When the NFL created Thursday Night Football in 2006, it was a package of five games late in the season. By 2012, TNF expanded to nearly every week of the season, and today it brings in $1 billion annually from Amazon, which exclusively streams the primetime matchups.

As the league begins its 2025 season, its series of international games may be on the same growth trajectory as TNF.

This fall, a record seven games will be played outside the U.S., beginning Friday night in Brazil, as YouTube streams its first exclusive game broadcast, Chiefs–Chargers. The U.K. will once again host three games, Germany will get another game, and the NFL will make its debut in Spain and Ireland. The NFL had the option of scheduling an eighth game abroad this season, but plans to return to Mexico were stalled, as renovations continue at Aztec Stadium. 

Soon, the NFL’s international slate will likely be 16 games—a move commissioner Roger Goodell and several influential team owners have been bullish on in recent years.

“That’s probably on the horizon,” Falcons owner Arthur Blank said during an appearance on NFL Network during training camp in July. At the NFL’s spring meetings in March, Chiefs owner Clark Hunt said the league “has a short-term goal of getting to eight, and maybe down the road as many as 16.” Goodell has been touting the potential for 16 games since last fall. In May, he told CNBC he thought that expansion could happen “within five years.”

Further international expansion will likely line up with the NFL adding an 18th regular-season game, which needs to be collectively bargained (the current CBA runs through the 2030 season). The league, which can opt out of most of its current $110 billion media rights deals after the 2029 season, is also expected to try and sell a TV package around its international schedule, which could be worth $1 billion annually.

Less than three weeks into the new Premier League season, is the race for the title already over? That’s a rising question across England after defending champion Liverpool has led a record level of spending during the now-completed summer transfer window.

The Reds finalized a $170 million deal with Newcastle United on Monday for Swedish striker Alexander Isak, highlighting $598 million in transfer spending for the club this summer. Overall, the 20 Premier League clubs collectively spent $4.16 billion, smashing their own record set less than two weeks ago. 

The latest figures represent an increase of nearly $1 billion in total transfer spending in the final 10 days of the window. Liverpool’s signing of Isak, meanwhile, topped a separate deal it made in June for German midfielder Florian Wirtz, worth as much as $157.2 million, to set another league record for an individual signing.

As was the case in mid-August, the Premier League’s transfer spending is also more than the combined outlay this summer for the other four major European leagues—France’s Ligue 1, Germany’s Bundesliga, Italy’s Serie A, and Spain’s LaLiga.

On the pitch, Liverpool has picked up right where the club left off last season after claiming its 20th Premier League title, winning their first three matches of the new campaign to soar to the top of the table. 

“It is a recruitment drive that looks to have blown Liverpool’s rivals out of the water, irrespective of the ambitious efforts of Arsenal, Manchester City, and Chelsea,” wrote BBC Sport soccer writer Phil McNulty. 

Figuring Out the Spending 

The Premier League’s accelerating spending has much to do with a new domestic media-rights deal starting this season, worth $9 billion over four years and representing the largest sports-rights deal in the country’s history.

For Liverpool, owned by Fenway Sports Group, the club has also figured out how to work within existing Premier League profit and sustainability rules (PSR), in part by boosting local revenue through a continually competitive club that has led to additional commercial income and more prize money. That heightened income—now nearing $825 million per year—has helped the club to stay well clear of maximum permitted losses of $141 million over three years within the PSR guidelines. 

In its most recent annual report, Liverpool reported a loss of $76 million, but that followed a much narrower loss in the year before, and a small annual profit before that—leaving more than $65 million in estimated headroom, even after the latest outlays.

While Liverpool’s recent transfer spending topped the headlines, it also brought in more than $300 million in player fees for departing talent this summer. Such moves have left the club just seventh in the Premier League in net transfer outlays over the last eight years, according to Sky Sports.

For some of the highest-rated quarterbacks this offseason, Week 1 of college football didn’t necessarily go as planned. Texas’s Arch Manning, the third generation of the Manning quarterback dynasty, underwhelmed in his much-hyped debut, losing 14-7 to Ohio State on Saturday. UCLA’s Nico Iamaleava, who dominated offseason headlines for his abrupt transfer out of Tennessee, made an all-but-forgettable start for the Bruins: a 43-10 loss to Utah Saturday night.

One start isn’t much to go on. But if schools want to ensure they have a backup plan in case their star quarterback doesn’t pan out, they’ll still have to cough up some serious cash.

During the most expensive offseason of college football in history, the going rate for backup quarterbacks in both the power conferences and Group of 6 was in the mid-six-figures.

The most expensive backup quarterbacks are the “next men up,” or the young freshmen or sophomore phenoms awaiting their turn under center. (Arch Manning himself was arguably the most famous next man up as he spent two years on the Longhorns roster patiently awaiting Quinn Ewers’s departure.) At Texas, that spot is held by four-star true freshman KJ Lacey, who could be making seven-figures even on the bench, one power conference collective operator estimates.

But decent backups without big names could be cashing in, too. 

Across the power conferences and Group of 6, backup quarterbacks are earning an average of $233,000 a year, according to data provided by NIL company Opendorse. That’s just outside NIL deals, potentially provided by a school’s collective; it doesn’t include potential earnings from revenue-sharing (the pool of $20.5 million that each school can offer athletes across their athletic departments this year thanks to the House v. NCAA settlement). 

Backup quarterbacks can expect six figures from revenue-sharing payments, too, given that football rosters receive about 75% of the $20.5 million. 

A backup quarterback at a top power conference school—even without a big name and with little chance of playing—could easily be making around $500,000, the collective operator says. At Texas, in addition to Lacey, senior Matthew Caldwell and redshirt freshman Trey Owens are behind Manning in the pecking order.

Meanwhile, Manning—who is in a small upper-echelon of players who can easily make seven figures through endorsement deals alone—will keep raking in the deals. His endorsements with big-name brands include Warby Parker, Vuori, and Red Bull.