Arrowhead Pride
As the league persists in pushing its product abroad, the Chiefs see a tremendous opportunity.
The Kansas City Chiefs’ international roots date back to 1990, when they participated in the American Bowl — a series of preseason games played abroad to grow the sport’s global appeal. They were also featured in these matchups in 1994, 1996 and 1998.
In the present day, the league is deeply committed to international expansion, holding regular-season games in other countries since 2007. The Chiefs’ first such appearance came in 2015 — when Alex Smith led Kansas City to a 45-10 victory over the Detroit Lions in London, England. They have since played in Mexico in 2019 and Germany in 2023.
In 2021, the league allocated exclusive marketing rights in certain countries to specific teams. The Chiefs began with rights to Germany and Mexico in 2021, adding Austria and Switzerland in 2023.
Kansas City’s rise — driven by Patrick Mahomes’ popularity and back-to-back Super Bowl championships (and three in five seasons) — has coincided with the NFL’s push into international markets, strengthening the team’s global marketing potential.
All that has Chiefs president Mark Donovan — who runs the team’s business operations — thinking bigger. Donovan has long admired the Dallas Cowboys’ business model and now aims to replicate that success in his own way in Kansas City.
“We’ve been told by so many people that we’re the new America’s Team, that the Cowboys are no longer America’s Team,” said Donovan in a sitdown with local Kansas City writers in New Orleans on Wednesday. “And I said, ‘What’s more audacious? Let’s be the ‘World’s team.’ At first, it seemed arrogant, but I told them — this is an unprecedented opportunity. We’ve never had this level of international expansion, this brand strength, this level of social media dominance — and we’ve never had this combination of a head coach, tight end, defensive tackle and quarterback. If we don’t do this right now, what are we doing? It’s our responsibility.”
The club’s owner, chairman, and CEO Clark Hunt, urges his staff to channel the spirit of the club’s founder, his father, Lamar, who was an advocate for spreading the game worldwide. According to Donovan, one of Lamar’s creeds was to “dream big and set audacious goals.”
“We’ve been one of, if not the most aggressive, teams in the league in terms of international expansion,” continued Donovan. “When the league created the [Global Markets] program (GMP), we were one of the first to say, ‘What do we do to help them? How do we take advantage of this?’
“We completely agree that this is an opportunity to take advantage of. We’ve never had these platforms to maximize before. The world has gotten so much smaller because of the way content is consumed, and social media has created these superstars. So how do we fully maximize that?”
Just this week, the Chiefs announced the creation of Foolish Club Studios, a new business dedicated to creating original scripted and unscripted content....
