While one fan gets out of bed to feed his parrots from an apartment in Honolulu, another fan 7,000 miles away cracks open his cupboard of American crisps — Buffalo-flavored only.
And while another takes a short hike to the nearby tap house in Denver, a fan in Tokyo is tiptoeing to 7-Eleven, careful not to wake his family when he turns on his favorite team’s game.
They are all connected.
The NFL has a record nine international games this season, many with early kickoffs for American-based fans. But what about fans who must adjust their schedules to watch the NFL?
I interviewed NFL fans from around the world to learn about their typical Sunday (or in some cases, Monday) viewing schedules.
A few stipulations:
Time zones are compared to North American Eastern daylight time, which is March through November. Mountain time represents the U.S. because on discussion boards with The Athletic subscribers, this was the most preferred U.S. time zone for NFL viewing. Not too early. Not too late.
But first, let’s meet the fans:
USA, Mountain time (2 hours behind EDT): Lauren Moores, 63, lives outside Denver and works in GenAI. Moores grew up watching football with her dad, who was a Baltimore Colts fan during the Bert Jones era. Moores moved to Boston after college and has been a New England Patriots fan since.
Moores has watched the NFL on Eastern time (too late) and Pacific time (too early), but now that she has moved to Denver, she has found a happy medium. She prefers Mountain time because the lineup of games fits naturally into her routine.
“It’s not sucking my whole day. I don’t mean that in a bad way,” Moores says. “It’s almost like you’re going to work and you have a whole workday full of information and content coming through, and then you have an after-hours meeting with a client. It kind of fits into your normal, right?”
Lauren Moores lives in Denver but roots for the New England Patriots. (Courtesy of Lauren Moores)
Hawaii (6 hours behind EDT): Timothy Dyke, 63, is a high school English teacher who lives in Makiki (a neighborhood in Honolulu), on Hawaii’s island of O’ahu. He has lived there since 1992, when he moved from Houston.
His first football memory is watching the Baltimore Colts with his dad, but Dyke and his brother chose a different allegiance to the Minnesota Vikings. His brother now lives in Fargo, N.D., nearly 4,000 miles from Dyke’s island oasis, but the two still keep in touch about Vikings football on Sundays.
Football helps mark the start of fall in Hawaii, with its sunny forecasts and warm temperatures all year long. It also presents a distraction, with his students trying to tune into “Monday Night Football” for the 2:15 p.m. kick … 45 minutes before the dismissal bell rings.
NFL viewing in Hawaii means early Sunday mornings, but Dyke doesn’t mind it. It’s the football time zone for introverts, Dyke argues.
“I can have two Sundays. That’s what I like about it,” he says. “I can have my morning time, football, parrots, enjoying my coffee time, and I can text my brother and talk to him about the Vikings. I could have my whole football day, but it’s over by 2 p.m., and it’s a beautiful day outside, and the beach and the Beer Lab (a local craft beer brewery) are calling (my name), or the symphony.”
Timothy Dyke loves following the NFL from Hawaii because it allows him to watch games and still enjoy his afternoon. (Courtesy of Timothy Dyke)
London (5 hours ahead of EDT): Billy Mustafa, 34, is a gym manager and U16 football coach who lives in London. Mustafa watched his first game in February 2008 when the New York Giants played the Patriots in the Super Bowl. A few years later, he became a die-hard Buffalo Bills fan as he watched the heroics of Pro Bowl running back CJ Spiller. Mustafa has been to both Bills games in London (2015 and 2023) and tries to make it to one of the London Series games each season.
Last year, Mustafa made the trip to Buffalo to watch the Bills beat the Kansas City Chiefs before the old Highmark Stadium was knocked down. He remembers being invited to five or six different tailgates that day: “They’d hear the accent and want to know why we were there.”
Mustafa won’t argue that NFL viewing is easy in London — or preferable, for that matter — but that doesn’t stop him from indulging in his favorite American snacks or submitting to the occasional all-nighter.
