NFL upping international games and stripping teams rights to protect games

[Kirby Jackson]

Color me shocked but the international slate will increase again. The big change is that teams no longer can protect 2 games. We were discussing that here before people, including Sal, knew it was a thing.
 

Well, that probably means more international games for the Bills. With Josh Allen here the Bills are a team that others would protect. The Steelers did last year for sure. Teams like the Cardinals and Atlanta are probably never protected. Until now, the only way the Bills were going international was losing a home game. That changes moving forward.

 

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/48819165/nfl-oks-10-intl-games-27-teams-protect-games

[BillsPride12]

🤮🤮🤮

[Matt_In_NH]

They have said international games will increase.  I am not concerned at all. 

[Kirby Jackson]

Probably reasonable to expect an international game every 2, or 3 years max. This is the 3rd straight season without one so I’m guessing 2027 has one. I’m really, really hoping it’s not the Jacksonville game in 2027 that’s to be played in Orlando. We are planning to do a big Disney / Bills trip. 

[Gregg]

11 minutes ago, Kirby Jackson said:

Probably reasonable to expect an international game every 2, or 3 years max. This is the 3rd straight season without one so I’m guessing 2027 has one. I’m really, really hoping it’s not the Jacksonville game in 2027 that’s to be played in Orlando. We are planning to do a big Disney / Bills trip. 

 

They do play Jacksonville on the road in 2027. The 2027 schedule will have an NFC East and AFC South flavor to it.

 

https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=57170007b9a8863a2647077a8ca85da8ac809ddb05d2a3bd8df2c41a1f5cd727JmltdHM9MTc3OTIzNTIwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=39432f18-80d3-69d2-2993-3dda815f6841&psq=bills+future+opponents&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9mYnNjaGVkdWxlcy5jb20vbmZsL2J1ZmZhbG8tYmlsbHMv

[13 Seconds to Mars]

Once Josh Allen retires, I’m probably going to take long hiatus from the NFL. It’s not even the product that it was in the 2000s. Never seen an organization treat its die hard fans like this. The NFL only cares about appeasing the casuals these days. Roger Goodell needs to go (and his successor will probably be just as bad.) 

 

It actually infuriates me how much damage one man has done. The Buffalo Bills are in my blood. 

[Captain Hindsight]

Public money for NFL stadiums-> ship games overseas

 

 

[Kirby Jackson]

20 minutes ago, Gregg said:

 

They do play Jacksonville on the road in 2027. The 2027 schedule will have an NFC East and AFC South flavor to it.

 

https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=57170007b9a8863a2647077a8ca85da8ac809ddb05d2a3bd8df2c41a1f5cd727JmltdHM9MTc3OTIzNTIwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=39432f18-80d3-69d2-2993-3dda815f6841&psq=bills+future+opponents&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9mYnNjaGVkdWxlcy5jb20vbmZsL2J1ZmZhbG8tYmlsbHMv

Yes and Jacksonville is playing in Orlando in 2027. Unless the Bills get a Jags London Game (again) it’ll be in Orlando.

5 minutes ago, 13 Seconds to Mars said:

Once Josh Allen retires, I’m probably going to take long hiatus from the NFL. It’s not even the product that it was in the 2000s. Never seen an organization treat its die hard fans like this. The NFL only cares about appeasing the casuals these days. Roger Goodell needs to go (and his successor will probably be just as bad.) 

 

It actually infuriates me how much damage one man has done. The Buffalo Bills are in my blood. 

I know we say those things but the league is an absolute machine under Goodell. The cap is going up $20M a year and it’ll be $30M a year soon. By my rough math, that means that the league’s revenues are growing by about $1.3B per year!! He will be getting a giant raise prior to getting replaced.

[frostbitmic]

I'm guessing that soon every team will play an international game every year, especially after the Jaguars move to London. With a 17 game schedule it makes sense, 8 home games, 8 away games and an international neutral site game.

 

The Bills were a pioneer of this crap when they had the yearly game in Toronto. Thanks Russ.

 

The only international games I've watched involve the Bills, otherwise I'm not interested in games that start at 9:00 on a Sunday morning or on a Wednesday night. But greed is good and they'll move a ton of merchandise in foreign cities and that's what it's all about.

[SoCal Deek]

2 minutes ago, frostbitmic said:

I'm guessing that soon every team will play an international game every year, especially after the Jaguars move to London. With a 17 game schedule it makes sense, 8 home games, 8 away games and an international neutral site game.

