MADRID — Down a quiet facet road close to the Plaza de España, the place a crew of staff was busy organising the Miami Dolphins Fan Zone, Alvaro Medrano Medel tended bar and waited tables at Restaurante Sebas, his household’s place. The lunch crowd was rolling in for the hearty menu del dia — 14 euros for 3 programs and a drink.
Medrano Medel, 34, is the uncommon Spaniard who calls himself an NFL fan. He will the primary NFL sport in Spain at Estadio Bernabeu with a gaggle of 4 pals, who he says got interested within the league about six years in the past after they began going to Madrid’s Onerous Rock Cafe to look at the Tremendous Bowl. He tries to look at NFL video games each Sunday, or at the very least test the scores afterward.
The Dolphins aren’t his workforce (he selected the Minnesota Vikings due to their references within the TV present he known as “How I Meet Your Mom”) however he says he is impressed with the “big display screen” the membership has put up within the plaza close by. He says Sunday’s sport (9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Community) has been talked about rather a lot in Madrid lately, even supposing the vast majority of his household and pals simply do not get his ardour for the NFL.
“They do not perceive as a result of it is a sport that they’ve by no means seen,” he advised ESPN, in an interview performed in Spanish. “They do not know something about it.”
The cook dinner at Restaurante Sebas caught his head out from behind the kitchen wall coated in blue and yellow Spanish tile so as to add that he additionally is aware of nothing about Medrano Medel’s sport, and this opinion turned out to be consultant of the typical Spanish resident.
On the leafy Plaza de España, a younger girl with a darkish ponytail and black glasses stopped to take an image of the massive stage adorned with blue and orange Dolphins banners. Vehicles beeped and scraped alongside the pavement as staff unloaded extra gear to construct out a number of smaller platforms. By Thursday, this spectacular set could be full with a three-day schedule of programming to welcome Dolphins and NFL followers.
“Ellos ganaron?” Did they win? The younger girl despatched in a textual content to her pals, together with the photograph of the stage. She had by no means heard of this workforce from Miami, she did not know the sport had but to be performed, and he or she did not know a lot in any respect about American soccer.
As Madrileños, vacationers and enterprise vacationers handed by means of the plaza, many gazed in confusion on the building. 5 extra requested ESPN an analogous query. ¿Qué es esto? What is that this?
Two jet-lagged Dolphins coaches strolled by with afternoon coffees to survey the setup, and requested themselves the inverse. Is anybody going to know what that is?
“Is that this rugby?” requested an older girl passing by along with her husband, on their approach to see a film.
The passersby who acknowledged the model have been within the minority.
Gustavo Herrera, a Dolphins fan from Venezuela who has lived in Madrid for eight years, mentioned it is tough to be an NFL fan in Spain as a result of he hasn’t been in a position to determine how you can watch a sport in a very long time.
“It isn’t very seen right here,” he mentioned. “It’s important to seek for the video games on totally different platforms and dedicate your self to it. And the time change can be tough.”
¨Do not forget that Spain is 100% football-mad, it is all about soccer, soccer and extra soccer,¨ mentioned Dolphins fan Alejandro Villarreal, who traveled to Madrid from Monterrey, Mexico, to go to the sport.
The Dolphins and the NFL know American soccer won’t ever supplant the recognition of soccer in Spain, however the membership hopes to be the NFL workforce of alternative and to succeed in the typical ambivalent Spaniard. They’ve held advertising rights in Spain since 2022, and have been internet hosting occasions there since. Spain was the primary of the workforce’s now league-leading 4 Spanish-speaking advertising territories, and the nation is a key a part of Miami’s distinctive worldwide development imaginative and prescient: to be the NFL workforce for the Spanish-speaking world.
A Tuesday afternoon throughout their Madrid sport week suggests the Dolphins have their work reduce out for ensuring that Medrano Medel and Herrera are not within the overwhelming minority.
The Dolphins are in Spain this week as a result of Dolphins workforce president Tom Garfinkel made identified to the league workplace two years in the past that they have been keen to sacrifice a house sport to play internationally in 2025, and have been particularly occupied with Spain.
Garfinkel mentioned the workforce first outlined its worldwide imaginative and prescient to be the workforce of the Spanish-speaking world when the league launched its World Markets Program (GMP) in 2022, which gave golf equipment the chance to use for advertising rights to a global territory.