“If I was trying to tell you this was the best time zone,” Mustafa says, “I’d be lying through my teeth.”
Billy Mustafa follows the Bills from London and has seen his team play both in England and in Buffalo. (Courtesy of Billy Mustafa)
Tokyo (13 hours ahead of EDT): Richard Sasaki, 28, works in sales and lives in Tokyo. Sasaki was introduced to football about 10 years ago, when he was an exchange student in Hawaii. He remembers watching the Patriots-Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl in 2015 and caught the itch for the NFL’s theatrics.
With no Hawaii-based team to root for, Sasaki chose the Miami Dolphins because he thought their colors and logo gave “Hawaiian vibes.” Last year, Sasaki began to share on social media how he watches American-based sports on a Japanese schedule, with a focus on all of the Miami teams, and he has gained a significant following for it.
For Sasaki, football doesn’t just mean early mornings; it means Monday mornings. For him, it’s worth it.
“I enjoy this weird situation: waking up at 3 a.m. to watch a different country’s game. Football is not big in Japan,” he says. “(People) understand to wake up early for Shohei Ohtani’s game — baseball is popular — but ‘Why football?’ they ask me.
“The simple answer: Football is fun. Football, in my opinion, is bigger than baseball to me.”
Richard Sasaki goes great lengths to follow the Dolphins while living in Tokyo. (Courtesy of Richard Sasaki)
Game window No. 111 a.m. Mountain, 7 a.m. Hawaii, 6 p.m. London, 2 a.m. (Monday) Japan
Denver: Moores wakes up around 7 a.m. to enjoy a slow morning of reading the paper, putting on some music, and drinking good coffee. Once the caffeine hits, there might be time for a bike ride or a quick hike along one of the many nearby trails.
“You’ve already done all the things that you wanna do for the morning,” Moores says. “And then it’s like, all right, great, now I get to sit in front of the TV and watch games.”
The first slate kicks off at 11 a.m. for Moores. She’ll use multiview, prioritizing the Patriots (her team) and the Denver Broncos (her partner, Thomas Mount’s, personal favorite). At some point, lunch is made, too, which usually consists of an assortment of game day snacks (popcorn!) or something from the TV commercials that catches her eye.
Hawaii: Dyke’s eyes squint open around 6:45 a.m. He’ll reach for his computer and fire up RedZone for the first slate of games, which starts promptly at 7 a.m. Breakfast in bed? Nah. How about football in bed instead?
After about an hour, Dyke gets up to start his day, which begins with feeding his three pet parrots. He keeps the NFL on in the background.
He says there are a few sports bars in town that open early for fans. He has one friend whose husband is a Bills fan, and he’ll watch the games over morning brunch. As for Dyke, he prefers to take in a slow Sunday morning with football to pass the time.
The Rams and Cowboys played a preseason game in 2019 at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu. (Alika Jenner / Getty Images)
London: Mustafa has plenty of time to kill before the first game of the day at 6 p.m.
So, Sundays start with a 7:30 a.m. wake-up time to make it to Mass at 8:30.
“We don’t miss a Sunday Mass,” Mustafa says. “You have to pray for a Bills win on Sunday.”
The rest of the day is dependent on Mustafa and his fiancée’s plans for the evening games. If they have a more laid-back agenda, they might head to meet a family member for breakfast. Once they’re home, they’ll take a Sunday snooze, normally from around midday to 3 or 4 p.m. (alarms are set to lock in their fantasy football lineups).
Other days, if they’re hosting a Bills watch party, it’s straight to the kitchen to start prepping (more on the menu later). Mustafa says he has enshrined a good number of his friends into Bills Mafia, and his house is the home base.
“We pretty much always stay home for the games, because I like to watch the Bills in a sort of calm environment where I can hear the telly,” Mustafa says.
Japan: Sasaki’s NFL Sunday is actually on a Monday, but regardless, the prep starts the night before.
