As the National Football League continues to explore expansion opportunities, a new team being awarded north of the border appears unlikely due to one important aspect.
Despite the league’s popularity among sports fans in Canada and having already staged six regular-season games in Toronto, commissioner Roger Goodell alluded to the absence of an adequate stadium as the biggest factor holding the NFL back from expanding to either Toronto or anywhere else in the country.
“We’re all huge fans of Toronto,” NFL commissioner Goodell said in a Thursday appearance on TSN1050’s OverDrive. “They’re great sports fans, it’s great city. I’m from Western New York so I know the relationship - and they do have a great relationship - with the Bills. I think the Bills are focusing more and more on the business opportunities and how to expand the Bills into Ontario and Toronto.”
“I think the big thing is the stadium ultimately,” he said. “[Buffalo’s new Highmark Stadium] sets a mark and the stadiums are an important element of every team. I think that’s going to be key.”
Goodell’s comments came on the same night that the Buffalo Bills opened their new stadium in Orchard Park, a $2.2 billion construction built using both public and private funding.
The open-air stadium features natural grass and over 60,000 seats, and is built just across the street from their old home that hosted the team for 53 seasons from 1973-2025.
“Every stadium has to scream their community - Dallas screams Dallas and Green Bay screams Green Bay,” Goodell said of the Bills’ new home. “I think this stadium is going to scream Buffalo.
“This is the future. I think this is going to be a great home and I think the fans are going to love it.”
While Goodell doused the flames of Canadian expansion, the commissioner explored the idea of heading back up north for pre-season games after Winnipeg hosted one in 2019, despite him wanting to further reduce the amount of exhibition games played before the start of the season.
“I can see that we’ll continue to play preseason games [in Canada],” he said. “I’m hoping to reduce the preseason games because I don’t think they’re as necessary as they once were.”
The NFL has continued to focus on its international markets in recent years, staging regular-season games across the world including countries such as England, Germany and Mexico in an effort to globalize the game.
This season, the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers opened the International Series with a Week 1 clash in Melbourne, Australia to kick off a nine-game schedule that will see seven different nations host games this year.
“The reception [in Australia] was extraordinary,” he said. “They are mad about sports in a wonderful way. We had 100,000 people in the stadium at 10:30 in the morning on a Friday. These folks love NFL football.”
Despite the growing number of international contests, Canada has been left off the league’s regular season travel plans once again - making it now 13 years since the NFL has headed north of the border.
The Bills made annual trips to Toronto for regular-season games at the Rogers Centre from 2008-13, playing in front of Canadian crowds on six different occasions. Since the end of the Bills Toronto Series, the league has not been back.
Buffalo entered into a partnership with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment - the ownership group of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Raptors and Argonauts- last year to grow the NFL in Canada and strengthen the franchise’s ties with its Canadian fanbase.
During the partnership announcement, MLSE president Keith Pelley said that there had not been discussions about the Bills returning to Toronto at that time.
While the NFL continues their global tour without Canada as a destination, Goodell cited alternative methods of reaching worldwide audiences outside of hosting games in those countries.
“We want to be a global game. We want to be globally accepted, and games are only a part of it, right? Media is the most important issue - that’s how to share your game with the fans, including here in the States.”
