The very idea of a Premier League fixture taking place overseas prompts widespread outrage and you will do well to find someone supporting the concept.
But Jon Miller, a leading executive at NBC Sports, the American broadcaster that spent $2.7billion (£2.2bn) on a six-year deal to exclusively show every Premier League game between 2022-23 and 2027-28, is pushing for an in-season match to be played in the United States.
As part of an in-depth report looking at the relationship between the Premier League and NBC, Miller told The Athletic that he “would love to see” matches in the United States. “That’s something that we’ll continue to push for because there’s an American audience here that would like to see regular season games,” Miller said.
His comments came after Richard Masters, the Premier League’s chief executive, said the “door looks ajar” for a game to be played overseas, while also stressing it is not “part of their current plans”.
Miller’s interview with The Athletic, combined with what Masters said, has sparked a debate. Most of the discourse — even though some clubs were quietly pleased by what Miller said but too afraid to admit it publicly — has not supported a fixture taking place in the United States.
The Football Supporters’ Association, the national group for fans in England and Wales, responded by saying: “We defeated ‘Game 39’ (an attempt to add another game to the Premier League calendar to be played overseas) in 2008 and we’d attack any attempted revival with a full-blown, two feet off the ground, studs to the knee tackle.”
Jon Miller, an NBC executive, would like to see a Premier League game in the U.S.
But the likelihood of taking one-off domestic league fixtures overseas increased in April when FIFA was dropped from a landmark lawsuit against Relevent, a U.S. events promoter.
The topic is controversial, there is no denying that — yet there are reasons why taking a Premier League game to the United States makes sense.
It is important to note that what is being proposed is not a 39th game played at the end of the season, as first explored by Richard Scudamore, the former Premier League chief executive, in 2008.
Nobody is suggesting an entire round of top-flight fixtures takes place in the United States, either. That would have no chance of getting off the ground.
But is the notion of one Premier League match — and remember, there are 380 of them every season — taking place in the U.S. that ludicrous?
The chances of the Premier League sending a big-ticket match, such as Liverpool against Manchester United, to America are slim. It is far more likely you would see Liverpool against Brentford.
There would be value to a match like that. Liverpool would be the historic name to draw the crowd in, while Brentford would be able to grow their fanbase in the U.S.
The demand to watch Premier League matches in the U.S. is obvious. You only have to look at the inaugural Summer Series last year, which saw six top-flight teams play nine matches as part of a pre-season tour across five cities.
The games had no real jeopardy or meaning, yet tickets sold out in hours, with more than 265,000 supporters attending in person. Imagine the demand for a fixture that has something riding on it.
Even NBC’s Premier League Mornings Live fan festivals, which have been held in Washington, D.C., New York (twice), Boston, Austin, Miami Beach, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Orlando, have seen more than 60,000 fans turn up.
The Premier League Summer Series was well attended (Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
Eventually, other leagues will start taking games to America, with La Liga at the front of the queue. Italy’s Serie A and France’s Ligue 1 would then want a piece of the action, as would UEFA, knowing just how big a Champions League final would be for them in America.
Once that happens, the Premier League will look like an outlier behind the curve.
One imagining of how this could look in five years is a festival of football taking place, with one game from every big league in Europe over 10 days. That may be how Relevent pictures it and the event could also take place outside the MLS season to avoid cannibalising the domestic league.
In England, fans of American sports, be it the NFL, NBA or MLB, have been able to watch meaningful matches as those leagues have brought teams to London. The NFL started the trend by taking a regular season fixture between the Miami Dolphins and New York Giants to Wembley Stadium in 2007.
Since then, the NFL has grown exponentially in London, with the Jacksonville Jaguars now playing two games a year on consecutive weekends in October, along with another regular season match between different franchises also taking place. Tickets to these fixtures often sell out within hours.
The NFL now hosts games in England, Germany and Brazil, with the league announcing plans for eight international games in 2025. Even still, it took from 2007 until 2022 for every NFL franchise — there are 32 of them — to visit London, with the Green Bay Packers being the final team to make the trip.
People would be justifiably concerned about something similar happening to the Premier League. One match a year soon turns into four, which turns into eight across multiple continents.
Money talks and the Premier League is more than fully aware of the market with the highest growth potential. It is no longer the UK.
The Premier League’s TV deals with UK broadcasters, predominantly with Sky Sports and TNT Sports, stagnated at around £5billion between 2016 and 2023. The most recent deal is worth £6.7bn, but that is over four years as opposed to three years, which is normally how it has sold its rights packages domestically.
In the U.S., it is a different story for England’s top flight, and the room for growth seemingly knows no bounds. In 2013, NBC Sports paid £180million for the exclusive live rights to all 380 games a season between 2013 and 2016.
The Jacksonville Jaguars played at Wembley twice last year (Stephen Pond/Getty Images)
In 2015, the American network spent £800million on a six-year deal and, in 2021, that increased further to more than £2billion. Its investment is a large factor in why the Premier League is the world football’s most lucrative league.
People are often waking up in the early hours to watch NBC’s live Premier League coverage, especially if they live on the West Coast and their team are kicking off at 12.30pm UK time — 5.30am Pacific Time.
Their support may not seem traditional to match-going fans in the UK but why wouldn’t they support Chelsea as much as someone living on the King’s Road?
There will come a time when fans based in America, who have seen their NFL, NBA or MLB team head to the UK for a one-off game every few years, will want to see meaningful matches. US-based supporters, however, don’t think homogeneously and some will be adamant that English football should remain in England and are prepared to make once-in-a-liftetime trips to the UK to watch their teams.
The truth is that if local club supporters in England are desperate to keep seeing expensive signings arriving in the transfer window, a game overseas could be something they have to swallow.
(Top photo: Kevin C Cox/Getty Images for Premier League)