“Look, if we will do it, let’s not put our toe within the water,” Garfinkel advised ESPN, describing the workforce’s inside conversations on the time. “Let’s go all-in and take into consideration what this implies long run to the model and the sport. Miami is a booming development market. Lots of people are shifting to Miami from Europe, from different locations in the USA, from Latin America. That development coupled with the worldwide alternative, it simply made sense.”
Some NFL groups map out a geographic space, others give attention to only one nation, however Gerrit Meier, the NFL’s head of worldwide, advised ESPN that the Dolphins’ imaginative and prescient is exclusive. “We’ve not had [a team] say, “I am committing to a language,” Meier says.
With 486 million native audio system, Spanish is the second-most-spoken language on the planet, and in Miami-Dade County, 66% of residents reported talking Spanish at residence on the 2024 American Group Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The league workplace does not promote the worldwide advertising rights to golf equipment. It grants them based mostly on the membership’s pitch on why it’s occupied with that exact market and the way it plans to construct model consciousness by means of fan engagement, occasions, business alternatives and NFL Flag growth.
There aren’t any limitations on the place on the planet groups can apply for rights, no restrict to what number of golf equipment could be in the identical market (11 groups are in Germany, 10 in Mexico and 9 within the U.Okay.), nor strict specs for what the membership is required to do out there to be granted the five-year time period.
By now, should you’re considering this entire conceit feels nebulous and a bit made-up, just like the sale of air rights, it is as a result of it sort of is. The GMP is mapping out hypothetical parameters for a dream world that does not exist but, a future fiefdom of worldwide soccer markets.
Meier mentioned the league does have one concern: It desires golf equipment to speculate equally throughout every market “so they do not begin diluting themselves or shifting cash from one market to a different,¨ Meier says, however that spending quantity differs per membership and market.
Going “all-in” in worldwide growth, as Garfinkel put it, isn’t a well-liked technique leaguewide. Why would an proprietor put money into an undeveloped market with no clear or instant payoff, particularly when all 32 golf equipment share the worldwide income generated from video games performed overseas?
Nineteen groups utilized for territories within the first 12 months of the GMP, nevertheless it wasn’t till this 12 months that each one 32 golf equipment grew to become individuals in this system.
Garfinkel declined to share the particular greenback quantity that the Dolphins have invested into their six GMP territories. “I can say it is within the hundreds of thousands yearly,” he mentioned. “It isn’t a pair hundred thousand and it isn’t 1,000,000 {dollars}. It is hundreds of thousands yearly.
“It is a long-term funding. We imagine that is one thing that’s going to require some persistence. It’ll require some imaginative and prescient, and it will require some consistency.”
Dolphins proprietor Stephen Ross sits on the NFL’s worldwide committee, and underneath his stewardship, the workforce has a protracted historical past of enjoying in worldwide video games. Miami performed within the league’s first worldwide collection sport in London in 2007, and has since performed there 4 extra instances and in Germany in 2023.
Ross has a number of sports activities enterprise ventures that cross continents, so taking his soccer workforce worldwide has been a no brainer. Ross owns Onerous Rock Stadium, which is able to host the 2026 World Cup and has hosted worldwide sporting occasions and live shows, and he owns two different worldwide sporting occasions that happen on the Onerous Rock Stadium property: the F1 Miami Grand Prix and the Miami Open tennis match. He’s additionally the chairman and co-founder of Relevent, which brokers business rights for soccer manufacturers worldwide.
“Steve is an enormous, visionary thinker,” Garfinkel mentioned. “We’re constructing a reasonably sturdy database proper now. We have now a global soccer match the place Colombia is enjoying Argentina, and we’re gathering knowledge on folks which might be attending that occasion. Then we’ve a Dangerous Bunny live performance, then we’ve tennis match, with [Spanish tennis player Carlos] Alcaraz enjoying tennis, then we’ve a Formulation One race, the place we’ve [Spanish driver] Carlos Sainz, and now we’re enjoying in Madrid, so we’re making an attempt to tie all these issues collectively in a synergistic means.”
Miami began off with rights to Spain, the U.Okay. and Brazil, after which added Mexico, Argentina and Colombia in 2024. The membership now has advertising rights to 6 totally different nations, which is second-most within the NFL behind the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs and the Los Angeles Rams, who each have seven territories, and each have staked a declare on being the, “World’s Group.” The league common of two.5 international advertising territories per membership is properly beneath the scale of Miami’s portfolio;. 14 golf equipment have just one territory.
