American fans aren’t enough for US sports anymore

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American sports leagues treated global expansion as an aspiration for decades, but it was something to pursue only when convenient — and often without much strategic forethought.
The calculus changed in 2025, as evidenced by the organizations that signaled that going global is now a permanent feature of doing business as an American sports league, and the National Football League has provided the clearest example of how far a U.S. league is willing to go.
Over the last 12 months, it expanded its overseas schedule from five to seven games — and even scheduled the Minnesota Vikings to play in Dublin and London on consecutive weekends. It was the league’s first-ever back-to-back overseas road trip, boosted by a global marketing program that involves all of the NFL’s teams. In some ways, it’s a prototype for what could be coming as the ambitious organization pushes for a 16-game international schedule.
Meanwhile, the National Basketball Association revealed it was seriously exploring the formation of a European competitive association. Those plans happened against the backdrop of its own expanding international schedule, which includes games in Mexico, Abu Dhabi and across Europe.
In soccer, the National Women’s Soccer League announced a clutch of new global streaming and broadcast agreements, and Major League Soccer shifted its calendar to align with global associations. Even golf pivoted. The Masters, the sport’s most prestigious American tournament, changed its rules to invite more foreign champions to the event. And we can’t forget about the National Hockey League, which opened a permanent European office.
These initiatives represent a shift away from business focused on American audiences to globalized entertainment available to everyone (There are exceptions, of course. Major League Baseball has long had a thriving fan base and business across Latin America.). Even a decade ago, this evolution seemed unlikely. The domestic opportunities with media rights deals — the largest source of income for major professional sports associations — and legalized sports betting were then compelling enough to keep leagues focused at home. Plus, the returns from global expansion have been limited and tenuous. For example, the NFL’s lauded annual series of games in London lost money as recently as 2016, despite consistent sellouts. The NBA, among the most aggressive organizations when it comes to expanding overseas, still loses money on its international games. And the NHL recently acknowledged that it would probably make more money playing overseas games at home.
What, then, has motivated the sports industry to seemingly ignore past and present challenges and keep investing abroad? Leagues are more financially resilient than they’ve been in years, thanks to the post-pandemic recovery — spurred by fans returning to stadiums and live entertainment — and a surge in private equity and other investments. And those gains coexist with growing uncertainty about the viewership habits in the domestic market. While American fans still love sports, younger ones are drifting away from watching full games to consume highlights on social media, so there are reasons to doubt that an old business model based on media rights growth will remain as lucrative.
Overseas fans offer another option to convert a wave of new investment into long-term returns, and two key factors ensure that the globalization boom has momentum going into 2026 and beyond.
First, American professional sports have become increasingly savvy at scouting, developing, and — above all — showcasing international talent. Foreign-born players are marketing hooks for overseas fans.
Second, the emergence of streaming has enabled leagues to deliver their content directly to consumers. For example, the NFL doesn’t have to rely upon individual broadcasters with different schedules and priorities to show its games in overseas markets.
Instead, since 2023, the organization has distributed games globally through DAZN, a single platform accessible to almost anyone with internet. Matchups can be watched both live and on demand and supplemented with additional content like NFL RedZone and NFL Network. Most importantly, fans can just pay for the NFL — they don’t need to buy into an expensive local cable or streaming package to get their football.
The arrangement seems to be working. Though viewership numbers aren’t available, in February, DAZN announced that paid subscribers to the NFL service grew 23% year-over-year. And it’s not just DAZN offering this kind of friction-free global streaming platform. Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Apple+ are acquiring and offering sports to countries beyond U.S. borders, too.
Of course, global expansion isn’t without possible downsides. As leagues shift their attention abroad, they could alienate fans at home who are accustomed to games being scheduled around their calendars. Not every American fan or season ticket holder is happy to see afternoon home games moved to London and broadcast early on Sunday morning.
More serious are the potential political and reputational consequences of doing business in authoritarian countries. In 2019, the NBA learned this the hard way when a tweet from then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey regarding Hong Kong led Chinese businesses to freeze out the association for years. The incident likely cost the NBA hundreds of millions of dollars.
But for now, the leagues are committing to an opportunity years in the making. Whatever the risks, 2025 is the year that American sports fully embraced business beyond its borders.
Adam Minter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the business of sports. He is the author, most recently, of “Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale.”