Beyond Brazil, the Eagles have global ambitions to grow the NFL in Australia, Ghana, and New Zealand

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — For Saquon Barkley, the Eagles running back who has scored a total of four touchdowns in two career games on the international stage, those NFL contests abroad have an added layer of importance beyond the wins and losses.

“I take pride in it, of growing the game, expanding the brand of the game, and even myself,” Barkley said after the Eagles’ 34-29 win over the Green Bay Packers in São Paulo on Friday. “I never thought when I was 7 years old starting football where this game would take me to.”

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Since 2005, the NFL has hosted regular-season games internationally in England, Mexico, Germany, and Brazil, all to grow the fan base and, in turn, its bottom line. Those efforts have ramped up in recent years, with the league slated to hold five games outside the United States this season.

The NFL is adding a game in Madrid in 2025, and commissioner Roger Goodell said Friday that the league expects to add Asia and Australia to their list of destinations soon.

But international games aren’t the league’s only method of fueling popularity abroad. In 2022, the NFL introduced the International Home Marketing Areas initiative, which granted teams marketing rights in countries across the globe to promote their clubs, develop a fan base, and build commercial relationships.

The Eagles bid on and were awarded the rights in Ghana, Australia, and New Zealand. As the team enters its third year of spreading awareness of its brand and the sport in those countries, Jen Kavanagh, the Eagles’ senior vice president of media and marketing, provided insight on the state of those initiatives.

“I think the vision is to make American football and the NFL a global sport,” Kavanagh told The Inquirer. “And I think that exists in many places, in many countries today. There is sort of an existing understanding and passion for it, but I think there’s a lot of opportunity in many other countries.”

When the league awarded the Eagles the rights to Ghana, they became the first NFL team to officially enter an African market. With its rich culture, Ghana appealed to the team for a variety of reasons. It’s a young, growing country, with the median age in the country being 21 years old, according to its government. Sports are already a prominent part of life for Ghanaians, and soccer (the country’s football) is the most popular.

“I think when you combine young, vibrant, passionate sports fans in any sort of international territory, it’s easy to kind of [home] in and say that would be good for us,” Kavanagh said.

The NFL allows its teams to personalize their approaches to developing fans in each market. In Ghana, one of the Eagles’ main focuses has been on connecting its people directly to the sport, specifically flag football. By teaching both adults and children the sport and its rules and helping provide avenues and the means to play, the Eagles aim to cultivate a new fan base.

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To connect Ghanaians to flag football and grow the game, the Eagles found them spaces to play, ensured that they had the proper equipment and uniforms, and taught people how to coach and officiate. They also partnered with the Ghana American Football Federation, which was already on the ground teaching kids the sport.

“We have about 1,000 kids playing flag in Ghana, which is incredible, and we want that number to continue to grow,” Kavanagh said.

Kavanagh also saw the importance in hosting Eagles watch parties, given that the game broadcast isn’t easily accessible in the country. Last season, the team held a “family day” on Christmas Day, complete with various activities, an appearance from mascot Swoop, and a screening of the Eagles’ matchup against the New York Giants.

The third component to the Eagles’ strategy in Ghana is to support the community in a meaningful way. Kavanagh said that one of the team’s most impactful undertakings in Ghana was partnering with Shirley Posey, the director of STEM at Imhotep Charter High School who traveled with 16 students and three other teachers to Keta, Ghana, in May 2023 to build a water-filtration system for the community.

Keta lies on a thin strip of sandy land on the Gulf of Guinea about 120 miles by vehicle west of the capital, Accra, and the population of about 25,000 people had been reliant on unsafe drinking water from the Keta Lagoon.

In April, Posey and 28 Imhotep students including football team members made a return trip to the region and participated in flag football games on the beach with local players.

Underscoring every prong of the Eagles’ efforts in Ghana is a sense of authenticity, which Kavanagh said was “the most important consideration” for the team.

“While we wanted to connect people to who we are as an organization and a brand and what our values were, we did not want to force sort of the way we look here into these other territories,” she said. “There’s a lot more, I’d say, cultural consideration up front and desire to learn.

“We were able to identify great partners who kind of helped walk us through all the things we felt were really important to factor into any plan or investment or priority areas, and they helped us shape where we are today with fan engagement, community, and flag football.”

The Eagles’ interest in growing the fan base in Australia and New Zealand goes beyond the sheer size of the countries and their passion for sports in general.

Jordan Mailata, the Birds’ 27-year-old starting left tackle, hails from Australia, and his origin story provides a natural entry point to the sixth-largest country in the world by size. (Brazil is fifth). Mailata, who is 6-foot-8 and 365 pounds, grew up playing rugby league and got his start in American football through the International Player Pathway Program.

The Eagles took a chance on an athlete who had never played a snap of football before 2018, selecting him with a seventh-round pick that year.

Nearly seven years later, Mailata has established himself as one of the top tackles in the NFL and a core piece of the team’s offensive future.

“His story is so unique and special, and his connection to Australia is unique and special, and it just felt like an opportunity to look at the way that we can continue to tell Jordan’s story as a means of connecting people to the Eagles and ultimately, to football in Philadelphia,” Kavanagh said.

The same way they have in Ghana, the Eagles have placed an emphasis on the growth of flag football in Australia and New Zealand. According to Kavanagh, there are roughly 70,000 children in the flag football pipeline. The league is cultivating a tackle football talent pool, too.

In June, Mailata was on hand to announce the opening of the NFL Academy on Australia’s Gold Coast, which provides student-athletes ages 12-18 with the opportunity to get a full-time education and elite American football training.

That appearance was part of a two-week tour this summer in his home country in which he sought to connect with fans of his team and grow the game in general. Mailata called it “an honor” to be a part of the Eagles’ marketing efforts and the NFL’s overall endeavor to tap into the country as a potential pipeline of players.

“I think it’s a plus-plus on both sides, if you think about it,” Mailata said. “They get to market and see what potential they can do there, and they can find the talent. The more eyes the Australians have on the NFL and then what opportunities it can bring to them, the more support and more revenue.”

In each of the Eagles’ areas in the marketing initiative, some indicators of growth are more easily quantifiable than others, such as the involvement in the flag football programs or their followers on their country-specific social media accounts. From the qualitative to the quantitative, those metrics of success continue to be top of mind for the Eagles.

“Growth of the game is really important to us,” Kavanagh said. “I think growing social channels, means in which we can continue to stay connected with them. Developing meaningful partnerships with companies who share our interest in growing the sport and share common values with us.

“I really think it’s just a continuation of the work that we’ve been doing in a way that demonstrates we’re accomplishing the goal of bringing more people into our fan world.”