Goodell Says NFL Teams Outside the U.S. Are Inevitable, Super Bowl Would Come Second

Roger Goodell isn't hedging anymore. The NFL commissioner told German broadcaster RTL/ntv, in an interview with former NFL player Markus Kuhn published Tuesday, that a franchise permanently based outside the United States is a matter of when, not if.

"At some point, there will be NFL teams outside the USA," Goodell said. "I have no doubt that this will happen one day."

This is a firmer stance than he's taken before. UPI noted Goodell told CBS back in 2023 he "didn't know what the future was going to be" on this question, then softened slightly in 2025 to say there was "potential" for an international franchise. Now it's certainty.

This isn't just talk. The NFL will play nine regular-season games outside the U.S. this season, a new single-season record, according to UPI and NBC Sports. The stops include Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro, three games in London, Paris, Madrid, Munich and Mexico City.

Team owners already voted this year to bump that to as many as 10 international games annually starting in 2027, per TSN and thescore. Owners also stripped teams of their ability to protect home games from being sent overseas. That's a real structural change, not just scheduling filler. It tells you the league office now has more leverage to force international games through, regardless of which team wants to keep its home slate intact.

Goodell has previously said the league was on track toward 16 international games a season, which would be enough for every team to play one abroad every year. If that's the actual target, nine games this year isn't a novelty. It's a ramp-up.

Goodell was clear about sequencing. He wants a permanent overseas franchise before he wants an overseas Super Bowl.

"There are definitely international cities that could host something like that," Goodell said of the Super Bowl. "But we would like to see an NFL team in such a city first."

That tracks with what Peter O'Reilly, the NFL's executive vice president of club business, international and league events, said in May: an international Super Bowl is "not a front-burner issue" right now, according to TSN. So the league's own executive on this exact portfolio was downplaying it just three months ago while the commissioner is now talking up permanent expansion.

For context, the NFL's first regular-season game outside the U.S. happened in 2005 in Mexico City, when the Arizona Cardinals played the 49ers under then-commissioner Paul Tagliabue, according to UPI. Goodell took over in 2006 and has overseen 61 international games since, with nine more set for 2026. He's the guy who built this pipeline for two decades. When he says a foreign franchise is inevitable, it's coming from someone who has personally engineered the buildup to that point.

None of the reports name a candidate city. Goodell didn't say London, Mexico City, or anywhere else, and none of the outlets pressed him on it. Bleacher Report's Mike Chiari framed this year's nine-game slate as a possible "trial run" for whether that many international games a year is sustainable, which is a reasonable inference but still speculation, not something Goodell confirmed.

There's also a real logistical wall nobody in these reports addresses head-on: travel. A team based in London or Mexico City playing 16 away games and eight or nine home games a year means opposing rosters cross oceans repeatedly, on top of whatever grind the international franchise itself faces just getting to road games in Seattle or Miami. The league hasn't laid out how that works competitively, and no source here has that answer either.

The 2026 season's nine international games, kicking off with the Rams and 49ers in Melbourne in Week 1, will be the biggest test case yet of whether fans, players, and broadcasters can sustain this workload. The 2027 slate expands to as many as 10 games under the rule owners already passed. Super Bowl host cities are locked in through 2030, with Inglewood, California hosting Super Bowl LXI on Feb. 14, followed by Atlanta, Las Vegas and Nashville. No timeline exists yet for when, or where, the first international franchise might actually be awarded.