Of Miami’s advertising territories, it’s the solely workforce with rights in Argentina and Colombia. Prior to now 12 months, the Dolphins have created two new worldwide roles: a V.P. of worldwide growth and a Spain nation supervisor, based mostly in Madrid, and are hiring for 2 extra nation supervisor positions, in Mexico and Brazil.
“Miami is really a gateway metropolis, a worldwide metropolis, an aspirational metropolis, and from that standpoint, it provides us a novel alternative internationally that could be totally different for another [NFL] markets,” Garfinkel mentioned.
In response to the American Group Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2024, 55.3% of Miami-Dade County residents have been foreign-born, with 92.8% of them from Latin America. Spanish was spoken at residence by 67% of individuals at the very least 5 years outdated.
Garfinkel mentioned the workforce’s largest worldwide fan base is in Mexico, a veteran worldwide market that has hosted 5 video games.
“México is a market that the NFL has already dominated,” mentioned Dolphins fan Edgar Lopez, who traveled to Madrid from Saltillo Coahuila, Mexico for the sport. ¨There are such a lot of followers, and right here in Europe I believe what makes it just a little tough is the schedule. … I’ve spoken with [Spanish] folks and lots of aren’t very properly knowledgeable. “
Meier is aware of the NFL isn’t a top-three sport in most worldwide markets, and he describes the league’s worldwide purpose in humble phrases.
“There is no expectation that we’ll are available and break the ranks of probably the most endemic sport that we’ve, whether or not that is soccer, basketball, cricket, rugby,” Meier mentioned. “However we do imagine that in lots of markets, we’ve a good probability to turn into the best-performing non-endemic sport.”
In 2023, NFL homeowners voted to extend the slate of worldwide video games from 4 to as much as eight per season, which requires every membership to host a global sport as soon as each 4 seasons, a rise from as soon as each eight seasons. When golf equipment play worldwide video games, they sacrifice a house sport and lose that ticket income. All 32 golf equipment share equally within the worldwide sport income, so the present setup does not reward internationally minded golf equipment like Miami to truly play overseas extra typically.
Jacksonville is the one workforce that receives ticket income when it performs overseas as a result of the franchise has its personal multiyear take care of the NFL and London’s Wembley Stadium to play video games there repeatedly.
Garfinkel mentioned the Dolphins are occupied with coming into into an analogous deal to play extra often in considered one of their international markets (Brazil, Mexico or Spain) and can proceed to have conversations about that risk with the league’s worldwide committee.
“The markets round Latin America that we’ve within the international markets program, we’re invested into these markets now,” Garfinkel mentioned. “We wish to be there constantly, and to play video games there is a vital aspect of rising the model there over time.”
Rafael De los Santos Navarro has solely been working in his new function because the NFL’s nation supervisor for Spain for 5 weeks, however he was already chatting with a room of about 50 members of the Spanish media at an NFL occasion Tuesday night time.
“Let’s begin by understanding why Spain was chosen,” De los Santos Navarro advised the group.
Behind him, a presentation slide mentioned: “Número de aficionados en España: 11.3 Millones” (Variety of followers in Spain: 11.3 million).
“Lots of you’ve gotten requested me, are there actually 11.3 million followers,” de los Santos Navarro mentioned in Spanish, getting forward of the elephant within the room, an enormous variety of supposed NFL followers that no one within the Spanish media gave the impression to be shopping for.
“There are 11.3 million people who sooner or later have proven an curiosity within the NFL,” De los Santos Navarro continued. “Whether or not that’s following the NFL straight, or watching the Tremendous Bowl halftime present, every part that there’s.”
This 12 months’s halftime act, Puerto Rican artist Dangerous Bunny, who raps in Spanish, was Spotify’s top-streamed artist for 3 straight years (2021-23) and was the third-most-streamed artist in 2024.
Per the NFL’s knowledge, 1.3 million of the 11.3 million Spanish NFL followers are outlined as “avid” NFL followers. Mexico, compared, the league’s largest worldwide market, has 39.9 million followers and 11.5 million avid followers.
Meier mentioned that Spain had three qualities the league seeks in a market: “Excessive sports activities affinity, excessive media consumption, and a younger base of socially engaged audiences.”
In October, the league entered into an settlement with a brand new ¨free to air¨ broadcast accomplice, Mediaset España, so Herrera ought to have a better time watching NFL video games, and the NFL is now constructing a Madrid workplace, for which de los Santos is hiring a workforce of three extra staffers.