Sasaki tries to go to bed on Sunday evenings around 9 p.m. This sets him up for about five to six hours of sleep before his alarm rings at 1:55 a.m., five minutes before kickoff.
The time change is particularly dramatic for Sasaki, so he mostly focuses on Dolphins games, though sometimes he’ll watch RedZone. Sasaki also lives with three other members of his family, which means he has to be careful not to wake anybody up in the wee hours of the morning.
“They get pretty mad at me during the Dolphins games (hearing screams),” Sasaki says. “So, I learned so many things, like to put towels on my face and scream into them. That actually works.”
Sasaki normally watches games in his living room, but if things get particularly stressful, he might be forced to adjust so his reactions don’t wake up the house.
“When it comes to the red zone or the fourth quarter, I go outside,” Sasaki says. “Or go to (the) toilet.”
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Game window No. 22:05 p.m. Mountain, 10:05 a.m. Hawaii, 9:05 p.m. London, 5:05 a.m. (Monday) Japan
Denver: Around this time, Moores might head down to the nearby tap house to watch the afternoon slate, a laid-back, Denver-oriented function that could get a little rowdy if the Broncos are on. Kickoff is at a perfect 2:05 or 2:25 p.m.
She has also made occasional trips into downtown Denver to catch the action at sports bars near Empower Field at Mile High Stadium. And if they’re in the mood, maybe she and Mount might try to snag some last-minute tickets, as they did for both of the Broncos’ playoff games last year.
“Great the first one, bad for (Mount) on the second one because I was the only red person in a sea of orange,” Moores says of the Broncos’ AFC Championship Game loss to her Patriots, which she watched, fearlessly, from the stands.
Hawaii: The parrots are fed and the sun is hitting its peak by the time the second slate of games starts in Hawaii at 10:05 or 10:25 a.m. Dyke might take a brief intermission right about now.
In Week 1, he took a walk to the beach, stopping at Barnes & Noble on the way to pick out a new book. He enjoyed the sun for about an hour before checking his phone to see the games were heading to halftime. That’s his cue to head home and watch the second half.
This time he turned on the Atlanta Falcons; there are plenty of Tua Tagovailoa fans in Hawaii, and even though Tagovailoa wasn’t playing, Dyke likes to keep up to date. When the afternoon slate winds down, it’s time to switch gears to his “second Sunday,” as Dyke calls it.
“By 3 p.m. I was at Beer Lab with my friends,” Dyke says, “and we were not talking about football at all.”
London: So, back to that menu. The second set of games is kicking off at 9:05 or 9:25 p.m. in London, and by now, many of the specialty snacks might have been picked over.
Mustafa’s fiancée is a chef, and for football game days, she puts on a spread with all of their favorite American foods: mac and cheese, loaded potato skins and, of course, chicken wings. They have one cupboard in the kitchen dedicated to their collection of Buffalo hot sauces. One gets chosen each game day as the featured sauce.
“And then we’ve got another cupboard in the kitchen that’s full of American crisps,” Mustafa says. “So anything Buffalo flavored: Buffalo-flavored pretzels, Buffalo-flavored Pringles, Buffalo-flavored Snyder’s pretzel bits, anything Buffalo-flavored that’s a crisp goes in that cupboard and comes out in the season.”
The party will stick around through the second slate of games if the Bills are playing. Toward the end of the games, Mustafa might grab himself a coffee for an energy boost before the primetime nightcap.
“Most people in the UK don’t go to bed until half 11 (or) midnight anyway,” Mustafa says. “So I would say it’s not a bad time zone to watch the game … if you’re not staying up for ‘Sunday Night Football.’”
The primetime windows can be tough for viewing NFL games in the United Kingdom. (Alex Pantling / Getty Images)
Japan: If the Dolphins play in the second slate, Sasaki has a similar routine, though this time he gets a little more sleep. Again, he’ll wake up five minutes before kickoff, sometime between 5 and 5:20 a.m. He might even head down to 7-Eleven to grab snacks — like an egg sandwich or cookies — to start the morning off.
