The National Football League is looking to expand its Global Markets Program to the Arab world.
NFL Executive Vice President Pete O’Reilly told reporters at the NFL Owners Meeting that the league is exploring the possibility of playing games in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
“We don’t know the timing, and it’s really an ‘if’ in terms of whether we’ll play a game there,” said Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s executive vice president, club business, major events and international. “But I will say is that’s a market where there’s strong interest in our game, strong interest in growing our game on a year-round basis. I think that’s why you see three clubs raising their hands with interest there. It’s a market we’ll continue to explore. We’ve done some exploratory trips there to understand the viability of the potential for a regular-season game in the market. We have more work to go there in terms of what that looks like over this next stretch. But obviously an important market and one that has hosted significant events in other sports in recent years whether that’s NBA or global soccer. There are learnings there, but we really do it as we try to do all these markets in the right, thoughtful cadence way.”
In total, 29 clubs will participate in the global markets program across 21 international markets — up from 25 clubs across 19 markets in 2024 — as the NFL continues to prioritize global growth.
The NFL will play seven games outside the country in 2025 and could expand by two more in 2026.
