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Latinos are the fastest-growing fanbase in the NFL. What's the league's playbook?
Fans cheer before an NFL football game between the Los Angeles Chargers and the Kansas City Chiefs in Mexico City in 2019. The NFL plans to play as many as eight international games beginning next season. The NFL’s two largest international markets are Mexico and Brazil,
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Rebecca Blackwell/AP
Raúl Allegre arrived in Washington state from Torreón, Coahuila, in 1977 as a high school foreign exchange student. The school’s football coach immediately noticed the Mexican fútbolero, who had an aptitude for using his foot. That season, as a senior, Allegre learned how to kick a football for the first time.
Historically, Mexican immigrants haven’t always embraced the U.S. pigskin sport, known in Mexico as simply “Americano.” Even rarer? That a teenage Mexican citizen in the 70s would have any desire — let alone pathway — to play in the National Football League.
Raul Allegre (2), shown here attempting a field goal against the Philadelphia Eagles in 1987, is the most decorated Mexican-born kicker in NFL history. He won two Super Bowls as the star booter for the New York Giants in 1987 and ’91 en route to a nine-season career.
G. Paul Burnett/AP
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G. Paul Burnett/AP
Allegre went on to become the most decorated Mexican-born kicker in NFL history, eventually winning two Super Bowls as the star booter for the New York Giants in 1987 and ’91 en route to a nine-season career.
Though he wasn’t the first Mexican-born player to suit up on the gridiron — that was Tom Fears, a wide receiver from Guadalajara who led the league in receptions after being drafted to the Los Angeles Rams in 1948 — Allegre was certainly one of the very few to make it across the border and onto the field.
The Los Angeles Rams high-powered passing combination, probably football’s best, gets together at Redlands, Calif., as the NFL titleholders began drills July 23, 1952. From left: quarterback Bob Waterfield and ends Elroy Hirsch and Tom Fears.
Harold Filan/AP
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Harold Filan/AP
“The NFL hadn’t internationalized back then,” says Allegre. “Today, the market in Mexico and Latin America is enormous. That didn’t exist in the ’70s when I was growing up. There were some Latinos like Tom Flores, Max Montoya, Anthony Muñoz. But even then, many of the Latino players didn’t register as Latinos.”
Members of the Cincinnati Bengals offensive line include wide receiver Steve Kreider (86), right guard Max Montoya (65) and left tackle Anthony Munoz (78) during an NFL game in 1981.
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AP
In 2024, that’s no longer the case. The NFL is beginning to shift its league’s perception — formerly as one of American pride, militarism, and rigid conservatism (see: the backlash on Colin Kaepernick’s infamous kneel in 2016) — to one of global inclusivity, community values and mindfulness (see: the Washington Commanders changing their franchise name and logo in 2020). It hasn’t been a perfect transition, but it’s clear the NFL is seizing an opportunity to re-brand and reach more fans, especially outside of the States.
In November during an NFL game in Germany, commissioner Roger Goodell stated the league would like to play as many as eight international games beginning next season. Currently, the NFL’s two largest international markets are Mexico and Brazil, with a reported 39.5 and 35.9 million fans, respectively. Germany, China and the United Kingdom round out the top five, each with less than 20 million supporters.
In terms of overall viewership growth, Latinos lead the way. League sources confirmed Latino viewers (both English- and Spanish-speaking) have spiked by 11%. Spanish broadcasts alone have jumped 34% compared to previous years. Those numbers are good enough to outpace any other demographic of measurable fan growth.
This Christmas, Netflix México has announced its first-ever live stream of NFL games. So what happened between the time when Allegre first took aim at the uprights as one of the few Latin American-born players of his day until now — when multiple Latino-heritage players, as well as a diverse array of Spanish-speaking fans, have joined the NFL’s ranks?
NFL en español
The NFL hasn’t always translated easily to fans outside of the States. In fact, it required an entirely new vocabulary to be learned by non-English speaking audiences.
Fernando Von Rossum is credited with literally translating the game for Spanish-only fans. Throughout 60 years, he announced NFL games for Mexican broadcast networks. Von Rossum’s groundlaying work led to being honored by the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Earlier this year he became the first and only Spanish-speaking recipient of the prestigious Ralph Hay Pioneer Award. In Mexico, he’s viewed as the godfather of NFL fandom.
