NFL Exploits Loophole to Play Another Friday Night Game in Brazil

The NFL is returning to Brazil to help start the 2025 regular season, and again is taking advantage of a legal loophole to make it happen. 

The league said Wednesday that it will play a game on a Friday—Sept. 5 in São Paulo—following a debut effort there last year with a game between the Packers and Eagles. This time, the Chargers will be the designated home team in Brazil, but the formula to play a rare Friday NFL game is the same as last year.

The NFL is bound by the terms of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which is aimed in part at protecting high school and college football and precludes pro football games from happening on Fridays and Saturdays during the regular seasons of those lower levels. 

The applicable window of that federal act, however, begins with the second Friday of September, extending to the second Saturday in December. The Brazil game is situated in front of that and again sets up a blockbuster opening week for the NFL that will include primetime games on Sept. 4, 5, 7, and 8. Aiding that effort is the Sept. 1 placement of Labor Day on the 2025 calendar, the earliest it can be. 

Beginning that run of Week 1 games will be the kickoff event in Philadelphia with the Super Bowl LIX champion Eagles. 

NFL games each of the past two seasons on Black Friday have fallen within the protective window of the Sports Broadcasting Act, but there is a further loophole there. Those contests started at 3 p.m. ET—ahead of a prohibition of airing “all or a substantial part” of pro football games on Fridays after 6 p.m. during the high school and college regular seasons. 

Broadcast plans for the 2025 Brazil game have not been finalized. Last year’s Packers-Eagles matchup was streamed exclusively on NBCUniversal’s Peacock, drawing an average audience of 14.2 million. 

The Bigger Global Picture

The Brazil game is part of an expansive NFL international slate for 2025 that also includes two games at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, an additional London game at Wembley Stadium, another in Berlin, and first-time trips for the league in the regular season to Spain and Ireland. 

Amid that growing ambition, however, Brazil is a key priority for the league, as it looks to take advantage of the fast-growing fandom for American football in South America. The NFL says Brazil has more than 36 million people who identify as NFL fans, representing the league’s second-largest international fan base after Mexico.