ABSTRACT
“Yusajel Hadaf!” This phrase can be heard among Arabic-speaking people in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) when their football (soccer) team scores a goal. However, the 2012 founding of the Emirates American Football League (EAFL) in the UAE, along with changes in athletic interests that include the National Football League (NFL) and American football, could change this. Nielsen Sports (2015) shares that “since 2011, the proportion of the UAE population […] interested in the NFL has risen […] by 0.7 percentage points. Whilst this looks to be a small increase, this […] is equivalent to […] 20,000 more NFL fans” (p. 4). The growth of this global market supports the overseas expansion initiatives of the NFL which “has made no secret of its desire to bring American football to a new international stage” (Gardiner, 2016, p. 1). There exists viable value in the NFL brand far beyond the borders of the United States; in fact there is potentially more outside of it than within it.
