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No sports league in the world makes more money than the American National Football League.

The NFL earns more yearly revenue than the English Premier League, the Champions League,

Formula One, the Japanese Nippon Professional Baseball League, and the Kontinental Hockey

League combined.

It is by far the largest sports league in the world by revenue.

Making up the NFL are 32 football teams each themselves essentially acting as their own

distinct businesses.

These teams are spread out all across the contiguous United States—some only 30 miles

or 45 kilometers apart from each other, some nearly 3,000 miles or 4,500 kilometers apart.

Now, American football teams are some of the largest in sports, both physically and in

numbers.

They have a roster of 56 players—the majority of which play in any given game.

These players weigh on average about 250 pounds or 110 kilograms.

This team size leads to some particular travel needs.

Players each require a first class seat or, at the very least, the seat next to them free

in economy meaning those 56 players take up far more than 56 seats.

On top of that, a team typically brings more than 100 support staff and an immense amount

of cargo to each away game.

With the exception of the largest, most valuable ones, most other professional sports teams

in the US will just fly on chartered narrow-body aircraft like a320's, 737's, or 757's,

but most NFL teams, given their size, require something larger.

NFL teams tend to charter their aircraft from commercial airlines—American, Delta, United,

or Hawaiian Airlines—and they'll typically fly something a bit larger than other teams

like a 767 or sometimes even a 777, but the nature of this charter job makes finding a

plane to take them particularly difficult.

You see, let's take the example of the New York Jets' last game of the 2018 season

versus the New England Patriots on December 30th.

For this game, they left the day before on a United Airlines 767-400 at 3:37 pm landing

30 minutes later, at 4:07 pm, in Providence, Rhode Island.

The plane then sat on the ground at Providence airport for the next 26 hours until the game

was over.

The following day, the plane took off at 6:30 pm bound for New York.

The aircraft's previous flight had been to Buenos Aires and its next flight was to

London and yet for these 26 hours, United only made money from the half hour charter

flight to and from Providence.

It's easy to understand why this wouldn't really be worth it to the airline, but at

least the Jets are located next to a United Airlines hub at Newark airport.

Many teams, like the New Orleans Saints, for example, are not located in a city with any

airline hub.

That makes finding an airline to take their charter contract even more difficult.

That's because, for example, when the team had to travel to Charlotte last season, the

767 that took them had to fly in empty from Houston, the nearest United hub, then fly

to Charlotte, sit on the ground for 33 hours, fly back to New Orleans, then once again fly

empty—this time all the way to New York.

All told, for the 2 hours and 51 minutes of flight time United was paid for, they used

this airplane for about 44 hours.

Being located away from an airline hub, where planes are based, means charter flights will

almost always require a plane flying in empty.

It is for this reason that airlines are raising rates or just flat-out stopping flying NFL

teams as they find normal, commercial flying a more lucrative use of their aircraft.

American Airlines, in recent years, for example, dropped all the many teams they previously

flew except for the Carolina Falcons, the Dallas Cowboys, and the Philadelphia Eagles—three

teams located at their hub airports.

More teams have moved their contract to dedicated charter companies such as Atlas Air or Miami

Air International, while the New England Patriots even bought their own set of planes to solve

this issue.

Some other teams still have contracts with commercial airlines but have switched to flying

multiple smaller planes as these can be in less demand.

The Indianapolis Colts, for example, now typically travel in two Delta 757's leaving within

a half hour of each other.

Other American sports, such as Hockey, Baseball, and Basketball, don't have nearly as much

of a problem because they play far more games a season, which makes their contract a more

attractive one to the airlines, and they also typically use smaller aircraft of which there

are more available.

The NFL briefly considered investing in its own fleet of aircraft or at least negotiating

a deal with an airline in bulk, like the NBA does with Delta, but for now, NFL teams are

seeing their travel costs skyrocket as the laws of supply and demand take hold.

After losing their contract with American Airlines, for example, the Jacksonville Jaguars

saw their travel costs double to $4 million a year as they chartered an Atlas Air 747

and remember, those $4 million pay for the travel costs to a mere eight away games.

But the NFL's most daunting logistics problem is not this.

Their most daunting logistics problem relates to the NFL's other big problem—expansion.

You see, part of the reason the NFL is the most valuable sports league in the world is

because of how saturated the football market is in the US.

57% of Americans identify as NFL fans.

That's an amazing level of market saturation for what is, at its core, a business, but

that also presents a problem because, with such a high proportion of the population already

fans, it's quite difficult for the NFL to expand their audience, at least within the

US.

In the past decade or so, the league has turned its attention internationally.

The NFL now plays regular season games in Mexico City and London.

These cities don't have home teams but rather, two teams from the US will come out and play.

For the most part, these international games are about promoting the sport in these two

countries which already have significant fanbases watching the sport on TV.

There's never been more than one game a season in Mexico City but in London, in the

2019 season, they're playing four regular season games.

With the 16 regular-season games per team per year, any other city that has a resident

NFL team typically only has eight home games meaning London's quantity is really not

that far off.

What's more, the Jacksonville Jaguars are designated as a sort of home team for London

and therefore play at least one of their games there each year in an attempt to give the

city and country a clear team to root for.

The league has even said that it plans to eventually have a full eight games per season

in London—the same as any home city in the US.

The reason there are now so many NFL games in London is because the sport of American

football has gained significant inroads in the UK audience.

