NFL eyes Germany, Mexico for regular-season games

Alec Brzezinski

NFL eyes Germany, Mexico for regular-season games image

The NFL owners' meetings ended Wednesday, and though plenty of the talk revolved around moving a team back to Los Angeles, there were also discussions involving different game sites around the world, according to NFL.com.

The league already hosts annual games in London. Now, the league is looking to broaden its horizons to other nations.

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"The work we're doing now is to ask, 'How do we accelerate the agenda in Mexico, Canada and China?'" Mark Waller, the league's executive vice president for international affairs, told NFL.com. "Those would be our next stage, and we have offices in those three countries. And then, after those, where should be our focus? I think we've concluded that Brazil and Germany are the next two frontier markets, which is where the Pro Bowl idea comes from."

The NFL is considering holding the 2017 Pro Bowl in Brazil, and could expand the International Series beyond London beginning that fall. Frankfurt and Dusseldorf are among the possible hosts for games in Germany, and the NFL recently sent a team to Mexico City to assess stadium availability there.

London is still interested in having a team full-time, and Waller said the league is still on schedule to have that done by 2022. The NFL has a base of 40,000 fans who bought tickets for all three London games in the upcoming season, and most of those fans are local.

Alec Brzezinski