Ahead of the 2025-26 campaign, American football’s NFL has once again expanded its Global Markets Program (GMP), where teams can gain marketing rights for international territories, adding four new participating franchises and two new markets.
In Europe, Greece has stepped in as a new territory and will be the NFL’s first global market in both southern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean as the league looks to make inroads across the continent.
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Greece’s first global market club will be the Los Angeles Chargers, one of the four new GMP participating franchises, which boasts a Greek connection through its owner Dean Spanos, whose father (and former Chargers owner) Alex Spanos was the son of Greek immigrants to the US.
The other additional global market will be the United Arab Emirates, the NFL’s first Middle Eastern global market, marketing rights for which have been awarded to the San Francisco 49ers, the Los Angeles Rams, and the Washington Commanders franchises.
The Commanders are another new franchise to the global markets program, with the UAE their sole team, while the 49ers already have rights for the UK, Ireland, and Mexico. The Rams count Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea among their international markets.
The other two new entrants to the GMP are the Green Bay Packers, which now has marketing rights for the UK and Ireland, and Germany, and the Baltimore Ravens franchise, which solely holds rights for the United Kingdom.
Several NFL franchises that are already members of the GMP have also expanded their commitments with new international marketing rights.
These include; the Arizona Cardinals (adding Canada), the Detroit Lions (Brazil), the Indianapolis Colts (Switzerland), the Kansas City Chiefs (Spain, Ireland, UK), the Las Vegas Raiders (Australia, New Zealand), the Seattle Seahawks (Australia, New Zealand), and the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles (Brazil).
Now that the NFL is scheduling a record number of international games for the 2025 campaign and beyond, the league is increasingly benefitting from international exposure, and its franchises play an important role in that.
When Sportcal spoke to New York Jets vice president for finance and Analytics John MacCarter in 2024, he affirmed his opinion that it's “critical” for teams to be programming around their global market, and the International Games in particular.
NFL UK and Ireland general manager Henry Hodgson added when speaking to Sportcal later in 2024: “The combination of the clubs and the league together help to promote the game as best and as authentic as we can, and we can certainly help the market [each franchise] is going into.”
The addition of the UAE in particular is set to be one of the most important additional GMP markets, with the NFL reportedly exploring the possibility of staging an international game in the country in the future.
The UAE, and in particular Abu Dhabi, has long been rumored as a potential NFL market, with location scouts sent for an on-site visit in Abu Dhabi in 2024.
Now that the UAE has been added to the GMP, a hurdle has been passed that could preempt games in the territory.
O’Reilly continued on the prospect of staging games in the Emirates: “Interest (is) high… We don't know the timing, and it's really an if in terms of whether we'll play a game there. What I will say is that's a market where there's strong interest in our game on a year-round basis. I think that's why you see three clubs raising their hand with interest there, it's a market we'll continue to explore,” O’Reilly said.
“We’ve done some exploratory trips there to understand the viability of a potential regular season game in the market, but we’ve got more work to do there in terms of what that looks like over this next stretch.”
