Commissioner Roger Goodell: NFL will never leave London

LONDON — The NFL “will never leave” London, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told a fan forum Saturday.

He was asked how soon the NFL will increase their slate of international games to eight per season. The NFL played its first game in Brazil this year. He wants to continue playing there, and in other “markets that we’d like to be in” across the globe, including Ireland.

“We want to get to those,” he said, via a live stream of the meeting. “But we gotta make sure that our foundation, which is this market … Germany’s getting close to that too. Germany’s doing an amazing job. We’ve had two games there last year. …

“We’ll never leave this market. This will always be a foundation.”

Goodell said the NFL is “seriously” considering moving to 18 regular-season games and two preseason games, with two byes. Each team could end up playing one international game, he said, if the league could find 16 markets to hold one game apiece.

“There’s probably more interest than we can handle,” he said in an answer to a fan question.

He said playing in London is similar to playing in America.

“The fandom here is most like that,” he said. “They really understand the game.”

Goodell is in town to see the Bears play the Jaguars at Tottenham Stadium on Sunday. His first NFL experience overseas was the 1986 International Bowl exhibition game between the Bears and Cowboys.

Goodell said he wouldn’t be surprised if the NFL played a Super Bowl overseas someday but admitted that’d be a hard sell back home.