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The National Football League on Wednesday awarded international home marketing rights for Canada to the Minnesota Vikings and Seattle Seahawks as part of a league-wide initiative aimed at building team brands and the NFL’s following beyond U.S. borders.

Awarding 18 of its teams’ rights to 26 international zones in eight countries follows the NFL’s commitment that each of its 32 teams will play one home game over the next eight seasons beyond U.S. borders.

Besides Canada, rights were awarded to teams that bid for those in Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Mexico, Spain and the United Kingdom. Best efforts will be made to have teams play those games in countries where they own international home marketing rights.

That means the Seattle Seahawks are likely to be staging a game in Canada some time over the next eight years. The Vikings may also do so, although they are also one of six NFL teams that secured rights in the United Kingdom.

“The idea was that the NFL is an exciting game but the league shield, the NFL logo, that’s not going to evoke the same emotion that players and teams are going to have,” said Jeff Richards, Seattle’s vice-president of marketing and community engagement. “The best way to grow the NFL product is to make sure there is a connection between players and teams all around the world.”

“It was obvious to us there is a strong, established relationship with [Canada]. A lot of it has been Canadian fans coming to us. What this allows us to do is speak to [Canadian fans] and to be present with them in a much more intentional way throughout the calendar.”

The rights essentially give the Vikings and Seahawks opportunities to market similarly to what they do in their domestic markets, including such things as in-person and digital marketing, corporate sponsorship, fan events, youth football activities, merchandise sales and co-marketing relationships with other sports and entertainment properties in the market.

“We see [Canada] as a brand fit for us,” said Vikings CEO Andrew Miller. “We consider ourselves the team of the north in the U.S. and are focused on defending and uniting the north. That definitely connects in.”

The two NFL teams that border Canada, the Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions, did not have to bid on international rights for Canada to continue marketing around Toronto and Windsor, respectively. Both those Canadian markets fall under the NFL’s defined 75-mile territorial rights zone for those teams.