The NFL has already scheduled a New York Giants-Miami Dolphins game at Wembley Stadium, but this will come to the expense of the Florida-based team as they have sacrificed a home game in order to promote the game in Europe.

Rumblings out of the NFL now suggest that a 17th game be added to every team’s regular season schedule, which would be neither a home nor away venue, but rather a neutral one played outside the United States. Mexico City hosted an NFL game two years ago and London has already been scheduled for a 2007 regular-season clash. League insiders believe that by 2008 every NFL team could have one game scheduled outside the country.

According to Mark Waller, the NFL’s senior vice president of international affairs, it is certainly a feasible scheduling move. The NFL has made reaching out to a global audience one of its top priorities. Yet all of this seems to have taken a step in the wrong direction when a 2007 pre-season game scheduled for China was cancelled. Not much later, however, the regular season game set for Wembley was announced.

The idea most probably is not to hold every one of these games at a different venue, but rather to have a select few venues host at least one game per month. This would allow for a package Mark Waller has described as “mini” season tickets. Wembley looks to be one of those venues, and with its previous success it is fair to say that Mexico City is probably in, too.

The NFL of course, like all major sports around the world, is eyeing China. As far as worldwide ratings go, the NBA has been able to surpass America’s most watched pro league due to the advantage it has in China. With the luck of having a basketball player like Yao Ming, a superstar in his homeland and a star player in the US, the NBA has been able to become an instant hit with China’s enormous population. The NFL definitely envies this achievement, and such a new form of scheduling could be seen as a major step towards attracting global audiences.

Of course, lengthening the season is going to be a tough task. With a 17th game added, the league has to decide how to include an extra week of action. They could move the opening week back to Labor Day weekend, but this is something the league has opposed to doing many times.