 

The Bills were a pioneer of this crap when they had the yearly game in Toronto. Thanks Russ.

 

The only international games I've watched involve the Bills, otherwise I'm not interested in games that start at 9:00 on a Sunday morning or on a Wednesday night. But greed is good and they'll move a ton of merchandise in foreign cities and that's what it's all about.

Let me suggest you don’t move to the west coast then. The regular ‘early’ games kick off at 10:00am here. LOL

 

(On the flipside, night games are generally over by 9:00pm, at the latest)

[Kirby Jackson]

3 minutes ago, frostbitmic said:

I'm guessing that soon every team will play an international game every year, especially after the Jaguars move to London. With a 17 game schedule it makes sense, 8 home games, 8 away games and an international neutral site game.

 

The Bills were a pioneer of this crap when they had the yearly game in Toronto. Thanks Russ.

 

The only international games I've watched involve the Bills, otherwise I'm not interested in games that start at 9:00 on a Sunday morning or on a Wednesday night. But greed is good and they'll move a ton of merchandise in foreign cities and that's what it's all about.

I think that the 8/8 and neutral game is a better option than 8 or 9 and maybe 8 and 8 with an international game. That feels like the most fair way to do it. 
 

As an aside, with the exception of the Jags, who choose London, it should rotate conferences that “host” the international game in the current setup. I don’t know if that’s the case or not now. It looks like the Jags are hosting 2 in London this year and the rest of the hosts are NFC teams. That makes sense I guess. Next year, it should be only AFC teams hosting.

[DrDawkinstein]

This late-stage capitalism is ruining everything.

[Gregg]

1 minute ago, SoCal Deek said:

Let me suggest you don’t move to the west coast then. The regular ‘early’ games kick off at 10:00am here. LOL

 

(On the flipside, night games are generally over by 9:00pm, at the latest)

 

A few years back I was in Vegas during football season. It was weird watching football at 10:00am for what we on the EC call the 1:00 games. On the plus side the Sunday "Night" game would be over at 8:30pm

[SoCal Deek]

1 minute ago, Gregg said:

 

A few years back I was in Vegas during football season. It was weird watching football at 10:00am for what we on the EC call the 1:00 games. On the plus side the Sunday "Night" game would be over at 8:30pm

It’s actually great. You go to early church and are ready to go….and the ‘afternoon’ games are over by 4:00.

[Lost]

5 minutes ago, DrDawkinstein said:

This late-stage capitalism is ruining everything.

 

I'm sure communism would fix it...

[OutOfBubbleGum]

The NFL isn't about marketing the game to the world. It is an American game with rivalries that should stay in America only. The commissioner has it wrong since his brain trust is ruining the game for fans.

[Kirby Jackson]

25 minutes ago, OutOfBubbleGum said:

The NFL isn't about marketing the game to the world. It is an American game with rivalries that should stay in America only. The commissioner has it wrong since his brain trust is ruining the game for fans.

I’m not trying to support Goodell but what should he be doing? The game is growing at a rate that it could have never dreamed of. It’s growing roughly $1.3B a year by my math and think that moves to about $2B a year in a few years. His job is to run the business for the owners. I would think that every owner getting an additional $25M-$35M of profit per year would be something that they’d feel pretty good about. Goodell’s job is to make more money for the league and grow the fan base. He has done an exceptional job at that. 

Edited May 20 by Kirby Jackson

[Gregg]

9 minutes ago, OutOfBubbleGum said:

The NFL isn't about marketing the game to the world. It is an American game with rivalries that should stay in America only. The commissioner has it wrong since his brain trust is ruining the game for fans.

 

The NFL IS ABOUT MARKETING THE GAME TO THE WORLD. I agree with you it's an American game that should stay in America. But the NFL is a cash cow, and these international games are growing the fanbase outside of America which means more $$$$$. You see games now being shown on streaming services rather than just CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN, and ABC (playoffs). It's the way things are trending now in 2026. You can already see cable TV is dying off and has been for a while now.

[transient]

Can hardly wait until they announce they've signed a broadcast agreement with a different subscription streaming service for each different country...

[BeyondTheProcess]

sucks that folks who invest in PSLs throughout the league lose home games now and then.   plus TV will continue to fragment into multiple subscription services.   

 

the genie is out of the bottle on these and she's not going back in