London Could Get Own NFL Football Team in Future

Tank

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Sep 13, 2008
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BBC SPORT | Other sport... | American Football | London 'could have own NFL team'


Didn't they try this with NFL Europe and it failed miserably?

I don't think this is smart in the fact that all away games would consist of a plane ride across the Atlantic Ocean to the states and same with teams traveling to them for home games. Also, 1-2 games is manageable but eventually futbol/soccer will take back over and the NFL London team will fall on the backburner.
 
NFL Europe ran for 13 seasons, so I wouldn't call it a miserable failure.

This sounds like the CFL expansion experiment from 1994-95 where they put a half-dozen CFL teams in the U.S. (Baltimore, Birmingham, Las Vegas, Memphis, San Antonio/Sacramento, Shreveport). Now THAT was a miserable failure.

The old WLAF (1991-92) had 8 North American teams (Birmingham, Montreal, NY/NJ, Ohio, Orlando, Raleigh-Durham, Sacramento, San Antonio) and 2 European teams (Barcelona, Frankfurt). Again: miserable failure.
 
The plane ride across the ocean wouldn't be much different than the ride from coast to coast for east coast teams, though it would be quite difficult for west coast teams I'm sure

NFL Europe was a bit different in that it was a whole league, plus it was sort of the D list players.

I think one team in London could do well, if for no other reason than for the ex-pats who live there.

There are plenty of people in NFL towns that don't give a crap about the NFL, and I'm sure that would be the case in London. It's just a question of getting enough fans to make it viable. No question soccer would still be way bigger.
 
NFL Europe ran for 13 seasons, so I wouldn't call it a miserable failure.

This sounds like the CFL expansion experiment from 1994-95 where they put a half-dozen CFL teams in the U.S. (Baltimore, Birmingham, Las Vegas, Memphis, San Antonio/Sacramento, Shreveport). Now THAT was a miserable failure.

The old WLAF (1991-92) had 8 North American teams (Birmingham, Montreal, NY/NJ, Ohio, Orlando, Raleigh-Durham, Sacramento, San Antonio) and 2 European teams (Barcelona, Frankfurt). Again: miserable failure.

I think the XFL takes the cake as far as professional football failures. :wink:
 
The plane ride across the ocean wouldn't be much different than the ride from coast to coast for east coast teams, though it would be quite difficult for west coast teams I'm sure

It's not so bad for the visiting teams to travel to London once, but the London team would have to travel five to eight time zones away for every away game. I don't think that's feasible.
 
I have a cousin that lives in London. When I visited, I met all kinds of people who were born and raised in London.

Almost all of them were asking me about the NFL: which teams I thought would be good, who are people talking about, etc,. They talked about how in the 1980s and 1990s they would get some NFL games in London and that it was somewhat sucessful.

It seems like because of this exposure in the past, the people over there know a lot of the teams and all of that.

I don't think there is ANYWAY it would compete with soccer over there, but that doesn't matter too much. All that would matter is can you get 40-50k people to fill it up, and I think you could as long as the scheduled smartly.

I agree that some in the league wouldn't be thrilled about the long travel to get there, but at the same time they do get a week to prepare for a game.

I'm not saying it would be a success for sure, but I am saying that more people in London talk about NFL than we may realize. It's more casual fan type stuff, but they still knew like the 49ers, the Cowboys, the Patriots and all of that.
 
The travel costs will doom this before it starts. Even to play a game now the teams get their bye week following the travel to Europe. I would guess we'll see a team in Mexico City before we see one in Europe.

The NFL needs to be careful as to not expand too much. There is a saturation point that the season and the home town team will not be as special as it is now.
 
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The travel costs will doom this before it starts. Even to play a game now the teams get their bye week following the travel to Europe. I would guess we'll see a team in Mexico City before we see one in Europe.

The NFL needs to be careful as to not expand too much. There is a saturation point that the season and the home town team will not be as special as it is now.

Dude it's the NFL. They fly everywhere anyway. It's a few extra dead dinosaurs out the tailpipe. Hell I bet you can fly from NYC to London cheaper than you can fly from NYC to San Diego.

The NFL has been pretty much unwatchable for me for the last couple of years. It's been in decline since the salary cap and free agency kicked in, IMO.
 
Do you think if New York hosted a EUFA team it would be successful?!? I think if London hosted a NFL team it would be very successful, and great for the league.

I don't think baseball or basketball would work.
 
Nope, sports that play more than once a week wouldn't work. Football is the one sport that it could work with though.
 
Nope, sports that play more than once a week wouldn't work. Football is the one sport that it could work with though.

Well sports that play more than once a week tend to also play "series", so it may be more viable than you might think, especially with a couple of days off on either side of a trip out there.

I think it's still certainly logistically viable for pretty much any sport. It's just a question of whether it's financially viable...
 
Baseball teams usually only get a 1 day break between series, if any at all. I guess it could work, but it would be very difficult... and do British people even like baseball that much?
 
Wow that would suck to play for that team. Those 8 road games would be rough with plane ride and time change. No way this happens to 1 team.
 
It might be feasible if they schedule 2 home games, then 2 road games -- with the team staying in the U.S. between games. Then you've got 4 trips instead of 8.
 

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