How NFL used AI & analytics technology to create the 2026 international, prime-time schedules

How NFL used AI & analytics technology to create the 2026 international, prime-time schedules originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Everything the NFL does seems to be meticulously planned out months or even years in advance, from Super Bowl dates and locations to the annual draft. The schedule is one major exception.

The league typically doesn't announce when the schedule will be released until just a few days before the reveal, leaving fans in the dark until about mid-May, when the spectacle that has become the schedule release takes place.

The NFL doesn't wait so long to announce a date just for fun. The league combs through large amounts of data to determine which games should be played in which windows, from early Sunday afternoon kickoffs to Thanksgiving and Christmas schedules and beyond..

As the league continues to expand its international slate, finding the right balance for all 32 teams is becoming even more of a science. AI is helping the NFL sort through it all.

Here's a closer look at how the NFL relies on AI and analytics to build out its 272-game schedule.

MORE:Tracking 2026 NFL schedule leaks

How many international games are on the NFL schedule?

The 2026 NFL season will feature a record nine international games, split between the following seven cities:

• London, England (3 games)
• Melbourne, Australia
• Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
• Paris, France
• Madrid, Spain
• Munich, Germany
• Mexico City, Mexico

With about half of the league playing an international game (the Jaguars will play two), the schedule has become even more complex to create. The distance required to travel to some of those countries, particularly Australia, forces the NFL to account for where and when teams play in the weeks surrounding their international game.

Here’s some insight into how the league manages the convoluted process.

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How NFL creates international schedule

The NFL still leaves much of the science behind its schedule to mystery, but the league has come to rely on Boston-based Recentive Analytics to help craft its 272-game slate.

After initially helping the NFL better understand ticketing, Recentive now supplies the league with data "focusing on providing viewership for any permutation of any schedule and any game in any window," founder Andy Tabrizi told Sporting News.

Recentive works with the NFL to provide "a prediction for literally any game in any possible window, or any combination of games," Tabrizi said, using a software platform that the league can use to tweak its schedule for maximal viewership.

"They're actually able to use the software platform directly themselves to do everything from 'we're here, how do we tinker this to improve the viewership' to measuring five or 10 different schedule combinations against each other to determine which one will maximize viewership the most.

When it comes to deciding which teams play in an international market, the NFL has to consider something it doesn't have to consider quite as much with the rest of the schedule: ticketing demand.

The NFL schedule operates on a cycle, so no one is deciding which teams get to play at Gillette Stadium or Arrowhead Stadium in a given season, but the league does have to decide which teams will draw interest in an international market.

For Recentive, that's where their ticketing data comes into play. "If you bring these two teams versus these two other teams to a certain market, the demand's not going to be the same," Tabrizi said.

Recentive's original partnership with the NFL began in the late 2010s with ticketing at the heart of it, and international games are now where that data matters most to the league.

The NFL still handles other factors on its own, though. The league has to ensure that teams have some additional time off before or after most international games, depending on how far they have to travel. What one team does affects what other teams do, so the league builds out the rest of its schedule around those marquee matchups to ensure competitive balance.

For example, the Pittsburgh Steelers had their bye week after making the trip to Ireland, while the Indianapolis Colts also had their bye after a game in Germany. The Minnesota Vikings stayed in the region to play a game in London after their matchup in Ireland, then had a bye week.

In some cases, the additional travel is just something teams have to deal with. The Atlanta Falcons didn't have a bye before or after their game against the Colts in Germany, but those scenarios are not as common.

The designated home team for international games almost always comes from the conference whose teams play nine home games rather than eight. That's the NFC in 2026, so every international game has an NFC team as a designated home team except for games involving the Jacksonville Jaguars, who have long played at least one home game in London each season.

Because every NFC team playing internationally still has at least eight true home games, the same amount as every AFC team, the NFL avoids throwing competitive balance out of whack with a huge international slate.

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How NFL chooses prime-time games

When creating the prime-time schedule, which includes "Thursday Night Football," "Sunday Night Football" and "Monday Night Football," the NFL has to balance more than just Recentive's viewership data -- but it is one major factor.

"Our role is to say, okay, if this is the Sunday night schedule or the Monday night schedule, here's what your viewership will be."

The NFL can take that data and balance it against other factors, including what the TV networks want, but it's that information that can lead to some of the final tweaks to the slates.

"It provides an objective lens to something that was a lot more subjective in the past," Tabrizi said.

Tabrizi explained that Recentive creates viewership projections in part by accounting for what is happening around a game, from other sporting events to local, national or world events.

"The reality is that at all times there is something going on," Tabrizi said. "What we really try and do is try and consolidate down, not just NFL or MLB or sport-related factors, but the environment in which somebody is actually operating."

While the NFL is the viewership king among sports leagues in the United States and isn't afraid to compete with other leagues, maximizing viewership requires accounting for outside factors. Tabrizi said Recentive's model accurately predicted sports viewership would go down in the fall of 2020 because cable news viewership was considerably up in a year dominated by national and global headlines.

"Media consumption is a zero-sum game. If something is going up, it pretty much guarantees something is going down," Tabrizi said. "If we're going to be blind to everything else going on in the world, how could you ever actually predict what's going to happen with that specific thing?"

When you take a look at the NFL's prime-time schedule and see the usual smattering of the Chiefs, Bills, Eagles and more, it's easy to forget that choosing which games are played in which slot is a meticulous process for the league, its networks and its data partners.

"A game with Patrick Mahomes tends to be more interesting than a game without Patrick Mahomes, but it's one factor, not the only factor," Tabrizi said.