When the NFL tells you what its regular season is going to look like, believe it. That’s the message that should be taken from Tuesday’s installment of the owners’ meetings in Orlando, when another step in the league’s (carefully planned) relentless march into future schedule expansion was established.
The latest move was via an amendment that will allow a new maximum of 10 league-run international games each season. The ceiling was eight prior to Tuesday’s change. Technically, the league’s international series is already at nine games this season, with the Jacksonville Jaguars taking part in back-to-back contests in London during the 2026 season as Everbank Stadium continues $1.4 billion in renovations. However, one of those two games was established through the Jaguars choosing to operate as the home team, sacrificing one date in Jacksonville, which allowed for nine international games this season rather than eight.
Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s executive vice president of club business, international and league events, framed the expansion to 10 games as sooner rather than later when meeting with media.
“There’s a path to 10 [international games] in 2027,” O’Reilly said.
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One of Yahoo Sports’ 25 game changers to watch in 2025, O’Reilly has been a power player in stewarding the league’s international strategy. He was even dubbed “the most impactful league employee not named Roger Goodell” by a highly influential NFL team president who spoke with Yahoo Sports about O’Reilly’s place in the NFL. And Tuesday’s vote to expand the international series showcases why, as it acts as another stepping stone to the league’s push toward 18 regular-season games.
Goodell, the league’s commissioner, along with O’Reilly and the NFL’s heaviest-hitting club owners continue to lay the groundwork for an annual 16-game international season. The primary goal of that kind of international season would be to create a “33rd” NFL franchise in a foreign- based aggregate, driving an expansion of NFL popularity outside the continental 48 states in North America. In turn, the league would aim to create markets for expanded overseas television rights contracts, along with a multitude of other new revenue drivers that help offset the cost of rising player salaries, more expensive stadium complex builds, other renovations and overall costs. Not to mention a general expansion of the league’s bottom line, which was once aimed at $25 billion by Goodell but is being recalculated to blast beyond that mark in the coming decade.
As part of that effort, the league’s team owners also struck down scheduling protections Tuesday as it pertained to international games. Previously, franchises were granted the right to protect two scheduled opponents from being chosen for international games. The NFL eliminated that protection as part of the new ceiling of 10 international games.
In some ways, it mirrors the NFL’s aggressive scheduling blitz over the last several seasons, which went from Thursday night games to expanding the Thanksgiving schedule to a Thanksgiving Eve game, three Thanksgiving Day games, a Black Friday game, three Christmas Day games and a Wednesday season-opener. All of this despite complaints from players and the NFL Players Association about the schedule grind throwing chaos into recovery times between some games — and an international game in Week 1 in Melbourne, Australia between the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers that will be a test cast of far-flung “complex” international games that stretch the limits of teams and travel.
This push, particularly from an international standpoint, was foreshadowed in comments from powerful team owners who have thrown support behind the strategy. That includes the New England Patriots’ Robert Kraft, who laid out the plans involving both international games and expanding platforms (like Netflix) in unambiguous terms last January when speaking with the team’s flagship network, 98.5 The Sports Hub.
“We’re gonna push like the dickens now, to make international [exposure] more important with us,” Kraft said in the January interview. “Every team will go to 18 [games] and two [exhibition games] and eliminate one of the preseason games. Every team every year will play one game overseas. Part of the reason is so we can continue to grow the cap and keep our labor happy. Because we’re sort of getting near the top here, you know, with the [domestic] coverage.”
“Ninety-three of the top 100 programs on television are NFL games,” Kraft continued. “Think about that. It’s really amazing. … You know, we had that Amazon game on Thursday a couple weeks ago — 31 million people streamed in. So as long as we can keep growing revenue, we can keep long-term labor peace.”
Make no mistake, Tuesday was part of that “push like the dickens” plan. Where it goes now depends on future labor negotiations — both on an 18-game regular-season schedule and possibly raising the international limit beyond 10 games. To go beyond 10 games in the future, the NFL would have to negotiate a new cap with the players’ union under the current collective bargaining agreement. As it stands, the union, which recently elected new executive director JC Tretter, has resisted expanding to an 18-game schedule.