The NFL estimates that it has 13 million fans in the UK, 4 million of which watch regularly,

and 47,000 of which buy games to every single NFL game in the UK.

Its dedication to the UK has become so significant that it contributed $12.5 million to the construction

of the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in north London.

This recently opened stadium was built to become the home of the NFL in the UK.

It has a permanent synthetic American football pitch under its grass soccer field; purpose

built, NFL-sized locker rooms; and a media suite built to the preferences of NFL press.

In the coming years, at least two NFL games will occur each year at this stadium.

Now, the logistics of these international games in London are formidable.

When the Seahawks played in London in 2018, they had to ship 1,150 rolls of athletic tape,

about 4,000 pounds or 1,800 kilograms of medical supplies, 350 power adapters, 500 shoes, 240

pairs of socks, and tens of thousands of other pounds of equipment to the city weeks ahead

of their arrival.

Months before, they had to arrange for many of their players, who had never left the US,

to get passports.

The team's trainers had to carefully schedule their players sleep in the week leading up

to reduce jet-lag.

There's even a hotel in Watford with a purpose built American football practice pitch that

the teams typically stay in.

While these London matches come at great difficulty and force teams to sacrifice a coveted home

game, the teams and their owners seem to tolerate them given their infrequency and the promise

of the UK market.

But the promise of the UK market could push the NFL to stretch beyond eight international

series games a year there.

You see, there is some very real, very serious discussion of putting a National Football

League team in London.

There is little doubt that the city and country could support a team in terms of fanbase.

The issue, according to the league's commissioner, would be having one solitary team stationed

more than 3,000 miles or 5,000 kilometers away from the next.

It would be an immense logistics problem considering that, for the weekly games, teams would have

to take flights as long as eleven hours crossing up to eight timezones.

On the flip side, this London NFL team would have to travel continuously throughout the

US for weeks at a time since, practically, it wouldn't make sense for them to return

to London between the weekly games.

This would come at enormous expense, would likely impact their performance, and prove

unpopular with their players.

In addition, as the UK does not yet have significant American football talent, the majority of

this teams players would come from the US and would need to be persuaded, either monetarily

or otherwise, to live outside their home country.

Those are just some of the cost problems.

Beyond that, it is not cheap to fly a whole NFL team over the Atlantic every week.

For the international series games, teams were flown on chartered Virgin Atlantic 747

or a330's arranged by the league, but if London had a fully fledged NFL team, it would

likely be treated just like any other team meaning both them and their American competitors

would have to arrange their own flights.

The wide-body planes teams would have to charter to cross the Atlantic come at a cost of up

to $50,000 per flight hour.

That means that transatlantic travel costs, just in terms of the flight, would be anywhere

between $650,000 for an east coast team or up to a full $1 million for west coast teams.

Teams also tend to carry tens of thousands of pounds of cargo to each away game which

would further escalate the cost.

While such an expense would be little issue for large, wealthy teams like the Dallas Cowboys

or New England Patriots, teams with smaller budgets like the Detroit Lions or Cleveland

Browns would certainly have more of an issue with potentially adding an extra million in

travel costs.

But this level of team isolation is not unprecedented.

Further west, in the middle of the Pacific, the University of Hawaii has a division one

college football team—the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors.

The closest team in their conference is 2,600 miles or 4,200 kilometers away in San Diego.

To get there, they take a five hour flight.

That's only an hour or two faster than it would take a London NFL team to get to its

closest competitor—the New England Patriots.

While the furthest team in the Rainbow Warrior's conference is only a seven or eight hour flight

away in Colorado Springs, Colorado, they do play a number of non-conference games each

year which take them all the way to the US east coast—an up to 10 hour flight away

from Honolulu which is almost exactly the same as the longest required travel time for

an NFL team to London.

Not only that, but the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors also have to balance their time with class

schedules which means that they travel to their away games far closer to kickoff than

NFL teams typically do to London.

The Rainbow Warriors regularly rack up more travel miles than any professional football

team.

For example, in one particularly grueling month in 2016, the team started its season

with an international match in Sydney, Australia, then the next weekend played in Ann Arbor,

Michigan, then the weekend after that played in Tucson, Arizona meaning they flew 25,000

miles or 40,000 kilometers in just one month.

The Rainbow Warriors also make most of their trips on commercial flights making their travel

even more difficult than that of NFL teams.

Now, this does potentially give the team a more significant home-field advantage since

they're used to playing with jet lag while their opponents, when they fly to Hawaii,

would not be, but it also supports the view that, logistically, it would be possible to

add an NFL team in London.

There are even professional sports leagues that already regularly require travel over

similar or greater distances.

The Kontinental Hockey League, for example, has teams spread out all across Asia and Eastern

Europe meaning the teams from Beijing, Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, and Beijing regularly have to

travel more than 4,000 miles or 6,500 kilometers to play the teams from Minsk, Riga, and Helsinki.

An even more extreme example would be Super Rugby which has teams spread out across Japan,

Argentina, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

With this, when the Tokyo Sunwolves play the Buenos Aires Janguares, for example, they

have to travel more than 11,000 miles or 18,000 kilometers each way to their match.

Part of the NFL's problem is just the pure scale of their competitions with many tens

of thousands of pounds of equipment and many hundreds of staff traveling to each game.

The problems are surmountable, though, at a cost but this cost would be partially burdened