The new NFL season is about to get underway, and while most of the action and fandom are based in the United States, a significant portion of the NFL is now “international.” Seven games will be played in other countries across the 2025 season, including places like Spain and Ireland for the first time. They are almost guaranteed to be sold out (some already are).

While it might seem like a given that every sports fan in, say, Ireland will want a ticket for the game, it’s actually the culmination of a long, well-thought-out strategy that has taken years, decades, even to pull off. We’d argue that the NFL is light-years ahead of other leagues, including the NBA, in expanding its international footprint, and we believe that there are valuable lessons in its strategy that can be applied to any startup or established business seeking growth in new markets.

Patience Pays Off

One of the interesting characteristics of the NFL’s strategy was taking a long-term approach. People point to the sold-out stadia for the London Games (three per year in the fall) as the hottest ticket in town, but it took years of strategy to reach that point, partnering with broadcasters, doing deals with local stakeholders (two games are played at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium), and building up a presence in other ways. As to the latter, NFL academies are springing up across many different countries. They won’t produce the next Tom Brady tomorrow, but they establish grassroots connections with local fans.

It’s Not Just About the Games

Hosting a game in London or Berlin a couple of times a year is only the focal point of a wider campaign to drive fan interest. After the Super Bowl, fans will be discussing NFL playoff odds for the new season, the Draft, potential trades, and other topics, but it’s about keeping them engaged via social media and other content, such as movies, previews, podcasts, and more. The NFL has done an excellent job of soft marketing in this way, often tailoring its content to resonate with local audiences.

Spheres of Influence

It is quite interesting to see that the NFL’s 32 teams have agreed to have specific target markets, with deals in place for broadcasting, among other things. For instance, the Rams have Australia, the Jaguars have London. Some territories will have multiple teams, whereas others will have just one. However, it appears that a gentleman’s agreement exists among rival teams, allowing them to focus on specific regions without interference from others. It all comes from a recognition that there is an enormous potential market out there, more than enough to go around.

The Power of Socials

The NFL does, of course, have a massive social media presence, but it’s not just about posting content from @NFL on X. The league maintains a network of social media accounts across various markets, posting content in multiple languages and adjusting it as needed to have a greater impact in specific markets. What’s more, it has partnered with local media to both curate and deliver its content.

Local Adjustments Count

Sometimes, it’s the small things that matter. If you visit the NFL’s website while in the UK, for instance, game times are listed in GMT. Content produced by the NFL is also often written in British English. While most fans would understand the US vernacular, the small touches matter; bringing in local references makes a difference with a target market, fostering a connection between the fans and the product.

Seeing the Bigger Picture

The NFL and other sports leagues used to zealously attempt to remove content from social media, viewing it as a means of losing revenue when the content is not behind a subscription paywall. Yet, now the reverse is true, and fans can get video content of in-game plays on social media minutes after they happen. This matters for international fans, some of whom might not have access to traditional television broadcasts for the games.

Airtable CEO Howie Liu is making an unusual demand of his staff: take more time off work—at least from meetings—and dedicate it to playing with artificial intelligence.

In a recent episode of Lenny’s Podcast released Sunday and published by Business Insider, Liu, 36, said he has been actively encouraging Airtable employees to experiment with AI, not just as a tool for productivity, but as a way to reshape the company’s long-term strategy.

“If you want to cancel all your meetings for a day or for an entire week and just go play around with every AI product that you think could be relevant to Airtable, go do it. Period,” Liu said. “That’s the most important thing. Play. Experimentation.”

Liu made clear on the podcast that his approach is not rhetorical. He described himself as Airtable’s most dedicated and, in his words, “intentionally wasteful” user of Airtable AI, the company’s own service.

“I take pride in being the No. 1 most expensive in inference-cost user of Airtable AI,” Liu said. He noted that he was not just the top user within his own company, but “globally across all our customers.”

For Liu, that “waste” is part of the point. He admitted to spending hundreds of dollars at a time on inference costs—AI computations—just to analyze sales call transcripts. To him, the exercise is far from frivolous.

“Hundreds of dollars spent on this exercise is trivial compared to the potential strategic value of having better insights,” Liu explained. “That’s invaluable, right? You could pay a consulting firm literally millions of dollars to get that quality of work.”

The culture he is trying to instill at Airtable mirrors a broader movement among tech CEOs to normalize AI as a routine part of everyday work. Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn recently revealed that the language learning app organizes weekly AI experiments, cheekily branded “f-r-A-I-days,” where teams spend every Friday morning testing new ways to use AI for efficiency.

The approach reflects a growing recognition in Silicon Valley that AI adoption requires more than occasional pilot projects. Instead, it demands immersion, experimentation, and sometimes deliberate inefficiency—an argument Liu appears determined to embody.

Liu’s commitment to AI exploration comes at a pivotal moment for Airtable itself. He cofounded the company in 2013, initially as a spreadsheet-style application, but in June, Airtable relaunched as what Liu calls a “vibe coding platform.” The company, which employs over 700 people and was valued at nearly $12 billion in December 2021 according to PitchBook, is betting its future on becoming an “AI-native app platform.”

In a statement at the time of the relaunch, Liu argued that AI chat interfaces like ChatGPT may be effective for small, one-off tasks, but scaling AI in organizations requires something more structured.

“This is the real unlock,” Liu said. “AI chat interactions are good for one-off requests, but you need an AI app to scale AI work.”

He pointed to the rise of companies like Lovable and Cursor as evidence that vibe coding—the ability to build apps and workflows through conversational AI—is emerging as the “killer application” of the technology. For Airtable, that shift represents both a threat and an opportunity.

Liu, by encouraging his workforce to experiment—free from the strictures of calendars and deadlines— appears to be betting that play may not just inspire innovation but also help Airtable stake its claim in an increasingly crowded AI-driven software market.