Once regarded as America’s sport, American football has steadily gained a foothold in international markets, including the UK, thanks to the NFL’s efforts to globalize its appeal. With international games becoming a core strategy, the league has successfully introduced the sport to new audiences worldwide. This season featured five international games, including three held in London at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in October, alongside fixtures in Rio de Janeiro and Munich. Speculation suggests the NFL’s global footprint will expand to 16 international games in the near future, supported by a potential $1 billion media rights package.
The NFL’s strategy appears to be paying off in key markets such as the UK. According to data from Paddy Power, American football has surged in popularity among the brand’s UK and Irish bettors, becoming the third most popular sport for wagering this year, behind only soccer and horse racing. This marks a significant rise from its 10th-place position in 2019, surpassing other major global sports like golf, boxing, and tennis.
Television Coverage and Market Growth
One driver of this growing interest is the improved accessibility of NFL games through UK broadcasters such as Sky Sports. Earlier kickoff times for international games, starting at 2:30 PM GMT, make them more convenient for UK audiences compared to the traditional 6 PM or later start times for U.S.-based fixtures. This scheduling shift has increased awareness and engagement with London-based NFL games among Paddy Power customers, leading to a 25% rise in active bettors and a 30% increase in staking during these events compared to the previous year. These figures outpace the overall growth in NFL betting, which saw a 21% increase in active bettors and a 25% rise in stakes year-over-year.
Leveraging Innovation Through the Flutter Edge
Paddy Power customers have also benefited from advancements in FanDuel’s NFL product, developed in the U.S. and seamlessly integrated into Flutter brands through the company’s Global Betting Platform. This system allows innovations, such as enhanced team and player markets, to be quickly adopted across Flutter-owned brands. The success of NFL BetBuilders, which enable bettors to combine multiple wagers on a single game, demonstrates this impact. BetBuilders accounted for 34% of overall staking in the opening weeks of the current NFL season, up from 29% in 2023.
Flutter’s global expertise in pricing, trading, and risk management further strengthens its NFL product offering. A team of nearly 100 specialists based in Dublin supports FanDuel and other Flutter brands by managing risk operations, compliance, fraud prevention, and analytics, ensuring a consistent experience for customers regardless of brand or time zone.
Cross-Promotion and the NFL’s Halo Effect
American football’s growth among UK bettors has also benefited from its crossover with soccer, a dominant sport in the region. Many of Paddy Power’s NFL bettors are also avid soccer fans, creating opportunities for targeted promotions that highlight offerings such as NFL BetBuilders. This strategy has successfully driven engagement with both sports, further embedding American football into the UK’s betting landscape.
As the NFL’s London series concluded with the Jacksonville Jaguars’ victory over the New England Patriots, the league’s commitment to the UK market remains evident. A deal ensures at least two regular season games in London each year through 2029, suggesting that American football’s popularity among UK bettors—and its influence on the global iGaming industry—will continue to grow.
“We’ve seen a real jump in NFL activity this season for various reasons,” commented David Curran, Commercial Manager for Paddy Power, one of Flutter’s leading brands in the UK, with a strong heritage in sports betting, lists four key drivers – “organic growth in NFL interest, an enhanced product offering, the halo impact from growth in soccer activity and our enhanced strategic focus on the NFL” – behind this shift.
“This stronger interest in the NFL UK games suggests that customers are getting used to the early kickoff times versus the usual ‘Redzone’ kick-offs on Sunday evening,” according to David.
“From the outset, we wanted to ensure that we were maintaining the same service that was being given to customers from a risk and trading perspective, 24 hours of the day,” said FanDuel’s Head of Trading Paddy Aherne who leads the Dublin team after establishing the operation in 2021. “Even if it was early in the US, we wanted to be able to manage the full cycle of an NFL weekend schedule, allowing us to surface markets quicker and to leverage our pricing opinion more effectively.”
