NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has been in his post for two decades now. While his tenure will be remembered for many changes that brought the league into the modern era, it is fair to say that his most important legacy is international expansion. This season, nine NFL regular-season games will be played abroad, some as far away as Australia. It has become a significant part of the season, even if not all NFL fans are happy about it.
This summer, Goodell arguably went a step further, giving the opinion that he believed NFL international franchises were inevitable. There was no timeframe given, but make no mistake about it: Goodell was very firm in his assertions that it would happen.
Toronto would fit well into the NFL
Could Toronto be in the mix? There are several logical reasons to say yes. For a start, there is the precedent, given that the Raptors and Blue Jays hail from the city as the only Canadian representatives in the NBA and MLB. Toronto sits inside the existing NFL travel footprint and Eastern time zone. It is a large, wealthy corporate and media market, and Visiting teams wouldn’t require special bye weeks or lengthy acclimatization.
All of that makes sense, yet there are some drawbacks in the NFL’s view. The first is the broadest concept. Namely, that the NFL believes it has already ‘got’ Canada. It claims to have over 14 million fans in the country, who will already be watching the games on TV, tweaking their fantasy picks, and pouring over the Sunday night football game odds like everyone else. In short, there wouldn’t be much of a gain in new fans.
It's for that reason that the NFL International Series rarely comes to Canada. Yes, we know the Bills played there during their Toronto Series experiment in the late 2000s, but consider that there have been 42 NFL games played in London since that time. The NFL sees that as the real growth opportunity.
Financial revenue already streams in
We know that the NFL already earns a substantial amount from Canadian television deals. There’s also merchandising and sponsorship revenue also in place. The league’s thinking is that it would simply redistribute revenue streams rather than create new ones.
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There are other factors, too, not least the fact that a new stadium would almost certainly have to be built to accommodate the NFL. The Rogers Centre is now repurposed for baseball, and BMO Field would need to double its capacity; even then, it would have the smallest capacity in the league. Of course, Goodell has been talking long-term, so that is probably not a completely insurmountable problem.
Still, if there are international franchises, you shouldn’t rule Toronto out. A Canadian team would be more palatable to the disgruntled fans already miffed about seeing their teams play across the Atlantic and beyond. Logistically, it’s a bit of a nightmare for teams to organize playing so far afield, but a Toronto team could easily slip into an eastern division without any trouble.
In the end, this remains highly speculative, all based on the words of Goodell, who, while confident that it would happen, offered little substance on how it would work.
