The NFL’s international growth push just hit a snag in London, and it is showing up at the box office.
The Texans-Jaguars matchup at Wembley Stadium, currently scheduled for October 6, is reportedly struggling badly with ticket sales. The NFL UK Tickets X account posted a snapshot of the stadium availability map a week into general sale and called it directly: “Can’t actually believe how badly the Texans v Jaguars game has sold. Gone are the days of selling out the first day, people voting with their feet and staying away due to price.”
That is a bold statement from an account that exists to promote NFL ticket sales in the United Kingdom.
The honesty is the part worth paying attention to. London games have historically sold out within hours. The NFL became a phenomenon overseas precisely because demand outstripped supply for years. The league used that demand to justify adding more international games, expanding to Germany, planning Spain and Brazil dates, and eyeing the long-term goal of an actual European-based franchise.
Now, suddenly, there are visible empty seats on the seat map. That is new.
Pricing is the most obvious culprit. The NFL has steadily increased ticket prices for international games as demand has grown. At some point, that math stops working. International fans love NFL football, but they also have a price ceiling. The league appears to be testing where that ceiling actually is, and the Texans-Jaguars game is the first hard data point that suggests the ceiling has been hit.
The matchup itself is also a tough sell. Houston and Jacksonville are not glamour franchises. C.J. Stroud is a star, but the broader Texans roster does not have the household names that pack stadiums abroad. The Jaguars have Trevor Lawrence and not a whole lot else. UK fans have shown a clear preference for marquee franchises like the Chiefs, the Cowboys, and the Eagles. The other Jaguars game in London, against the Eagles a week earlier, is reportedly doing much better.
The NFL scheduled nine international games in 2026, the most in league history. Some of those games are going to sell out instantly. Some of them, like this one, are going to require some scrambling. The league is essentially running a stress test on overseas demand in real time, and the Texans-Jaguars sales numbers are the first sign that the test is producing uncomfortable results.
Roger Goodell and the NFL international office still have time to react. There are still three months until the game. They can adjust marketing. They can move some tickets through bundled packages. They can lean on the existing fan bases of both teams to spread the word. The seats will probably fill up eventually, one way or another.
But the bigger picture is the warning. The NFL has been operating under the assumption that overseas demand is functionally infinite at almost any price point. That assumption was just publicly challenged, by the league’s own ticket sellers, and it is the kind of feedback the league will need to take seriously before adding even more games abroad in 2027.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
