The National Football League (NFL)’s expanding interest in staging games overseas is part of a plan to strengthen the game’s appeal and market globally, but it also has implications for player performance and injury risk.
When the New England Patriots square off against the Detroit Lions in Munich, Germany, on Nov. 15, it will be one of a record nine regular season games played overseas this season. The 2026 schedule includes games played in three first-time countries — Australia, Brazil, and France — as well as Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, and Mexico.
“Bringing games into more markets gives consumers direct exposure to the NFL, whether it is a completely new experience or simply a rare opportunity to see a game in person,” says Eun Kang, Ph.D., associate professor of Marketing. “A sold-out stadium tells us people are interested in the event, but it does not necessarily mean they have become NFL fans.”
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The real measure of success is whether consumers continue watching games, follow a team or individual players, engage with NFL content, and eventually develop a longer-term relationship with the sport, says Kang. That’s a bigger hurdle for American football, which has no real cultural roots outside of the United States and Canada and has rules and traditions that are hard for newcomers to grasp.
“Sports fandom is highly emotional and is often tied to geography, family, tradition, and identity,” Kang says. “In many countries, people grow up supporting the same soccer club as their parents, friends, or local community. That connection creates a sense of belonging and makes the relationship with the team more personal. An NFL team from thousands of miles away does not automatically have that same emotional bond.”
Christian Fauria, a professional in residence who teaches within Bryant’s Communication, Media, and Sports Industries department, compares overseas NFL games to the “friendly” exhibition games that international soccer teams have staged in the U.S. to boost interest in teams playing in the upper echelon of the sport, such as the English Premier League.
“The merchandising, the games, the TV rights are where I think the NFL is headed, because that's where the big money is,” says Fauria, who played tight end for four NFL teams over a 13-year career and won two Super Bowl championships with the New England Patriots. “In-person game experiences are great, but if you look at every network and entertainment platform, the one thing that isn't going [away] is live sports.”
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Fauria doesn’t expect the NFL to place a franchise overseas soon, but he does see huge potential for growing the sport through promotion of flag football, which will make its debut in the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
“The NFL is putting a lot of time and money into flag football,” he says, noting that while college or pro football isn’t intrinsic to the sports culture in other markets, flag football can generate broad appeal across genders. “The NFL doesn't care if people move on to playing tackle football. They would be perfectly happy to have people play flag football and then watch NFL games.”
“The NFL doesn't care if people move on to playing tackle football. They would be perfectly happy to have people play flag football and then watch NFL games.”
Kang agrees.
“The NFL can become a global entertainment brand by getting consumers in countries such as Germany, Brazil, and Australia to watch games and support NFL teams. But football only becomes a truly international sport when people in those countries begin playing it,” she says. “That is why the growth of flag football and youth participation may be just as important in the long run as international NFL games.”
Challenges are physical as well as cultural
The NFL has been playing games in foreign markets for more than two decades: the first regular season game played outside the U.S. was in Mexico City in 2005, and the first European game was held in London in 2007.
Over the years, teams have become better acclimated to the travel involved in these one-off games.
“The players have been conditioned that it’s part of the schedule, and they account for it like Monday Night Football or Thursday Night Football,” says Fauria.
However, the schedule can still be punishing. The Los Angeles Rams, for example, were widely criticized for their decision to fly to Melbourne, Australia, just 24 hours before their Sept. 10 game against the San Francisco 49ers, who arrived a full week before. The 49ers handily beat a noticeably fatigued Rams team, 27-7, in that game.
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“Long flights and time zone shifts disrupt the circadian rhythm, the body’s internal clock that regulates sleep, body temperature, hormone release, and alertness,” says Benjamin Fry, lecturer of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. “Physically, athletes can experience shortened or fragmented sleep, fatigue, slower reaction time, reduced power output, stiffness from prolonged sitting, dehydration, and digestive problems.”
Mentally, jet lag can affect attention, memory, decision-making, and mood, Fry adds: “Those are the skills football depends on, from reading a defense to recalling a complex playbook in a split second.”
Fry says research findings about the impact of travel on sports performance are inconclusive but says a common rule of thumb is to allow one day of adjustment per time zone crossed.
“Melbourne’s 17-hour difference is more extreme, and even a week does not allow for full adaptation,” he notes.
“As the NFL increases international games, the interesting frontier is direct physiological monitoring linked to performance and injury,” says Fry, pointing out that few studies exist that track NFL players' sleep, circadian phase, or neuromuscular recovery.
“As the NFL increases international games, the interesting frontier is direct physiological monitoring linked to performance and injury."
Likewise, he says, current research on injury patterns in the NFL often examine season-long travel and may miss the short, post-travel window where fatigue peaks.
“We still don't know if jet lag affects a lineman's explosive power differently than a quarterback's decision-making, or how to optimize a protocol when half your roster adapts in two days and half needs five,” he says. “The research exists in other sports and in labs, but translating it to football's week-to-week reality remains more art than science.”