But the extra rest also comes with a dilemma.
Sasaki prefers to wear his Dolphins hat and jersey to watch every game — sending his team good vibes from across the world. But in this slate, the Dolphins game will start running against Sasaki’s commute to work. He has to change into his suit and head to the train by 7 a.m.
“I’ll be watching the game while walking. I know it’s bad, but, yeah,” Sasaki said. “Dolphins games are important to me.”
Sasaki starts work at 8:30 a.m., which usually lines up pretty closely with the end of the game.
“I’m actually a professional watching football at 3 a.m. because I can switch to a working mode,” Sasaki said. “If (the Dolphins) win or not, I can switch to working mode. … But when it comes to lunchtime, I’ll be thinking about that and getting upset or happy during lunchtime. And then back to work.”
And after work, if it’s a win, he might head back to 7-Eleven for more celebratory snacks.
Primetime6:20 p.m. Mountain, 2:20 p.m. Hawaii, 1:20 a.m. London, 9:20 a.m. (Monday) Japan
Denver: Whether Moores headed to the tap house or downtown Denver for the afternoon slate, “Sunday Night Football” is spent back at home.
“It’s a school night,” she says.
Sunday dinners are a mix of leftovers from the day and piecing together what they can find in the kitchen. There’s no time to cook up something extravagant before the 6:20 p.m. kickoff.
It’s cozy football and winding down from here on out for a comfortable 10 p.m. bedtime.
Hawaii: Dyke is at Beer Lab, the nearby pub where he meets a group of friends.
“You know, writer friends, the English teacher types,” Dyke says. “I’m being stereotypical, but these particular people are not into football at all. We were just hanging out, and then I would go to the bathroom, and I would check my phone, see what the Giants-Cowboys game was doing, and then I’d go back, you know? It’s great. I love it.”
This is Part II of Dyke’s Sunday. Some days it’s beers with friends. Other days it’s a trip to the Hawaii Symphony, which Dyke has season tickets to.
“Sunday Night Football” takes a backseat in Dyke’s agenda, but he’ll catch up by watching the condensed version of the game later that night. He also listens to four to five NFL podcasts a week, keeping up with the off-field storylines and league drama.
Dyke is in bed on Sundays around 9 p.m.
“It probably sounds weird, but I wake up in the morning watching football in bed, and I usually go to bed watching a game,” he says.
London: Unless it’s the Bills on SNF, much of Mustafa’s viewing party has cleared out by now. That includes his fiancée. But for Mustafa, the late-night coffee is just starting to kick in for “Sunday Night Football” at 1:30 a.m. on Monday.
“There’s been many a time where the Bills have been on ‘Sunday Night Football’ when I’ve had work at 6 a.m. on a Monday morning,” he says. “And unfortunately, work has to pay the price because there’s no way I’m missing the Bills play football.”
If it’s the Bills, that also includes staying up to watch the news conferences after with the coach and quarterback Josh Allen.
“If we’ve won, I find it easier to just watch that and go to sleep,” he says. “If we’ve lost, I normally will watch that and go have a sulk in the shower and then just start my day and then have an early end to my Monday night.”
Mustafa finally gets into bed around 4:30 or 5 a.m. He tries to catch up on some sleep after work on Monday … before “Monday Night Football” keeps him up again.
Japan: If Sasaki’s schedule to watch Dolphins football tells you anything about his discipline, then you already know he gives the same emphasis to his work.
There’s no way around it: Sasaki cannot watch the primetime game because it starts at 9:20 a.m. Prime working hours.
But he won’t spoil it for himself, saving the anticipation until he watches the condensed game after work. Luckily for Sasaki, the rebuilding Dolphins were one of five teams scheduled to have zero primetime slots this season. How is their biggest Japanese fan feeling about the season ahead?
“It’s going to be a long season,” Sasaki says. “But it’s OK.”