“What’s a quarterback? There is no word for that in Spanish. So he called it the ‘mariscal de campo’,” says Antonio Ramos, a Mexican-born broadcaster in Spanish for the Carolina Panthers. “A fumble? That’s ‘balon suelto.’ He basically tropicalized every NFL term without losing its essence, so we could understand it and make it our own.”
In an era when the NFL didn’t have much of a global presence, Von Rossum expanded the game’s accessibility for Spanish-speaking fanatics. He’s the reason football became more familiar, and more interesting, to generations of Latin Americans, including both Ramos and Allegre.
Unlike the U.S., where English-language NFL games are shown multiple times a week, Spanish-speaking fans haven’t traditionally had that viewership luxury. To put things in perspective, Telemundo became the first Spanish broadcast network in the U.S. to air the Super Bowl exclusively in Spanish. That was in 2022.
The flags of Mexico and the United States cover the field before an NFL football game between the Los Angeles Chargers and the Kansas City Chiefs Nov. 18, 2019, in Mexico City.
Eduardo Verdugo/AP
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Eduardo Verdugo/AP
Since then, the NFL has inked multiple deals with Spanish-speaking networks, and regularly airs games in Mexico and countries throughout Latin America. The league even hosts annual games in places like Mexico City and São Paulo, Brazil.
Ramos never imagined that as a child. He could only watch certain games on special occasions and says he learned the rules of football by playing NFL Madden — the popular video game franchise — as a teenager in Mexico. Now, Ramos is six seasons into his career with the Carolina Panthers (a team that, coincidentally, boasts the league’s only Latino-heritage head coach in Dave Canales, as of this writing). Though backing the Panthers might still be an aberration in Mexico (most fans cheer for legacy teams like the Dallas Cowboys or Pittsburgh Steelers), Ramos’ is adamant the league has made significant strides to reach a new generation of foreign NFL proponents like him.
The Carolina Panthers’ Dave Canales, the league’s only Latino-heritage head coach, talks to referees before an NFL game against the Denver Broncos in October.
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Jack Dempsey/AP
“I feel like [Latino appreciation] is real now. It’s not just Hispanic Heritage Month or treated as a joke,” says Ramos. “Teams are really investing in stadium production and the community like I’ve never seen, not just marketing with a few advertisements or social media posts in Spanish. This is constant and permanent and you see Latinos have more of a voice now. It’s genuine.”
Today’s NFL is “Por La Cultura”
For the modern sports fan, watching the NFL — let alone any league in any country — is more attainable than ever. With the internet, social media apps, and a slew of streaming services, fans no longer have to be stateside to know who Aaron Rodgers or Lamar Jackson is. This accessibility has allowed the NFL to reach a larger Spanish segment.
Since 2019, Javier Farfan has been the quarterback — or, el mariscal de campo — overseeing a massive push to highlight the league-wide spectrum of Latinidad.
A New York-raised Ecuadorian-American, Farfan initially joined the NFL as their Global Brand and Consumer Marketing Consultant. For Latino-heritage players and fans — whether Spanish-speaking, English-speaking, or bilingual — having Farfan lead the charge has been game-changing.
Kansas City Chiefs running back Isaiah Pacheco runs the ball against the Las Vegas Raiders in an NFL football game last month in Las Vegas.
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Jeff Lewis/AP
With “Por La Cultura” — a marketing gambit initiated by Farfan that celebrates mixed-heritage and international players like the San Francisco 49ers’ Fred Warner (a Mexican-American All-Pro linebacker whose birth name is Federico) and the Kansas City Chiefs’ Isaiah Pacheco (a Puerto Rican running back who snagged his first Super Bowl last season) — the NFL’s ambassadorial efforts are reaching a historic level of Latino amplification.
In their 2023 video series, “Hometown Heroes,” Latino players like Colombian-American Christian Gonzales and Mexican Alijah Vera-Tucker are filmed going back to their hometowns and retracing their journeys. This season, the league introduced “Cross-Border Pride,” where select players flew to visit their families and fans in Brazil, the Caribbean and Mexico.
New York Jets guard Alijah Vera-Tucker during an NFL game against the Denver Broncos in October. Vera-Tucker, from Mexico, is one of several players being filmed going back to their hometowns and retracing their journeys.
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David Zalubowski/AP
“Pacheco going back to Puerto Rico was a blessing. He was able to see his grandparents for the first time in 10 years,” Farfan says. “Football has allowed him to connect with his heritage.”
