Die hard NFL fans like us don`t even want a London game, let alone 3 a year or a London franchise which is sacrilege.

How many who attend the London game actually follow the game or even watch it every week on Sky? I may be wrong, but I would say that more than half just think it`s trendy to go and just go for the experience and a booze up.

I'm pretty sure there's no real logistical reason it cannot work. 

For starters London is not a lot further from NY than LA is from NY.

I would expect the team to base themselves in an East Coast location and the players would live at that Base (atlanta? New York?) for 10 months each year.  And for two blocks of 4 weeks (Sept and Nov or Oct and Dec there would be a series of 4 home games) they would be in camp somewhere on the home Counties for the Wembley games.  for the away games they would just fly from their base training HQ to wherever the game was.
The players are pros and play for whomever pay 'em, and it wouldn't even be a foreign gig (in a living overseas sense) because why would you live in London when work requires you to be here for as little as 2 months a year.  It's no hardship at all.
Away teams would just get a bye after the long flight (particularly if they were W Coast).

Play off schedules could be tinkered with (Thurs one week; to Mon the following week for example to stretch the gap in the event that a team has London followed by San Fransisco (say).

Salary Cap and Draft takes care of the quality thing in the long run just as it does for any team.  Long established teams have 2-14 seasons and then win the SB within 3 years.  Why couldn't London?

The NFL would be motivated to make it work (if they made the decision in the first place) and ultimately money talks.  And lots of money talks loudly. 

I'd buy three season tickets for 8 home games and I'm not a Jags fan.  I'd be prepared to fall in love with whichever team was here, as I suspect a lot of NFL fans would.  Being a fan of NFL teams is something I suspect a lot of Brits and European people are prepared to be flexible with (in a way they won't with their EPL team).  And you could sell it to yourself as your "second" team.
And there's be loads of One off tickets for Weekenders in London (Europeans) as well as away fans from the States here for work or just for a holiday based around the chance to watch their home tame play in London.

Don't understand the sacrilege comments.  Where's the traditions in loads of NFL teams?  The Ravens have now won two SBs and there was no such thing as the Ravens until the late 90s.  The Titans were the Houston Oilers, then the Memphis Oilers etc. 

I expect London would be hugely popular while it was a novelty and this would buy a lot of time for things to establish themselves on and off the field.  Then - when it's part of the norm, three or four years down the line, it's a test of the true size of the viable market.  I would bet they'd be well supported and ultimately have as much chance as any team of being successful...

come where?

This would be an East Coast based operation with two short trips to the UK each year to play the home games.  There would be money-fame-glory as per playing for any other NFL team.  Life and carrerwise It would be like playing for Atlanta, or NEng or NY or Miami.

New franchises always get players.  Why would this be any different?

I will p*ss myself laughing when it falls on its ar*e after 3-4 seasons.

It wouldn't be long before the next Eli Manning said 'I'm not playing in London' - FA's would not choose to come to London either, they'd stay home. The whole thing is laughable IMO.

There are plenty of logistical problems they have been gone over plenty of times. Most games so far have been trash. It's a London franchise in the same way the Starbucks n the Old Kent Road is a London franchise. It's completely different for one team to play 8 games a season here, rather than 1 every year. You just watch FA's turn down London in droves, London would be the last resort every time.

Who said the players will be making objections based on what Betfair forumites say?


If Eli Manning won't plan in SD, you can bet diamonds many more players will be dead against playing over here.

It's a gimmick and it would fail, I see so benefit whatsoever to the NFL, or to my experience of the NFL with a London franchise. In fact, I am sick and tired of hearing about the International series  every single week on UK coverage. I know many people are, and dislike losing redzone to watch a lousy game like last week. Personally, I don't use redzone, but I can see why people were disgusted.

The solution for the Jackson Jags is not to move the team 5,000 it's to run their organization better. You do that by winning, not relocating to another country. The motive behind this is pure greed, not enhancing the NFL as a sport. I think people see this and that's a major reason why people are against it. The NFL is the best sports league in the World and pretty much perfect in terms of format already.

I don't have blinkers on, I know why they've come up with this idea. I'm also not against change for the better, this is not change for the better. The NFL franchise can come to London, it will still be a miserable failure and the NFL will end up folding it. Tell me, how many more years and how many more awful one game off games before they actually bring a team over? 10? 20? - It is still all about building a market, not about having a team in London. I also think this a way of putting pressure on LA and other home markets to up their game.


They're already billionaires! not that that will stop them of course.


I cannot wait to laugh my ar*e off when it fails, I really can't.

And I cannot wait to see the look Neil Reynolds smarmy face it when it all goes t*ts up. IMO NFLUK is having its trousers pulled down by the NFL.

I just don't see why you think it would fail.

