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A display of helmets of the New Orleans Saints and Paris Musketeers during the Saints’ visit to Paris in July 2025. Courtesy of New Orleans Saints
If you’re a hardcore Who Dat and a Francophile, you’re living in the best of times.
Your two passions — the Saints and France — are aligning.
The Saints’ French connection is happening. In real time. Right before our eyes.
The relationship has grown in the two years since the club secured the NFL Global Market rights to Europe’s most popular country.
Owner Gayle Benson and linebacker Demario Davis led a Saints contingent on a marketing trip to Paris this summer.
The club has formed a strategic partnership with the Paris Musketeers of the European League of Football and is hosting a group of their players, coaches and executives this weekend.
Meanwhile, the NFL continues to negotiate with French officials to bring a Saints regular-season game to Paris in the next two years.
"I'm really, really excited about Paris. When I found out that we had the possibility of getting France (in the Global Markets program), and we would have a chance to play over there, I raised my hand in the NFL meeting and said, 'I want France,'" Benson said. "I wanted France because Louisiana and France have always had this close connection."
The Saints’ plans in France go beyond the potential regular-season game there.
Benson is in constant contact with Charles Kushner, the U.S. ambassador to France and Monaco. Likewise, she has met multiple times with Prince Albert II of Monaco, who was her guest at Super Bowl LIX in February. During their visit in Monaco this summer, they discussed the possibility of the Saints conducting an weeklong offseason minicamp in Monaco.
The minicamp would be funded in part by Monaco and conducted at the historic Stade Louis II, the longtime home of the AS Monaco soccer team.
“We’re working on it,” Benson said during an interview last week.
And if that’s not enough, imagine this: a future training camp in France or Monaco.
The thought of an overseas training camp might seem outlandish, but the NFL has discussed it. The idea is only in the conceptual stage right now, but there’s a future world where it exists.
Staging a training camp in France would obviously cost a mint and require years of logistical planning, but if the league is serious about its European outreach — and it is — then the juice might be worth the squeeze.
To make it work, the Saints would not go it alone. They’d be part of a multi-team contingent in Europe, with teams seeded across the continent, say in NFL strongholds like England, Ireland and Germany. Each team would conduct camp at their respective sites, then play their preseason games at various European locations in a round-robin format.
"It's a possibility," Benson said. "These things are all possibilities and potential right now. Nothing is promised or concrete."
If you’re in that number that frowns upon the NFL’s international outreach or someone who prefers the Saints to play their homes games at, you know, home, then I empathize. The NFL’s global interests are only going to grow in the years ahead. And the Saints, like every NFL team, are going to be a big part of it.
When NFL commissioner Roger Goodell took office in 2010, he pledged to make the NFL a $25 billion-a-year business. He’s well on his way to realizing that goal. And the major drivers of those revenue gains are the eventual expansion of the regular-season schedule from 16 to 18 games and global growth, both in games and marketing.
The International Series began with a single game in 2005 and has grown to seven this year. The NFL’s first game in Spain this month was a spectacular success. The league has already announced plans to play a first-ever game in Australia next year. Asia and the Middle East are also on the to-do list. The plan is to increase the International Series to 16 games by 2030, with each NFL team playing one game abroad every year.
“We really are focused on becoming a global game,” said Goodell here at Super Bowl LIX in February, adding that he envisions a day when the NFL has an international franchise and plays future Super Bowls abroad.
Europe is the first step in the league’s global expansion plan. And while France might lack the zealous interest level in the NFL of, say, Great Britain or Germany, it offers untapped marketing potential.
“It’s really exploding,” Paris Musketeers coach Jack Del Rio told WDSU-TV this week. “It’s very popular. The people of Europe are embracing the sport of American football.”
New Orleans will always be home to the Saints. But France will be their home away from home. Who Dat Francophiles rejoice.