Owners voted Wednesday to add a game in Brazil in 2024. South America will be the fifth continent in which the NFL has played. The NFL will play three games in London again next year and one in Munich. The league will expand to eight international games in 2025.
With the exception of the AFC’s Jaguars, who have a London partnership, the NFL is likely to send NFC home games abroad next year. NFC teams have nine home games in 2024; AFC teams have eight.
Bears kicker Cairo Santos is the NFL’s only Brazilian player ever — he was born an hour from Sao Paulo, where the game will be held. He said he’d love to contact the NFL to lobby for the Bears and joked that if it’s another team, he’d ask coach Matt Eberflus “to give me a day off” so he could go himself.
The Bears were assigned the United Kingdom and Spain as international home-market areas two years ago, allowing them to sell sponsorships there. Spain was a candidate for ’24 but wasn’t added. The Bears still could land in any of the three countries. They played in London in 2019, losing to the Raiders.
