NFL looking to expand on its international offerings

The NFL, every looking for new ways to make even more giant piles of money is now looking to expand on its overseas presence. The NFL's "international series" has in recent years only featured games played in London England.

Albert Breers of NFL Media stated that the league is looking into and considering holding regular season games in countries other than the United Kingdom. First up on their list is Mexico and Germany. Mexico City hosted a 2005 regular season game between the Cardinals and the 49ers that saw more than 103,000 fans show up to see the action live. Frankfurt Germany of course hosted a team from the now defunct NFL Europe league, the Frankfurt Galaxy, from 1991 to 1992 and 1995 to 2007.

There has also been suggestions that the NFL may play the 2017 Pro Bowl in Brazil. Beyond that there are those within the league that would like to see games held in Canada and even China. Canada is seen as the obvious choice for not only games to be played but also as a future target for expansion.

With the NFL already committed to playing at least three regular season games per season in London, playing even more games overseas will require more teams to "voluntarily" give up home games. One way the NFL found to lure some teams into giving up a home game is by requiring any team that would like to host a Super Bowl to give up a home game. In addition they will also require any team moving to a new market to give up one home game per season if and while playing in any temporary venues while waiting for construction to be completed on any new stadiums.

NFL executive VP of International play, Mark Waller told Breer, "The work we're doing now is to ask, How do we accelerate the agenda in Mexico, Canada and China", Those would be our next stage and we have offices in those countries. And then, after those, where should our focus be? I think we've concluded that Brazil and Germany are the next two frontier markets which is where the Pro Bowl idea comes from.".

Despite the fact that many fans oppose the international play that takes away a home game, the NFL seems hell bent on moving forward and expanding their overseas offerings. Additionally when polled most players state that they neither like the idea of traveling overseas to play in the international series nor playing full time in an overseas expansion market. This may be a case where the NFL's drive to make even more profits outweighs the desires of either their employees or their primary customer base, the American NFL football fan.