Although the proposition is never off the table, the NFL is more concerned about growing the game of football internationally than establishing a permanent footprint in another country or region.

That is the opinion of Brett Gosper, the league’s current head of operations in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, speaking to the A Load of BS On Sport podcast this week.

There has been much speculation over the years regarding the possibility of an NFL franchise permanently relocating outside the USA, with the Jacksonville Jaguars usually at the heart of the discussion given their long-standing agreement to play games at Wembley Stadium in London. Thinking bigger again, there has even been talk about the possibility of expanding the league to include a European division — not least in Issue 80 of Gridiron magazine — despite all the logistical headaches that would cause in terms of player relocation, match scheduling and travel. Gosper, however, suggests that the growing interest in staging games as part of the burgeoning NFL International Series will, for the time being at least, continue to overshadow thoughts of expansion.

“I think, when I first arrived at the NFL, the feeling was the biggest global step we could take would be to have a franchise in London, and every question I was ever asked at any press event or whatever was, ‘When’s the franchise landing in London?’ and so on,” he noted. “Would there be a team that would suddenly relocate? The Jaguars are often touted because they’re playing regular games here at Wembley and so on, but that didn’t happen — and nor was there a sign that it would happen elsewhere.

“There were conversations — and, certainly, it was mooted at one point — that actually, if one team outside of America is going to be slightly different in terms of the equity and scheduling and all sorts of things like that, maybe the easier thing is to have a division outside of the United States — maybe four teams in Europe, maybe two in Germany, two in the UK — and they would battle out through the pre-playoff and then the teams who made playoffs would relocate into Florida to base there. All sorts of conversations happened in public and in private around that notion, but it’s a very, very heavy lift for the NFL and it probably would mean expansion of the league from 32 teams to 36. They’re not easy things to do when the pie is of a size and the sharing of that pie is accepted as it is. I think there’s a feeling this is certainly the strategy of more games, more engagement and a wider footprint is the way to go.”

With the now familiar three-game stretch in London being joined by at least one in Germany, a port of call for the past three or four seasons, and further expansion to São Paulo (from 2024), Madrid and Dublin (for 2025) and Melbourne (from 2026) — as well as the mooted return of Mexico City — Gosper’s assertion that the International Series is successfully achieving the NFL’s aim of growing the game overseas appears on track.

“It’s something which we’re seeing real returns on,” he emphasised. “Playing a first regular season game in 2022 in Germany spiked so much growth and interest — including commercial interest and broadcaster interest — that that model is now being shipped to other places where we’re seeing similar reaction. So I think we’re on a pathway of using the [International Series] games, not as the end in itself, but to trigger interest that we then develop into a higher engagement with fans in that market over a period of time.

“Of course, [to return to] the franchise, if someone puts their hand up and says, ‘We want to move’, that’ll be considered. And, maybe in the future, there might be a division somewhere but, for now, the strategy is definitely to sample the sport The interest from around the globe has persuaded NFL team owners to sanction as many as eight overseas games a season from 2025, and Gosper admits that there are talks behind the scenes to expand that number even further.

“We want to bring the very best games, regular season games, [to the international audience] and we’ve moved from where we used to have about two of those in a year to where we are now, from 2025, able to take eight games internationally,” he confirmed. “But we have around 12 priority international markets that we’ve earmarked as having high growth potential, fans, future revenue and so on.

“So there’s talk about potentially, in 2030, if ownership votes that way, going to 16 [International Series] games annually, which is almost every week of the regular season. The NFL realises that, if we’re fan-centric, the next 50 million fans will come from outside of America, not within it.”

Brett Gosper was speaking to the A Load of BS On Sports podcast. Listen to the full interview on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.