games in London, the NFL made its debut in Germany last Sunday in a historic day for the league. Tom Brady led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a 21-16 win over the Seattle Seahawks as more than 70,000 fans gathered to produce an incredible atmosphere at the Allianz Arena, in one of the more memorable occasions for the league in recent history.

The game itself held far more significance than just the final box score. The German fanbase showed up in incredible fashion, with Tom Brady calling it “one of the great football experiences” that he’s been part of.

So, could this become the norm? Will there be more games abroad? Or even, a team moving overseas permanently?

So where next?

The NFL has been very forward with expansion plans. Back in 2018, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell admitted a team in London was a genuine future possibility, given how the much of an asset overseas matches were becoming.

In 2021, the league announced the International Home Marketing Areas Initiative (IHMI), with franchises given new markets to develop their global brands and find new fan bases. It means more in-person digital marketing, corporate sponsorship and fan events, as well as youth football activities to encourage more young people into the sport.

For the international series, the initiative boosts changes of more games taking place abroad. In fact, according to Brett Gosper, NFL Head of UK and Europe, as the league is keen to continue its growth across Europe, the prospect of regular season games played in Spain and France a real possibility, for example.

Spain is one of the 10 countries chosen by the NFL which has allocated international rights as part of IHMI, and has the Chicago Bears and Miami Dolphins as it’s teams.

Currently no team has rights in France, but given the strength of it’s sporting media market and infrastructure, the presence of the NFL is absolutely real.

Gosper also suggested Sweden could be a future NFL destination given the popularity of the league in the Nordic region. In August 1988, the Bears played the Minnesota Vikings in a preseason game at Ullevi stadium in Gothenburg.

We’ve spoken frequently about the likelihood of an overseas franchises as almost being inevitable, but any sort of move would take time. The NFL will go wherever the money is and there is certainly an appetite for the league internationally.

While there is still a lot to figure out regarding the NFL’s international future, prospects are looking great for American Football. And not just in America anymore.