LONDON \u2014 In an offseason huddle at the NFL\u2019s London headquarters, the Kansas City Chiefs are drawing up a game plan to win over fans in a crowded UK market.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re getting input from the locals, and there\u2019s good news.<\/p>\n
“There is something about that younger generation, in the UK specifically, they are really into U.S. sports at the moment,\u201d says Louise Johnson, chief executive of marketing agency Fuse. \u201cThere\u2019s a moment in time that you can really capitalize on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chiefs executives visited London after the team added the UK to its list of countries in the NFL\u2019s global markets program, which puts teams in the driver\u2019s seat to increase fandom overall \u2014 as well as land commercial partnerships individually.<\/p>\n
A day that began meeting with local agencies in the NFL\u2019s glass-enclosed eighth-floor office overlooking Leicester Square ended along the banks of the Thames, where a \u201cChiefs cab\u201d was the meeting point to surprise a local fan with a ticket giveaway.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe UK is another puzzle piece in the larger globalization of the brand,\u201d said Lara Krug, the team\u2019s chief media and marketing officer, echoing a franchise theme of becoming the \u201c world\u2019s team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Krug led the team\u2019s delegation that included business, social media and public relations representatives. Besides marketing agencies, they also met with NFL officials. The takeaways were clear for growing the Chiefs’ fanbase.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Kansas City Chiefs mascot, KC Wolf, is seen, before the start of an NFL football game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills Sunday, Oct. 10, 2021, in Kansas City, Mo. Credit: AP<\/p>\n
\u201cOne, that 12-to-24 (aged) audience is where there is the biggest opportunity,\u201d she told The Associated Press. \u201d(They\u2019re) very much into the cultural part of the NFL and the Americana of it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Second, find creative ways to connect to local fans. The Chicago Bears did soccer-style jerseys last year for their London game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe league and the clubs have done a great job on growing the game,\u201d Krug said. \u201cWe see the opportunity of reaching more fans and doing it from a cultural lens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mahomes, Kelce and KC Wolf<\/p>\n
Expanding your fan base is much easier when your quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, is the face of the league, and your star tight end, Travis Kelce, is dating global pop star Taylor Swift. Kelce was the UK\u2019s top-selling NFL jersey in 2024.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes looks to pass during the NFL football team’s practice Tuesday, June 17, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. Credit: AP<\/p>\n
The Chiefs have also played in five of the last six Super Bowls and won three of them.<\/p>\n
Still, there are eight other NFL teams with the same rights the Chiefs have in Britain \u2014 and six of them have been there longer.<\/p>\n
Social media content on platforms like TikTok and Instagram are crucial, especially because NFL fans in the UK over-index on daily social media use compared to other fans, the Chiefs said.<\/p>\n
But some old-school methods work too. <\/p>\n
Hello, KC Wolf.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know mascots do really well in the markets, it becomes an ambassador,\u201d Krug said.<\/p>\n
KC Wolf was on hand in Frankfurt, Germany in 2023 when the Chiefs beat the Miami Dolphins 21-14.<\/p>\n
They’ll soon be looking for \u201cmultiple European-based mascots of our KC Wolf,\u201d Krug said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat will be something that we launch later this year,” she said, “so having KC Wolf show up in a few of our markets more frequently.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meetings aside, being on the ground in London was helpful in other ways: Krug noted the long line at a Formula One promotion in the Lego store in Leicester Square.<\/p>\n
The Chiefs have experimented before. Last year the team partnered with Hallmark \u2014 headquartered in Kansas City \u2014 on \u201c Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story. \u201d<\/p>\n
Going international<\/p>\n
In the NFL\u2019s global markets program, Kansas City has rights in seven countries \u2014 only the Los Angeles Rams have as many. All but one \u2014 Mexico \u2014 of the Chiefs\u2019 markets are in Europe. The team added the UK, Ireland and Spain this year.<\/p>\n
The team’s brass believes the best way to gain fans in foreign markets is to play games there. The Chiefs won their only London game, back in 2015. They are 3-0 overall in regular-season international games.<\/p>\n
Dublin, Madrid and Berlin are all new host cities this season.<\/p>\n
The Chiefs will play internationally this season \u2014 but not in Europe. They open in Brazil on Sept. 5 when they face the Los Angeles Chargers in Sao Paulo.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the first of seven international NFL games in 2025 \u2014 the most ever in one season \u2014 and Commissioner Roger Goodell wants to eventually get to 16 games per year. Goodell has also floated the idea of creating a European division and staging a Super Bowl outside the United States. One theory is the league will package the international games into a billion-dollar rights deal.<\/p>\n
Team and league data show that the Chiefs are already popular internationally.<\/p>\n
They have the largest overall German-language social media following at nearly 150,000. For consumer products sales, the Chiefs rank No. 1 in the \u201cDACH\u201d region of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and No. 2 in Mexico. In international Game Pass viewing, the Chiefs were the most-watched team in DACH and Mexico last season.<\/p>\n
NFL says UK still has room to grow<\/p>\n
The Chiefs brought several British \u201cinfluencers\u201d to a game at Arrowhead Stadium last season. They included \u201c Formz,\u201d a Tottenham fan who raps Premier League weekly recaps and sings about heartbreak; he has 1 million followers on TikTok.<\/p>\n
The league saw \u201csignificant growth\u201d in UK fandom last year, said Henry Hodgson, the NFL\u2019s general manager for the UK and Ireland.<\/p>\n
Confidence is high enough that three teams \u2014 the Chiefs, Baltimore Ravens and Green Bay Packers \u2014 applied for and were awarded UK rights starting this season, joining the six others already in the market.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor now, we don\u2019t want to cap it,\u201d Hodgson told the AP. \u201cWe see the benefit of these teams being involved in the market. It\u2019s something that the NFL will monitor, not just in the UK but in all the markets that the global markets program exists in and make sure that all of the clubs can be successful in all the markets they\u2019re in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eleven teams have rights in Germany. Mexico is next highest with 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 In an offseason huddle at the NFL\u2019s London headquarters, the Kansas City Chiefs are drawing up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2063],"tags":[346,7,118,110,2438,2437,262,6,2309],"class_list":{"0":"post-157516","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-chiefs","8":"tag-chiefs","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-kansas-city","11":"tag-kansas-city-chiefs","12":"tag-kansascity","13":"tag-kansascitychiefs","14":"tag-los-angeles-chargers","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-wires-bot"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114744436638589875","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}