The NFL broke new ground in Europe last year when the league decided to send the Jaguars to London for back-to-back games. The NFL has been playing in Europe since 2007, but before last season, no team had ever been asked to play consecutive games across the pond.
With the Jaguars going 2-0, the experiment was such a success that Jacksonville will once again be playing back-to-back games in Europe this year.
Going forward, there’s a good chance that more NFL teams will be asked to play consecutive games in Europe. During an interview with the Associated Press, Henry Hodgson, the general manager of the NFL’s UK office, said that sending teams to Europe for back-to-back games will likely happen more often due to the all the international expansion that’s coming in the NFL.
“There probably will be times where it might make sense for a team to play as a visiting team and then as a home team, and that might be in one market or it could be in Europe as a whole,” Hodgson said.
That’s exactly what’s happening with the Jaguars. Jacksonville will be the visiting team in Week 6 against the Bears before playing the role of the home team in Week 7 against the Patriots. The Jags will be playing at two different stadiums with the first game at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and the second game at Wembley.
There are only five international games this year, but that number is expected to shoot up to at least eight in 2025. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is hoping to see the league play 16 international games eventually, which is why Hodgson believes we’ll be seeing more teams playing back-to-back games abroad.
“You would expect that with 16 games a year, those are the kinds of logistical and operational things that we’ll need to be looking at as we expand that way,” Hodgson said.
The NFL already has plans to put games in London, Germany and Spain next season. It’s also possible that the league could add a game in Paris or Dublin and if that happens, a team playing back-to-back international games could end up playing at any one of those sites.
