Several NFL teams interested in playing game in China

BOCA RATON, Fla. -- The NFL's owners want to keep expanding their sport's reach around the globe, and they have discussed the possibility of playing games in China, Germany and Brazil, among other countries.

"International is a big push right now," New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch said Monday at the owners meetings here.

Tisch said a half-dozen countries were mentioned as possible sites for international NFL games in addition to the games already planned this year in London and Mexico City. Specifically, he named China, Germany and Brazil as possibilities.

Scheduling a game in China would be the most ambitious undertaking of those proposed, given the drastic time difference and how long the travel would take. There are no specific plans for such a game at this time.

Several teams have expressed a willingness to be involved in a game in China, which come come as early as the 2018 season.

"It's fascinating to think about," Tisch said. "It's very exciting, very exotic to think about. But if we do get to a point where the NFL plays a game in China, the logistics are going to be interesting. A lot to figure out in terms of getting there, playing there, coming back from there to the States, how do you maintain the parity with the other 30 teams who don't have to play there. So, a lot to be worked out still before that could happen."

Still, don't expect this to be the last time you hear NFL owners talking about plans for games in more far-off locales.

"We're going back to Mexico, and London has been very successful, and we're trying to introduce the NFL to more of the world, and of course that's the largest population of any country, in China," Houston Texans owner Bob McNair said. "They've expressed interest, so I suspect, yeah, we'll have a game over there. A lot of the value of the league is in the value of exposure of the media. Advertisers pay money based on how many people are seeing what they have to say. So, the more people you have watching what you're doing, the more value your content has."

This year, the NFL will stage three games in London and return to Mexico for a regular-season game in November. The London matchups will feature the Washington Redskins against the Cincinnati Bengals and the Indianapolis Colts facing the Jacksonville Jaguars at Wembley Stadium, the usual venue for NFL games in London, with the Bengals and Jaguars as hosts. The Giants will also face the Los Angeles Rams at Twickenham Stadium, a rugby ground being used for the first time, with the Rams as host.

On Nov. 21, the Oakland Raiders will host the Texans at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, in what will be the first NFL game there since 2005, when the Arizona Cardinals beat the San Francisco 49ers 31-14 before 103,467 fans. The NFL had planned to play a preseason game in China once before, in 2007 in Beijing, but it was canceled.

A trip to China would be the longest trek for the NFL, which has staged exhibition games in Japan and Australia. Preseason games were played in Tokyo in 1976, 1989-96, 1998, 2000, 2003 and 2005. One game was played in Osaka in 2002.

The NFL played one game in Sydney in 1999.

ESPN's Tania Ganguli andThe Associated Press contributed to this report.