Over the years, the NFL has grown to a product that reaches an audience far beyond the United States’. The league, ever trying to increase its revenue appeal, has reacted accordingly and in 2007 held its first regular season contest abroad. By the end of the 2018 season, a total of 27 games will have been played on international soil – the vast majority of which in the United Kingdom: London has hosted 24 regular season games.
The international market clearly is one that the NFL wants to reach, and playing in London has proved to be an easy way of doing that (even though the games played there have not always been up to the level of other regular season matchups).