The NFL has grown its brand substantially by expanding outside of the United States, having played games in England, Germany, Mexico and most recently, Brazil, between the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers in the second game of the 2024-2025 season. The league hasn’t quit attempting to expand its brand, announcing that the Miami Dolphins will be hosting a game in Madrid, Spain.

While the growth of the sport is at the forefront of the NFL’s mind, making sure the product on the field is as balanced as can be between organizations. With the 17-game schedule, teams alternate each season between home and away games, with eight for home and nine for away, before switching the next year.

For example, this was supposed to be a season in which Philadelphia was supposed to have nine home games. Instead, the Eagles had just eight, due to the Brazil trip and vice versa for the Packers and road games. In a different scenario, the Jacksonville Jaguars have become the honorary team of London, playing two of their games there in each of the last two seasons. With this, they’ve played consecutive weeks, giving the teams traveling to play the latter of the weeks a handicap, as Jacksonville has become acclimated to the time zone switch. In both instances, the Jaguars have been the victor.

This isn’t to deter the NFL from expanding its international presence. Rather, it gives the opportunity to expand the game more. Instead of the nine-and-eight game swap, make teams have eight home and away games, with one neutral site game sprinkled in the schedule.

The NFL has hosted three games in England in each season since 2022. With Mexico, Spain, Brazil and Germany, that accounts for at least seven international games, with the possibility to double up in any, if not, all of the countries.

With the massive success seen from college football hosting games in Ireland, the NFL could follow suit. Other potential landing spots for the International Series to stop could be New Zealand, Australia, France, Scotland, Argentina, South Africa and Italy, as each of the nations rank in the top 10 internationally in men’s rugby rankings.

There’s only three major push backs that could arise. The first is making sure teams have similar travel distances. That would mean if the NFL decided on expanding to South Africa, Jacksonville would most likely abandon its secondary post of England, as it is one of the closer teams to the country.

Redundancy would be another problem. The NFL usually switches the teams traveling, so to continue the trend, planning equal travel distances would be the biggest factor to avoid having repetitive matchups outside the USA.

Lastly, the games would have to be completed before Week 18. Most of the international games take place between October and November, with the few exceptions taking place in September. Theoretically, the NFL could have international games take place on Fridays or Saturdays for the nations with differing time zones from the States, with the games occurring in Europe still taking place on Sunday mornings, as years past.

Though it won’t occur this season, this would fix the current issue of uneven scheduling due to the NFL International Series, while still expanding the brand.

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