MADRID — What happened Sunday afternoon at Santiago Bernabéu Stadium — yes, it was afternoon over here while it’s morning back home — was at base a football game between the Washington Commanders and Miami Dolphins. It is also quite obviously a tiny piece of a massive business plan. For the struggling Commanders and Dolphins, the game matters. For the NFL, the exercise in global marketing is far more important.
Sunday’s game was
the 62nd that America’s most valuable sports league will stage as part of an “International Series” that dates from 2007. The Commanders have said all week they’re here on business. It’s important to realize they’re just pawns in the larger business. Expanding international reach – for the NFL, sure, but for the NBA, MLB and the NHL as well – isn’t just the gimmick of placing an unfamiliar sport in a new market for a few hours. It’s an essential growth strategy.“It’s massively important,” said Hugo Hensley of London-based consulting firm Brand Finance, which specializes in brand valuation, “especially in the NFL, where the amount that these franchises are being bought and sold for actually is baking in a huge amount of growth in revenue and profitability. And I think the expectation is that that’s going to come internationally.”
Translation: Commanders owner Josh Harris didn’t buy his hometown team because he thought he could grow more loyal fans in Bethesda or Bowie or Alexandria or Ashburn. (Though, given the damage wrought on the franchise by its previous owner, Harris certainly can expect bumps locally, too.) The potential to earn more isn’t just outside the DMV. It’s outside the United States.
Think about what international sports used to mean. The Olympics. The (men’s) World Cup. Athletes representing their countries, bearing their flags and booming out their anthems. The pro golf and tennis circuits traveled around the world and drew athletes from far-flung places. Team sports leagues tended to stay home.
That model has changed.
“With the Olympics, there’s still that national pride that goes along with it,” said Matthew Robinson, a professor of sport management at the University of Delaware who has done extensive research on and work in international sports. “But in pro sports, so much has changed. When hockey players started coming from Russia to the NHL, there was a concern that they wouldn’t be embraced. But it turns out, if you’re scoring goals for us to win, I don’t care where you’re coming from.
“Think about watching Barça,” he continued, referring to famous Spanish soccer club Barcelona. “I don’t think you’re worried about where the players are coming from. Messi came from Argentina.”
Remember the “Dream Team” from the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, when Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird led the best players in the world to a dominant performance that reestablished American supremacy in basketball? Consider what that gave birth to. The past seven NBA MVP awards have been won by four players born outside the United States: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Canada), Nikola Jokic (Serbia), Joel Embiid (Cameroon) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece).
Basketball had a head start, but other sports are spreading, too. In baseball, either the American League or National League MVP was from abroad in six of the past nine years. Winners of the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s MVP this century have come not only from Canada and the United States but also from Russia, Sweden and Germany.
“I always say this: The NBA is no longer a domestic league,” Robinson said. “The NBA is the best global league that happens to be based in North America. You could have someone argue with me, but the [English Premier League] is not the English domestic league. It’s the best global league that happens to be based in the U.K. The NHL, NBA, Major League Baseball – they’re all very international, with players from all over the world. Who’s to say that in 15 years or whatever the NFL won’t have international rosters?”
That is part of the goal of games such as Sunday’s. The NFL has staged flag football clinics in Madrid this week, and it pushed for flag football to be included in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. That’s not an accident. It’s a strategy.
But to make the business plan work on a macro level, there’s micro stuff to deal with. The logistics are significant. Road games for NFL teams are typically one- and occasionally two-night affairs. The reeling Commanders, trying to end a five-game losing streak, arrived Tuesday morning after an overnight flight essentially hauling their entire Ashburn operation – football equipment, video equipment, medical and training equipment – across an ocean.
Hey, Coach Dan Quinn, this seems like a lot for a team to take on, an effort that helps the league but not necessarily your team in this moment. Thoughts?
Quinn paused.
“Here’s what I liked: There was a lot of thought that went into it,” he said Friday. “You could leave right after a game [the previous Sunday] and get there. Not a lot of people have done the research of if you went on a Monday and you flew overnight. I personally like to get the team together. I don’t know if there’s a science behind that, but I know what that energy can look like when you connect.”
Logistics are one thing. Traditions are another. No top European soccer league has staged a regular season game in the United States. At some point, that’s going to change. Barcelona – which ranks second on Brand Finance’s list of top 50 soccer clubs in valuation, behind only Real Madrid – was supposed to face Villarreal, a rival in Spain’s La Liga, in South Florida this fall. The match was relocated amid protests from players, coaches and fans.
That’s quaint. The reality is: There’s money on the table across the Atlantic. These leagues won’t leave it there for much longer.
“I suspect we will see regular season games going out of their home countries, especially to the U.S., which is such a massive growth market,” Hensley said. “… Especially the top teams – Real Madrid, Manchester United, the names right at the top of our brand ranking – if they could then have U.S.-specific partners – larger audiences, the potential to sell their broadcast rights perhaps directly within the U.S. market – then they can access a huge amount of value.”
That is far more important than selling a ticket to a single game or a jersey to a particular fan. The Commanders and Dolphins are trying to win a football game Sunday. They’re just small players in the NFL’s push to take over an increasingly globalized sports industry.
