Any attempt at resurrecting plans to stage Premier League fixtures outside of England and Wales will be met with vehement opposition by the Football Supporters’ Association.
Premier League chief executive Richard Masters revealed last week the “door looks ajar” for English top-flight matches to be played overseas – although there are no plans in the pipeline currently.
However, a high-ranking executive at NBC Sports, which holds the rights to screen the Premier League in the United States, told the Athletic the broadcaster is intent on bringing games to American audiences.
Such a topic was broached by the Premier League itself 16 years ago, although proposals for a 39th round of fixtures overseas was mixed after a negative backlash from fans and pressure from FIFA.
Quote tweeting the Athletic article, the FSA wrote on X: “We defeated Game 39 in 2008 and we’d attack any attempted revival with a full blown, two feet off the ground, studs to the knee tackle.”
Two Premier League clubs – Chelsea and Manchester City – will be playing competitive games in the United States in the summer of 2025 at FIFA’s inaugural 32-team Club World Cup.
As for bringing Premier League games to the USA to widen the scope of English football with American fans, NBC Sports’ president of acquisitions and partnerships Jon Miller is in favour.
“Very much so,” he said. “This is a point that we’ve had conversations with the Premier League and they’ve been very open and receptive to listening to me.
“At some point in the future, I would love to see a couple of Premier League games open the season here in big stadiums on our opening weekend.
“I know that’s something that we’ll continue to push for because I think that there’s an American audience here that would like to see regular-season games.
“But in the meantime, we’ll continue to work with the Premier League to do everything we can to make the games available to as many people as possible.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here