His love for soccer started when he needed to play emergency kicker for his highschool workforce in Bend, Oregon, whereas finding out there as an alternate scholar in 1990. His first NFL sport in individual was a Dolphins sport within the early 2000s and he by no means thought then that he’d be working for the league someday in Spain.
After the league’s presentation, Dolphins cheerleaders and mascot paraded by means of the group and servers handed out buffalo wings , mini sizzling canine and tacos adorned with American flag toothpicks — and a Dolphins-colored cocktail, shiny turquoise with orange salt on the rim. The league handed out customized jackets printed with the NFL’s defend and “2025 MADRID GAME.”
“There’s lots of uncertainty and curiosity about what’s going to occur, on condition that it is a comparatively unknown sport with little visibility,” mentioned Manuel Merinero, editor for Spanish newspaper ABC and skeptical attendee on the NFL’s Spanish press occasion. “This sport and this occasion will present us if it marks a turning level for development.”
De los Santos Navarro mentioned the broad base of Spanish NFL followers watch the Tremendous Bowl halftime present every year, and, “evidentemente aquí tenemos mucha room for enchancment.”
Regardless of not having gained a playoff sport since 2000, the Dolphins have been the sixth-most searched NFL workforce by folks outdoors of the USA in the course of the 2023 and 2024 NFL seasons.
Miami (3-7) caught a break in Week 10 and flew to Madrid on a victory Monday after beating the powerhouse Buffalo Payments, 30-13, every week after normal supervisor Chris Grier and the Dolphins made a mutual resolution to separate.
In three of their six international advertising territories (Spain, Mexico and the U.Okay), the Dolphins are battling to be the NFL workforce of alternative with none apart from the dynasty-building Chiefs, who’ve performed in 5 of the final six Tremendous Bowls, and gained three of them.
And Kansas Metropolis was the one workforce this season that was eligible to market itself– and did — within the full slate of worldwide video games (Brazil-Eire-United Kingdom-Germany-Spain) as a result of they maintain rights to 5 of the six markets, and performed within the sport in Brazil.
“In Mexico, nobody rooted for Kansas Metropolis for years and now there are Chiefs occasions,” Lopez, the Dolphins fan from Mexico says. “Earlier than that, it was the Patriots. Now, no one cheers for the Patriots in Mexico, and so it goes. The workforce that’s successful will get probably the most followers. However a workforce that retains dropping, dropping, dropping, it is tough to get new followers.”
“I like the massive groups,” says Rivas, the NFL RedZone viewer from Barcelona. “Payments, Chiefs, Niners. While you see Titans, Panthers, the extent goes down and it isn’t as enjoyable anymore.”
Dolphins V.P. for worldwide growth Felipe Formiga and Garfinkel each emphasised that the primary precedence is to win this sport in Madrid, however mentioned that the workforce’s disappointing latest efficiency hasn’t affected their marketability in Spain.
“The best way the worldwide market reacts to a season or to a sport could be very, very totally different,” Formiga says. “It is a actually American soccer celebration second. So it is a second for all of the followers of the NFL to have the chance to expertise, on this case, for the primary time ever, an American soccer sport of their nation.”
Formiga describes his job as “lots of firsts,” like holding the primary Dolphins youth flag soccer clinic in Spain this previous summer time (they are going to host two extra flag soccer clinics this week in Madrid). He mentioned the most important hurdle to rising the workforce’s model in Spain is “the schooling course of that is concerned in each single dialog” with potential worldwide companions. “While you attempt to pitch one thing and folks don’t perceive precisely the worth or the proportion or measurement of what you are representing,” he says.
Meier mentioned the league can have a long-term presence in Spain, however “there’s lots of stuff we do not know.”
“This isn’t a advertising program that has been round for 10 or 15 years,” Meier mentioned. “So that you go in, you’ve gotten a sure expectation. Some stuff works, some stuff does not, and the golf equipment are going by means of the identical studying processes.”
The NFL hasn’t introduced an additional dedication to enjoying video games in Spain however Meier and O’Reilly each mentioned they anticipate the market to develop just like the U.Okay. and Germany did.
“Once we first went into the U.Okay. a few years in the past, you have seen the maturation of the fan base, and I believe you may see that much more rapidly inside Spain,” O’Reilly mentioned.
However for now, on the Plaza de España, NFL followers like Martin Rivas, from Girona, Spain, mentioned he watches RedZone each week. Typically his youngest daughter will watch with him for a bit, however “the video games are lengthy,” he mentioned.
Rivas does not have any pals or household who’re within the NFL. “Soy único,” he mentioned. I am the one one.
