The American Bowl was a series of National Football League pre-season exhibition games that were held at sites outside the United States between 1986 and 2005.
After 1990, games were also played in Montreal and Berlin to promote the new World League of American Football (later NFL Europe) which started in 1991.
Between 1950 and 1983, there were 13 football games involving NFL or AFL teams played on foreign soil.
One game involved an AFL team (the Buffalo Bills, who lost 38–21 to the CFL's Hamilton Tiger-Cats).
Then NFL exhibition games took place in Tokyo (1976), Mexico City (1978), and London (1983) before the term American Bowl was coined.
After taking over the position in 2006, new NFL commissioner Roger Goodell cited the league's new international strategy in the abandonment of international pre-season games as well as the closure of what had by then become NFL Europa after its 2007 season, instead focusing on playing regular season games in foreign countries.
The pre-season game that was scheduled to take place in August 2007 (later postponed to 2009) between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks at Beijing National Stadium in Beijing, China, was named the China Bowl instead of the American Bowl; that game, too, was eventually canceled before being played.
The New York Giants and Miami Dolphins played a regular season game at the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium in London on October 28, 2007 (with the Giants winning 13–10), the first ever NFL regular season game to be played outside of North America; similarly, the San Diego Chargers and New Orleans Saints followed suit in October 2008.