The NFL Goes MrBeast Mode

The first international game of the National Football League season, a Friday-night tilt between the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers in São Paulo, is celebrated on the ground by the usual pomp and circumstance.

There are photo booths and merch tents catering to local fans, samba dancers in feathered head-pieces entertaining American die-hards traveling across the equator, and a press conference where Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes has to backtrack after calling association football (that is, the kind that is still most popular in Brazil, and the rest of the word) “soccer.” But fans tuning in at home are greeted by a different, somewhat more disturbing spectacle: news that YouTuber, prolific content creator, and protein-infused milk impresario Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson has purchased the NFL.

In a pregame preview airing on YouTube–which, for the first time ever, is broadcasting a regular-season NFL game globally, and for free–the platform’s most valuable creator appears opposite league commissioner Roger Goodell, in a purportedly comical “sketch” about MrBeast’s takeover of the league, which sees him assigning popular content creators to team rosters. A postgame stunt sees Donaldson awarding one hardcore fan a ticket to Super Bowl LX, and firing another out of a human cannon. Not everyone welcomes the NFL’s new zillennial overlord. “MrBeast on my television invading my beautiful sport,” one fan posts on X. A friend (a lifelong football fan in his mid-40s) who texts me during the game says the whole production, “Looks insanely gen z.”

Which is of course the point. The September 5 YouTube-exclusive São Paulo game (the platform covered my travel expenses to attend), dovetails two of the NFL’s key priorities, spreading football both internationally and intergenerationally. “I completely understand that not all fans and audiences are going to welcome change,” Donaldson writes in a statement to WIRED. “Our hope is that over time they'll recognize we are approaching everything we do with admiration and respect and want to be able to share something that's as unique and special as the NFL with our fans.”

If the NFL fails to establish American football abroad, both with Gen Z—whose sports fandom, studies have shown, ranks the lowest among generational cohorts—and with international audiences unaccustomed to the distinctly American pastime, it won’t be for lack of trying. Since 2005, the league has been hosting regular-season games abroad. First was Mexico. Then London. Then Germany. Then Brazil. This season will see additional international games in Berlin, Madrid, and Dublin. The penetration into the South American market seems at once incredibly bold and completely sensible. Sensible, because players and fans alike don’t have to struggle against the pesky realities of time zones. And bold because, perhaps even more so than the UK or continental Europe, South America has its own distinct, passionate football culture that has nothing to do with its brawnier North American cousin.

The NFL’s 2025 Brazilian operation offers a good matchup for further testing the viability of the South American market. Due to their long, somewhat challenging, history in Southern California, the Chargers boast a substantial Latino fan base, who call them Los Bolts. And the Chiefs (despite being dismantled humiliatingly in last season’s Super Bowl) remain a global brand. The Chiefs have also benefited from the A-list celebrity of some of their players, specifically Mahomes, and tight end Travis Kelce, whose recent engagement to pop star Taylor Swift makes him de facto one of the most famous human beings on the planet. As James Brighton, a Chargers fan and California native who traveled to Brazil for the matchup, grumbles to me before the game, “Mahomes is easily marketable … Kelce and Taylor Swift is the romance the world wants to see, I guess. They’re the face of the NFL right now.” The league is counting on it. But for the NFL’s second Brazil game, they aren’t taking any chances.

“There is no better platform than YouTube,” says veteran broadcaster Rich Eisen, his head literally framed by a YouTube logo as he lounges in the YouTube-branded green room deep in the concrete bowels of São Paulo’s Neo Química Arena in the idle hours before he ascends to the broadcast booth to provide play-by-play commentary. “There is no more powerful distributor to reach people of all ages, and to feed an insatiable desire of people to take in content.”

Eisen speaks from experience. At 56, he may be a generation or three removed from the Gen Z–dominated domain of professional content creation. Nevertheless, he has been able to parlay his success as a journalist and longtime Sportscenter and NFL Network anchor into an arguably ever larger audience, streaming his Emmy-nominated, three-hour daily sports-talk program The Rich Eisen Show on YouTube, among other platforms. “The world has changed and you’ve got to be part of it,” he tells WIRED. “I mean, the commissioner of the NFL didn’t do a video about the Brazil game with me. And I’ve been his employee for 23 years! He did it with MrBeast.”