Looking ahead to the upcoming Monday Night Football matchup between the Houston Texans and Oakland Raiders in Mexico City, you have to wonder about permanent options for the city.  Mexico and their television providers reached an agreement to allow the Redzone channel along with Monday Night Football for the first time.  A growing number of Mexico’s population are now tuning into NFL broadcasts.  According to Nate Silver and fivethirtyeight.com’s statistics, Mexico City is currently a larger football market than 25 NFL teams.  While London’s football market is exponentially smaller but has been the center for international NFL .  So why hasn’t Mexico been seriously considered instead of London?

The largest competitor outside of the U.S. has been London.  Over the past 5 years, 13 NFL regular season games have been played in London.  Starting next year, the NFL will play half of its London games in a brand new stadium that will house the Tottenham Hotspurs.  Logistically the concept to eventually have a full-time franchise in Europe doesn’t any make sense.  Almost an eight hour flight from the closest NFL market, it creates an extreme inconvenience for teams.  With meaningless games being played between lackluster teams, problems have never been brought up.  But having to travel nearly double the usual with playoff spots on the line would create all sorts of uprising.  Not to mention, fans are forced to wake up at 6:30 A.M. to watch their team.  This situation can also create fantasy nightmares for fans who sleep past the start of the games.   

Benefits of a NFL franchise setting up in Mexico City would be substantially greater than the benefits of European expansions.  For starters, travel time would be substantially less, especially for teams along the west coast.  In addition, time zones overlap with that of the Central time-zone.  This would allow the NFL to schedule games according to its usual times of 1:00 ET and 4:05 ET and not those 7:30 A.M games in London.  Expanding into Mexico would also expand the diversity of the game which would include the addition of another language.  Future football play in Mexico makes complete sense for the NFL and is exceedingly more logistical for players and their fans.