NFL International Series: Roger Goodell seeks to conquer Britain

“Our game isn’t played on a global basis, like basketball or soccer is – we have to do it differently,” Goodell admitted.

“We are trying to globalise our game, but we’re not trying to tackle the whole world at once.

“We want to create a success in London first, and then we’ll look at taking games to Frankfurt, Paris, Moscow, Sydney and so on. That would be a nice problem to have.”

And that is the fundamental point. Goodell knows a saturated market when he sees one: he has helped create it.

What was once all about “Any Given Sunday” is now televised from Thursday to Monday – for the first time US pundits are wondering whether you can have too much of a good thing. And baseball provides a perfect example of what happens when a business thinks it has got it all worked out.

The rise of “soccer” (more Premier League than MLS), declining numbers of kids playing the game in the US and a slight dip in attendances do not add up to anything approaching a crossroads moment for the NFL, but Goodell is too smart to ignore warnings.

What he has got, though, is still the perfect entertainment for contemporary American tastes, and contemporary American tastes have often become global staples.

“Part of it is that in our game every team has hope,” said Goodell, when asked how the NFL had conquered America.

“The hope is a great thing for us. Take the Kansas City Chiefs, they had two wins last season, but now they’re 7-0, and that gives people hope. They want to be a part of it.

“But the other thing is that everything is an event. Sunday’s game is an event here, it’s an event in the US and it’s an event around the world. And we want to make each of our events bigger and better – look at the annual draft (of college players), it is now bigger than most sports’ play-offs.

“I think the media helps us, because there are more and more ways for fans to follow the game. I like to say that there’s never been a better time to be a fan.”