The NFL’s London expansion experiment is hitting a snag. The October 18 game between the Houston Texans and Jacksonville Jaguars at Wembley Stadium is not selling, and the league has more than four months to figure out why.
The NFL UK Tickets account on X went public with the bad news over the weekend, posting a photo of the stadium’s current availability and a stark caption. “Can’t actually believe how badly the Texans v Jaguars game has sold. Over a week of the general sale and this is a snap shot of what the stadium looks like. Gone are the days of selling out the first day, people voting with their feet and staying away due to price.”
Price is the most obvious answer. The NFL has steadily pushed up ticket costs for international games, and Wembley is a 90,000-seat venue. Filling it requires real demand, and the matchup of two AFC South teams without superstar quarterbacks is not exactly a marquee draw.
The Jaguars are unusual in this picture because they play two international games in 2026. They face the Philadelphia Eagles at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium a week before the Texans game. That is a much sexier matchup with Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley, and the recently traded AJ Brown’s old offense facing a team that has consistently embraced the London market. Demand for that game is reportedly strong.
The Texans contest is the harder sell. Houston has C.J. Stroud and a real playoff roster, but the Jaguars are coming off a disappointing year and have not generated much offseason buzz. Putting two non-rivalry, non-headliner AFC South teams against each other on a Saturday in October was always a gamble.
The bigger picture is that the NFL has nine international games scheduled in 2026, the most in league history. The strategy depends on the assumption that international demand is essentially infinite. The Wembley sale tells you it is not, and the league will need to be more thoughtful about which matchups it sends overseas if it wants to keep the goose laying golden eggs.
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.
