There will be a total of nine international games in the forthcoming campaign, with Australia and France hosting regular-season matchups for the first time. While the NFL is determined to continue to grow internationally, games outside of the United States present huge challenges for the teams that contest them. And one team in particular is likely to have a grievance with the record-breaking number of air miles they will clock up in 2026.
The event was the brainchild of an ambitious Los Angeles-based lettuce farmer, Frank Takahashi. Takahashi footed the bill to stage a cross-Pacific showdown between the two teams, hoping one day to own a Tokyo-based franchise - a cost of several hundred thousand dollars at the time, equivalent to millions today. "If we have a sellout," he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1976, "I will break even."