London hopes of more NFL games boosted as 17-match season given green light in collective bargaining agreement

The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium hosted its first NFL games last year.
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London’s hopes of increasing its annual allocation of NFL games were boosted on Sunday after the league and players agreed to expand the regular season to 17 games.

The option to move away from the current 16-game structure – which cannot exploited into until at least 2021 - was confirmed as part of a new 10-year collective bargaining agreement that also includes raising the number of teams in the playoffs to 14.

At present, franchises play eight home and eight road games per season. The UK hosts four regular season matches, with four of the visiting teams sacrificing one of their designated ‘home’ fixtures.

It is expected that the additional games will be played at neutral venues (though not all in the same game week), which is likely to see the league’s International Series expanded, sending more games to the current host cities of London and Mexico City, as well as opening up opportunities to include more European venues.

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NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is known to be keen on hosting as many as eight games per season in the UK capital, though fixtures could also be held at US facilities that do not currently stage the NFL, such as college football stadiums.

As part of the move, the NFL’s preseason will be reduced from four games to three, while the postseason playoffs will now feature seven teams from each of the two conferences, with only the top seed in each receiving a first-round bye.

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There are also improved benefits for players, including minimum salaries and injury guarantees, plus increases in roster size and tighter restrictions on the number of full padded practices teams are permitted to hold.

The agreement also sees a relaxing in disciplinary approaches to marijuana use, with the testing window reduced and the threshold for a positive test increased, while players who are caught will usually face fines rather than suspensions.

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