The NFL’s international slate of games is gradually getting better. That’s not an accident.
As the league more fully leans into its obsession with global expansion, it’s becoming harder for the designated home teams to hand-pick the game that will be selected for export.
During a Friday conference call to discuss the new schedule, NFL V.P. of broadcast planning Mike North addressed the trend toward making more and more games fair game for displacement to an international venue.
“Clubs right now, by resolution, have an opportunity to protect a minimum — a limited number — of home opponents from being taken for international venues,” North said. “That’s something this league’s been discussing quite a bit and, like I said, at the beginning, it used to be four or five games protected, got down to three games protected. I think we’re down now to two, and that may continue to diminish as we are trying to build a schedule and deliver quality inventory to our international fans.
“You know, you can’t have a team say, ‘Well, I don’t want my two best games ineligible for international.’ What kind of message does that send to the international fans? So I think there’s a lot of conversation about really just eliminating the protections in their entirety. . . . So [I’m] hopeful that the protections continue to diminish and maybe even are eliminated entirely. I think that would be better for everybody — not just the international fans, but also for the teams that might want to play internationally and keep getting blocked.”
It’s an important shift. The NFL has gone from giving international fans table scraps to hand-carving prime rib. For plenty of teams, there are marquee matchups that will lead to a standing-room crowd, and the various enhanced revenue streams that go along with having the facility at full capacity.
As North tells it, there’s a trend toward home teams having no say whatsoever over which games will picked for an international platform.
That cuts both ways. If a team can’t block a certain game from going global, a team like the Rams shouldn’t be able to foist its 49ers game onto a faraway stage in order to avoid the annual embarrassment of having the Faithful fill SoFi Stadium. The league should make the decisions without regard to what any of the international home teams want.
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