In its continuing effort to expand its global footprint, the NFL is considering playing future games in the United Arab Emirates.
NFL executive vice president Peter O’Reilly announced on Monday that the UAE and Greece are new markets under consideration for the league's Global Markets Program.
The Washington Commanders, San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams will have international marketing rights in the UAE, meaning that one or more of them would host a "home game" in Dubai or Abu Dhabi if the league moves forward with the proposal.
As with all international games, that means that fans in the teams' home cities would lose a home game off the schedule. And with the UAE on the other side of the world, that means that it would be increasingly difficult for fans of those teams to watch them on TV.
Dubai is 11 hours ahead of the Pacific Daylight time zone. A 1 p.m. kickoff in Dubai would start at 2 a.m. local time in San Francisco or Los Angeles.
Expanding the league's international games to the UAE is not a certainty. O’Reilly framed the proposal as a matter of "if."
"We don't know the timing, and it's really an if in terms of whether we'll play a game there," O'Reilly said, <a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/nfl-adds-uae-to-its-global-markets-exploring-abu-dhabi-as-a-possible-future-host-of-a-game">per Pro Football Talk</a>. "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."
O'Reilly called the UAE and "important market" while citing NBA and international soccer games played in the region. The NBA has staged preseason games in Abu Dhabi since 2022, but hasn't held regular-season games there.
The NBA has come under fire from critics for engaging in "sportswashing" by doing business with an autocratic UAE government that the New York Times describes as placing limits on freedom of speech and the press and provides arms to fighters accused of atrocities in the war in Sudan.
If the NFL moves forward, it would certainly draw similar criticism.