Outside of that, the league implemented an International Player Pathway program in 2017, which produced Mexico’s Isaac Alarcon and the Dominican Republic’s Bayron Matos, among others. It’s a far cry from the days of players like Chad Ochocinco — a flamboyant wide receiver born Chad Johnson, who, to be clear, has absolutely no Latin heritage, but legally changed his last name to incorrectly spell out his jersey number, 85. Unironically, Ochocinco brought more attention to Latinos in the NFL than Latino players themselves — because there weren’t many to do so.
Now, there are over 40 players of Latino descent currently on the field. That’s the most-ever, going back to 1927 when Cuban-born quarterback Ignacio “Lou” Molinet debuted for the Frankford Yellow Jackets as the first Latino athlete in the pre-merger NFL.
It’s not just about centering NFL players’ experiences, though. More than anything, the league’s efforts seem targeted at casual fans and future Latino participants with initiatives like Latino Youth Honors, Mundo NFL, ‘Tochito’ (or, flag football), and the International Games.
Detroit Lions linebacker Alex Anzalone (34) and Honorary captain Diana Flores, Flag Football Ambassador, on the sideline before the game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sept. 15, 2024.
Rick Osentoski/AP
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Rick Osentoski/AP
“We’re fueling this from a grassroots perspective,” says Farfan. “Flag football in the [2028] Olympics is going to be a big moment for us. It’s helping to reinforce that engagement, especially as Latinos. The NFL has made efforts to work with community centers to sanction and support flag football games [abroad] for 20 years. The output of that is a Mexican star, Diana Flores. That’s the amount of impact we’ve been able to see. We’re reinforcing and supporting that journey [with] flag football in indigenous communities in Mexico.”
The NFL has even partnered with niche Mexican streetwear brands and local artisans for “Orígenes,” a design project to spotlight creative fandoms beyond the border. It seems to be paying off.
“We did a lot of work to go after Spanish speakers. There have been more games than ever before in Spanish,” Farfan says. “Their perception of the game, the teams, and the league itself has increased significantly. They’re more likely to follow our channels to learn more. We’re creating an ecosystem of support with other people and folks to tell that story. That’s the strategy. Creating an ecosystem. Having that conversation about players and fans who have those experiences.”
For Farfan, Ramos, Allegre, and countless others, the NFL is finally becoming more of what they’ve always dreamt of: a National Football League that finally includes more Latinos.
Trump was listed as a passenger on eight flights on Epstein’s private jet, according to emailpublished at 11:58 GMT
Anthony Reuben
BBC Verify senior journalist
One of the Epstein documents, external is an email saying that “Donald Trump traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware)”.
The email was sent on 7 January 2020 and is part of an email chain which includes the subject heading ‘RE: Epstein flight records’.
The sender and recipient are redacted but at the bottom of the email is a signature for an assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York – with the name redacted.
The email states: “He is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, including at least four flights on which Maxwell was also present. He is listed as having traveled with, among others and at various times, Marla Maples, his daughter Tiffany, and his son Eric”.
“On one flight in 1993, he and Epstein are the only two listed passengers; on another, the only three passengers are Epstein, Trump, and then-20-year-old” – with the person’s name redacted.
It goes on: “On two other flights, two of the passengers, respectively, were women who would be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case”.
In 2022, Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison, external for crimes including conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts and sex trafficking of a minor.
Trump was a friend of Epstein’s for years, but the president has said they fell out in about 2004, years before Epstein was first arrested. Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein and his presence on the flights does not indicate wrongdoing.
We have contacted the White House for a response to this particular file.
Dr. Tyler Jorgensen sets “A Charlie Brown Christmas” on a record player at Dell Seton Medical Center in Austin Texas. He uses vinyl records as a form of music therapy for palliative care patients.
Lorianne Willett/KUT News
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Lorianne Willett/KUT News
AUSTIN, TEXAS — Lying in her bed at Dell Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas at Austin, 64-year-old Pamela Mansfield sways her feet to the rhythm of George Jones’ “She Thinks I Still Care.” Mansfield is still recovering much of her mobility after a recent neck surgery, but she finds a way to move to the music floating from a record player that was wheeled into her room.
“Seems to be the worst part is the stiffness in my ankles and the no feeling in the hands,” she says. “But music makes everything better.”
