With the 2025 NFL season officially underway, the league’s international expansion goals will be on full display this fall—particularly this weekend.
The Chiefs and Chargers will square off Friday night in the second NFL game in Brazil, and for Kansas City, it’s another step in the franchise’s goal of global dominance.
“We’ve been very transparent in our desire to become the world’s team,” Chiefs owner Clark Hunt said Thursday at a fan event in São Paulo. “And a big part of that is growing the Chiefs Kingdom all over the globe.”
Hunt has a good case. Kansas City is becoming the first NFL team to play in four different countries outside the U.S., having already played games in Mexico, the U.K., and Germany. As part of the league’s global markets program, the Chiefs have marketing rights in Austria, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, and the U.K. Those seven foreign markets are tied with the Rams for the most of any single club.
“We’ve made a lot of progress in Western Europe over the last decade, and now we get to come to South America, to the most important country in South America, that has a large fan base of American football already,” Hunt said.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who was speaking alongside Hunt, noted Brazil has an estimated 36 million fans out of its population of roughly 212 million. Goodell said Kansas City was chosen to play in this Brazil game in part because of Hunt and the team’s international ambitions. “The passion, desire, and objective to be a global team, and to help the NFL become a global sport,” Goodell said.
The NFL is playing a record seven international games this season, including debuts in Ireland and Spain, and wants to expand that number to 16 in the near future. Reaching that goal would likely mean every team would play one game outside the U.S. each season.
