Justin Herbert of the Los Angeles Chargers and Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs embrace … More
The Kansas City Chiefs will be playing internationally for the third time since Patrick Mahomes became their starting quarterback.
Two of those games involved facing the Los Angeles Chargers, including Wednesday’s official announcement from the NFL that the Chiefs will play the Chargers on Sept. 5 in São Paulo, Brazil, in Week One of the 2025 regular season.
The Chiefs won the previous international game against the Chargers, 24-17, in Mexico City in 2019 as they intercepted quarterback Philip Rivers, affectionately called “Felipe Rios” by local fans, four times, including at the goal line with 18 seconds left to preserve the win.
The Chiefs went on to win the first Super Bowl of the Mahomes era that year.
Playing in Brazil could be a good omen as well.
In last year’s inaugural Brazil game, the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Green Bay Packers 34-29 at Corinthians Arena.
En route to winning Super Bowl LIX vs. the Chiefs, the Eagles then defeated the Packers again, 22-10, in the wild-card round of the playoffs.
And during the Chiefs’ last international trip, they defeated the Miami Dolphins, 21-14, in November of 2023 in Frankfurt, Germany, and then won Super Bowl LVIII a few months later.
Though playing abroad can obviously be taxing, it clearly didn’t hurt the victors’ pursuit of their ultimate goal.
How to Watch Chiefs vs. Chargers
Chiefs-Chargers, which will be the second NFL game of the year following Dallas Cowboys at Eagles on Sept. 4, will be televised for free on YouTube.
Google owns YouTube TV, which has been the distributor of the NFL Sunday Ticket since the 2023 season, and last year people spent more than 350 million hours watching official NFL content on YouTube.
“YouTube and YouTube TV have been incredible partners of the NFL for several years,” Hans Schroeder, NFL executive vice president of media distribution, said in a statement, “and boast an immense global reach.”
Because YouTube has more than 2.5 billion monthly active users around the world, the audience for Chiefs-Chargers could exceed the NFL streaming record of 24.3 million domestic viewers, which Netflix set last year for its broadcast of the Baltimore Ravens’ win against the Houston Texans on Christmas.
International Game Was Not a Surprise
Rumors had swirled for months that the Chiefs would be playing the Chargers in Brazil.
Chiefs owner Clark Hunt was even asked about it during April’s NFL draft.
“I’ve also heard the speculation about Brazil and being the Chargers’ opponent, and it’s something that we would welcome and embrace,” Hunt said. “I don’t know when the NFL is going to announce it. It’s usually a little bit ahead of the schedule release. So, we’ll probably know in the coming days.”
The Brazil game should add to the Chiefs’ increasing international presence.
The Chiefs already had marketing and commercialization rights in Mexico, Germany, Switzerland and Austria as part of the NFL’s Global Markets Program.
Then, the Chiefs recently were awarded rights for the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain, tying them with the Los Angeles Rams for having the most countries with marketing rights.
“Adding Spain and then also adding the UK and Ireland gives us a really broad footprint in the continent,” Hunt said. “That will be beneficial.”
The Chiefs also hope to benefit by using the 2025 international game as a springboard to a Super Bowl title just as it did in 2019 and 2023.
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