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NFL looking to play a regular season game in China in 2018
- Updated: March 22, 2016
POOL/REUTERSChina’s National Stadium, built for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games has the capacity to host an NFL game.
The NFL, in its continuing efforts to become a global league, is reportedly interested in playing a regular season game in China.
The game could happen by 2018, and it would be the first NFL game played in that country. A 2007 game between the Patriots and Seahawks was postponed and later canceled. Several teams have reportedly expressed interest in participating in the China game. The league is also interested in games in Brazil and Germany, according to ESPN.
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But the league knows that such an undertaking won’t be easy, which is something Giants co-owner Steve Tisch made clear at the NFL owners meetings in Boca Raton.
“It’s fascinating to think about,” Tisch said, according to ESPN. “It’s very exciting, very exotic to think about. But if we do get to a point where the NFL plays a game in China, the logistics are going to be interesting. A lot to figure out in terms of getting there, playing there, coming back from there to the States, how do you maintain the parity with the other 30 teams who don’t have to play there. So, a lot to be worked out still before that could happen.”
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Indeed, any NFL team that heads to China will have to endure a marked time difference (as much as 12 hours for teams in the Eastern time zone). The league will also need to find practice sites for both teams.
But the league is open to the idea, because it would greatly further Roger Goodell’s goal of global expansion. And the Chinese are very open to the idea, said Houston Texans owner Bob McNair.
“We’re going back to Mexico, and London has been very successful, and we’re trying to introduce the NFL to more of the world, and of course that’s the largest population of any country, in China,” McNair said, according to ESPN. “They’ve expressed interest, so I suspect, yeah, we’ll have a game over there.
“A lot of the value of the league is in the value of exposure of the media. Advertisers pay money based on how many people are seeing what they have to say. So, the more people you have watching what you’re doing, the more value your content has.”
China is the great frontier in a continued expansion that the NFL will continue to showcase this season, when the Raiders and Texans square off in a Monday night game in Mexico City. The league also has three games slated to be played in its International Series based in London. The NFL will continue to play regular season games in England through 2020.
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