The Kansas City Chiefs want more international games, and Clark Hunt is fine with expanding the schedule to get there.
The Kansas City Chiefs are making a strong push to get into more international markets, and their owner is more than willing to support an 18-game season to get it done, according to a report from Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk via ESPN.
Owner Clark Hunt made a statement about this recently, as Hunt said that by adding a game to the current regular-season schedule format the NFL can increase its footprint in other countries while maintaining the same number of home games, according to Smith.
"Growing the number of international games, that’s something we’re very supportive of,” Hunt said, via ESPN. “From a schedule dynamic, having 18 games would facilitate that.”
The international part of this certainly makes sense. The Chiefs have played internationals games in Brazil, Germany, Mexico and the United Kingdom. They’re also lobbying hard to play in Madrid this season against the Atlanta Falcons, which would bring their country count up to five.
The schedule add is a stickier issue. The vast majority of NFL players have opposed an 18-game schedule, even with the addition of a second bye week. One of the main issues is keeping star quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes on the field for something close to a full schedule, and the Chiefs found out how this works when they lost Mahomes against the Houston Texans and their entire season basically went south.
Owners don’t care much about this, though, even if it is their own teams that are affected. The topic of the 18-game schedule disappears here and there for brief stretches, but owners bring it up whenever the opportunity arises, and if they’re not doing it it’s commissioner Roger Goodell pounding the podium to make this happen.
Everyone knows how this is going to play out eventually, and it’s all about the money. At some point the owners will offer the players a large enough share of the spoils to make it worthwhile for players to take a little bit more of a pounding, and that share will occur in both elevated salary levels and revenue sharing. Hunt knows this as well as every other owner, which is why he showed up on ESPN to do his share to promote the ownership cause. He also has a new stadium in the pipeline, and those extra home games and international affairs help fill the coffers to make that happen as well.