The record player is courtesy of the ATX-VINyL program, a project dreamed up by Dr. Tyler Jorgensen to bring music to the bedside of patients dealing with difficult diagnoses and treatments. He collaborates with a team of volunteers who wheel the player on a cart to patients’ rooms, along with a selection of records in their favorite genres.
“I think of this record player as a time machine,” he said. “You know, something starts spinning — an old, familiar song on a record player — and now you’re back at home, you’re out of the hospital, you’re with your family, you’re with your loved ones.”
Daniela Vargas, a volunteer for the ATX-VINyL program, wheels a record player to the hospital room of a palliative care patient in Austin, Texas.
Lorianne Willett/KUT News
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Lorianne Willett/KUT News
The healing power of Country music… and Thin Lizzy
Mansfield wanted to hear country music: Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, George Jones. That genre reminds her of listening to records with her parents, who helped form her taste in music. Almost as soon as the first record spins, she starts cracking jokes.
“I have great taste in music. Men, on the other hand … ehhh. I think my picker’s broken,” she says.
Other patients ask for jazz, R&B or holiday records.
The man who gave Jorgensen the idea for ATX-VINyL loved classic rock. That was around three years ago, when Jorgensen, a long-time emergency medicine physician, began a fellowship in palliative care — a specialty aimed at improving quality of life for people with serious conditions, including terminal illnesses.
Shortly after he began the fellowship, he says he struggled to connect with a particular patient.
“I couldn’t draw this man out, and I felt like he was really struggling and suffering,” Jorgensen said.
He had the idea to try playing the patient some music.
He went with “The Boys Are Back in Town,” by the 1970s Irish rock group Thin Lizzy, and saw an immediate change in the patient.
“He was telling me old stories about his life. He was getting more honest and vulnerable about the health challenges he was facing,” Jorgensen said. “And it just struck me that all this time I’ve been practicing medicine, there’s such a powerful tool that is almost universal to the human experience, which is music, and I’ve never tapped into it.”
Dr. Tyler Jorgensen plays vinyl records as a form of music therapy for palliative care patients in Austin, Texas. Willie Nelson’s albums are a perennial hit.
Lorianne Willett/KUT News
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Lorianne Willett/KUT News
Creating new memories
Jorgensen realized records could lift the spirits of patients dealing with heavy circumstances in hospital spaces that are often aesthetically bare. And he thought vinyl would offer a more personal touch than streaming a digital track through a smartphone or speaker.
“There’s just something inherently warm about the friction of a record — the pops, the scratches,” he said. “It sort of resonates through the wooden record player, and it just feels different.”
Since then, he has built up a collection of 60 records and counting at the hospital. The most-requested album, by a landslide, is Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours from 1977. Willie is also popular, along with Etta James and John Denver. And around the holidays, the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas gets a lot of spins.
These days, it’s often a volunteer who rolls the record player from room to room after consulting nursing staff about patients and family members who are struggling and could use a visit.
Daniela Vargas, the UT Austin pre-med undergraduate who heads up the volunteer cohort, became passionate about music therapy years ago when she and her sister began playing violin for isolated patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. She said she sees similar benefits when she curates a collection of records for a patient today.
“We are usually not in the room for the entire time, so it’s a more intimate experience for the patient or family, but being able to interact with the patient in the beginning and at the end can be really transformative,” Vargas said.
Often, the palliative care patients visited by ATX-VINyL are near the end of life.
Jorgensen feels that the record player provides an interruption of the heaviness those patients and their families are experiencing. Suddenly, it’s possible to create a new, positive shared experience at a profoundly difficult time.
“Now you’re sort of looking at it together and thinking, ‘What are we going to do with this thing? Let’s play something for Mom, let’s play something for Dad.’” he said. “And you are creating a new, positive, shared experience in the setting of something that can otherwise be very sad, very heavy.”
Other patients, like Pamela Mansfield, are working painstakingly toward recovery.
She has had six neck surgeries since April, when she had a serious fall. But on the day she listened to the George Jones album, she had a small victory to celebrate: She stood up for three minutes, a record since her most recent surgery.
With the record spinning, she couldn’t help but think about the victories she’s still pursuing.
“It’s motivating,” she said. “Me and my broom could dance really well to some of this stuff.”
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‘Music makes everything better’: A Texas doctor spins vinyl to give patients relief
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