NFL faces challenges with growth opportunities

The picture the NFL wants you to have of America’s most popular sport is that it’s a steamroller, breaking one ceiling after another in a seemingly endless streak of success with revenues, ratings, salaries and, of course, entertainment and drama.

And most of this is indeed an accurate portrait.

But there’s another snapshot the average fan is increasingly seeing, and it shows an NFL taking more money out of your wallet than ever before, whether you’re attending games or watching games at home.

The American-born NFL is looking to export games to feed fans abroad; Of course, this comes at the expense of full domestic stadiums.

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And it’s the NFL that has partnered with gambling conglomerates as a way to increase revenue and interest, perhaps at the expense of feeding addiction.

So yes, the NFL is America’s reality show. It’s fun and fascinating, but it’s also unquestionably disturbing at times.

So how did the NFL giant get here?

“When I started in the NFL, it was the most popular sport,” said David Chao, a former San Diego Chargers team physician who worked with the team for 17 seasons. “By the time I was done it was more popular than all other sports combined.

“So what’s the key difference? During baseball season, you go to a sports bar. During baseball season, men watch the games. During football season, on Sunday, you go to a sports bar, half the women watch the games. They doubled the attendance. And they added fantasy. So what is fantasy? It’s personal ownership and stake. It’s personal stake in the games.”

Chao notes that fans asked him years ago if a player was fit for the game because they wanted the Chargers to win. Fans still care about their teams, but the league has added new fans who want to know that information to ensure their fantasy team wins.

Or they want their gambling bets to win.

NFL’s ‘Existential Threat’

Gambling has become a source of revenue for the NFL that did not exist nearly a decade ago.

The NFL has moved from direct opposition to active commercial partnership with the sports betting industry. Caesars Entertainment now serves as the league’s official casino sponsor, while DraftKings and FanDuel are official sports betting partners.

These agreements allow partners to use NFL trademarks, promote betting activities in league media, and engage fans with NFL-branded betting experiences. While the NFL maintains boundaries designed to protect the integrity of the game, this is a very fine line for anyone who understands how potential betting information works.

“This is a disaster, an existential threat to football,” said Leigh Steinberg, the famed NFL agent whose career was the template for Tom Cruise’s character in Hollywood’s 1996 film Jerry Maguire. “All it takes is for some insider information to be leaked to a gambler trying to place a prop bet, or an athlete actually underperforming, and that’s a slippery slope to having a real contest and it starts to resemble wrestling.

“Gambling is perhaps good news in terms of revenue, but bad news in terms of the integrity of the game and the continued interest of fans.”

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Feeding NFL Gambling Addictions

Sports betting at Circa Resort & Hotel ahead of Super Bowl LVIII on February 10, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Mario Hommes/DeFodi images via Getty Images)

Steinberg is the author of four books; among them is his latest book, “Coming Back: A Playbook for Turning Life’s Setbacks into Triumphs,” which will be released on March 24. Part of the book details Steinberg’s struggle with alcohol addiction and concerns that the NFL’s ties to gambling could have a terrible effect on some fans.

Beyond probably losing a lot of money, that is.

“They will create a whole new generation of gambling addicts,” he said. “Because some people can’t handle it. Secondly, if you don’t think that matches are played on a level playing field with equal referees, rules and every player doing their best… If you instill in the fans’ brain the possibility of something different from what they see on the field, it’s a disaster.”

There is already a group of NFL fans on social media who say the NFL is scripted. Some NFL personnel even publicly joke about this narrative. But all it takes is one player, innocent or not, to share injury information leaked to the gambling community in a way that affects betting lines, and the NFL has a scandal on its hands.

NFL Exports Games Around the World

New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones (8) carries the ball against the New York Giants during the second half of the 2024 NFL Munich Game at Allianz Arena. (Kirby Lee-Imagn Images)

But none of this has so far prevented the NFL from its steady, seemingly inexorable expansion into a global game.

“We have to be global in today’s world,” Commissioner Roger Goodell told fans in Ireland last season before the Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings played in Dublin. “Every time we play an international game, the fans say they want more. I truly believe our game can and will be global. Our job is to share our game with the rest of the world.”

The NFL will play a record nine international games in four continents, seven countries and eight stadiums in 2026:

• London, United Kingdom (two matches at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, one match at Wembley Stadium)
• Madrid, Spain (Bernabéu Stadium)
• Melbourne, Australia (Melbourne Cricket Ground)
• Mexico City, Mexico (Estadio Banorte)
• Munich, Germany (FC Bayern Munich Stadium)
• Paris, France (Stade de France Stadium)
• Rio De Janeiro, Brazil (Maracana Stadium)

Paris, Melbourne and Rio are new additions to the International list. And if things go as planned, it won’t be the last one.

“We want to get to 16 games so everyone plays one game a year internationally,” Goodell said.

Players Don’t Want Match 18

But every game that is exported is a game that leaves the United States.

The NFL has a long-term plan that may please some fans but will certainly irritate players, and that’s to add another game. Although Goodell cautioned that adding an 18th game during Super Bowl week “is not a given,” he added that NFL owners would like to discuss such an expansion with the NFL Players Association.

That’s because the NFL would certainly like to one day offer an 18-game regular season and two bye weeks that begin on or before Labor Day and end the Sunday before President’s Day. This plan would include two preseason games, giving each team a trial run of one home game and one away game.

“Our members have no appetite for an 18th regular season game,” NFL Players Association interim executive director David White said at the association’s annual Super Bowl week news conference in San Francisco.

However, the players’ union has opposed other games in the past. He then acquiesced to additional games in collective bargaining in exchange for more money. So the league believes one more game can be negotiated.

New York Giants running back Cam Skattebo (44) reacts after suffering an injury during the first half of an NFL football game against the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, Oct. 26, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

More Games Cost YOU More Money

The motivation for the expansion is clear: More games are added to the NFL’s inventory of products that it can turn into more revenue.

And the bulk of that revenue comes from the league’s television and broadcast contracts.

Consider that in 2024, the NFL and Netflix signed a three-year agreement that brought live games to the streaming giant for the first time. Netflix pays about $150 million a year for the rights; This corresponds to four games.

Imagine what the NFL could do if it added 16 more games to its inventory by adding Week 18 to the season. Now Amazon can sell more games to its streaming partners, which include streaming services YouTube, Peacock and Netflix.

With disappointing 30- to 45-second delays compared to live streaming, these streaming services will be able to bid on the NFL’s new schedule, and then the winning bidders will likely do what capitalists have been doing since time immemorial: Pass their costs on to consumers.

“Part of the reason football is so popular is that anyone can buy a television for a few hundred dollars and watch multiple football games live with their bunny ears,” Steinberg said. “If you suddenly roll over and split the bundle, meaning consumers have to pay hundreds of dollars to multiple networks and streaming services, that could be an unexpected drop in revenue, but that might be shortsighted.

“Because what keeps you going is that everyone in this country can watch football, even without cable. And if you have to pay for Hulu or Netflix or Amazon, does that reduce the audience that is critical to negotiations for the networks?”

NFL Game next Wednesday

Jordan Love #10 of the Green Bay Packers takes a bite of a turkey leg after the game against the Detroit Lions at Ford Field on November 27, 2025 in Detroit, Michigan. (Nic Antaya/Getty Images)

The NFL wants to add a Wednesday broadcast next year before its traditional Thanksgiving and Black Friday schedule.

“Each offseason, we look for new opportunities to best serve our fans throughout the schedule-building process,” an NFL spokesperson told Fox News and OutKick. “As Commissioner Goodell has said, Thanksgiving and NFL football have become synonymous, and given the increasing fan interest in our games on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, it is exciting for us to explore looking for additional opportunities tied to this special holiday.”

An NFL source added that the addition of a Wednesday game isn’t the only new broadcast window the league is exploring for 2026, suggesting other days are also in play.

And the Wednesday game will likely feature teams coming off a bye week.

“The NFL has been doing this nonsense for a while,” Chao said. “They have the season opener on Thursday and continue on Thursdays throughout the season. They snuck into everyone on Friday. They snuck into games on Christmas. Obviously, when the college football season is over, they play on Saturday.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they go Friday-Saturday-Sunday after the high school and college football season. And it’s all about revenue.”

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Player Health and Safety is an Issue

What about player health and safety, which the NFL insists is a priority?

“Wednesday game? They will sell it for security reasons,” Chao said. “‘Don’t you like Thursday games?’ they will say. We will ski on Wednesday and you won’t need to rest for four days. First you will have (10-11) days and (11) days’ – a mini-goodbye on the front end and a mini-goodbye on the backend.

“And they will sell it as helping the health and safety of players.”

The thing is, fans will buy it. The 2025 Thanksgiving NFL games shattered viewing records as the average viewership for three games (Packers vs. Lions, Chiefs vs. Cowboys, and Bengals vs. Ravens) was the highest Thanksgiving average on record at 44.7 million viewers.

That 44.7 million figure surpassed the previous high of 34.5 million viewers and represented the fourth straight year that the NFL broke the Thanksgiving viewership record.

So yes, the NFL’s steamroller continues to crush it; major warts and such.

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