I share some of your apprehension and am not contesting the rights and wrongs of it.  I just think in this day and age it would not be impossible to get a Franchise organised to play out of London.  It's not like MK Dons.  The NFL and all the owners have a vested interest in making it a success so they have a toehold to paddle their wares.  I buy all my shirts at Goodwill, max $3, I am not making any Billionaires richer although the Packers are different in that regard.  These guys will bend over backwards and help with drafting players and scheduling games.

I do see a league where a number of major Cities might have a Franchise but like you do see the spread of the game being played globally although I am sure there would be growth initially.  It is not just the cost of the kit but what sane parent would want their kid to play a game at school where you needed a reinforced helmet to protect your brain!  There is hope for you yet Dirk!

I just don't see why you think it would fail.

I share some of your apprehension and am not contesting the rights and wrongs of it.  I just think in this day and age it would not be impossible to get a Franchise organised to play out of London.  It's not like MK Dons.  The NFL and all the owners have a vested interest in making it a success so they have a toehold to paddle their wares.  I buy all my shirts at Goodwill, max $3, I am not making any Billionaires richer although the Packers are different in that regard.  These guys will bend over backwards and help with drafting players and scheduling games.

I do see a league where a number of major Cities might have a Franchise but like you do see the spread of the game being played globally although I am sure there would be growth initially.  It is not just the cost of the kit but what sane parent would want their kid to play a game at school where you needed a reinforced helmet to protect your brain!  There is hope for you yet Dirk!



............Seen it all before, NFLE, London Monarchs, Britball etc (used to go and watch) in end end it was all short-lived gimmickry, once the novelty wore off, it withered on the vine, same thing would happen again. I don't see a league like that happening, because you know what? In Europe I have already seen it fail over a SIXTEEN YEAR PERIOD. SIXTEEN YEARS, and it never went from anything more than a niche sport that is supported by a truly devoted and fanatical fan base, this is the same audience as back in 1982 when it all began on 4 and I listened AFRTS (or FARTS as my brother and I used to call it) in my bedroom floor endlessly trying to get a better signal on the 'wireless'...

Here's the incarnations - WLAF - World League - NFL Europe - NFL Europa - made no difference. It folded, and it folded because of a lack of interest.

30 years later, the game is where it always was, in a tiny niche, with zero penetration of British culture, and that's where it will stay, and i'm happy with that. All I am interested in is as much coverage as possible, and we've got that, expensive as it is overall.


I'm happy that the great unwashed masses aren't interested in the NFL or NCAAF, I don't want them belching so to speak all over my sport, go and watch soccer!!!!

Great post. Huge dislike amongst Brits for US sport, to really get traction, attention and time and money and coverage and everything else is going to have compete with football and draw some of that audience away, it's never going to happen.

That the geographical problems can be overcome (modern flight making London as accessible as LA) does not mean the argument for a London franchise is also based on a false assumption that it would be just another US city in other cultural/sporting ways.  The cultural challenges are real, as pointed out above.

The whole point of cracking new markets with an existing product is that it's easier than making a new product for your existing market.  (Other methods of expanding a business being increased penetration of your existing market with your existing product, or of course, bringing a new product to a new market which is very tough indeed).  So what's the point of this diversion into the murky world of my wife's MBA marketing module?  It's to point out that London is not assumed to be a ready-made market where the NFL would immediately have the same resonance that it has in Chicago, or Cleveland or wherever.  You do not have to assume the culture is already there to bring the product and hope (plan?) for success.  When the first computer-tablets were made there was "no market" for them; their production made the market.  The existence of the product generated the interest.

NFL to London is a gamble - bring the product to a place where there's already some demonstrable interest - and hope to grow the interest.  So that in ten years those how-bout-dem-Jags? conversations are part of the sporting culture...

It's a straw-man argument to say it cannot work because things like the London Monarchs or the euro league failed.  They were not the real thing (by a very long way).  The real NFL coming to London would be a very very big deal for them and for us; and with a lot of vested interest in its success it would not be left to wither and die.  Not to guarantee success, but if anyone thinks Americans cannot effectively market some of their home grown products into new European markets then they haven't been paying attention the last 70 or so years...

The real NFL coming to London would be a very very big deal for them and for us;



I don't think it will be, this country is not, and will never be interested in the NFL.

I don't think the concept would work, but I think many players would love to be over here if there was a London franchise.  Living/working in one of the great cities of the world will have many more attractions than half the hick towns that current franchises are based in.

its only 20 weeks every year for a few years and they would get paid hansomely.

They are NFL players, it is just a way of life to live away from your family and friends for a period of time every year.  Many retire in their 30s

therhino - being away from family and friends in London will be seen as a bonus for many   They might even circle amongst some nice young chaps and chapesses rather than the syte they are often getting up to in their own back yards. 

Why does everyone assume they would be based in the US? How many professional sports teams are based in one place and play their home games on the other side of a pretty big fk off ocean? The model is already a mutant.


......Exactly, having the team US based, were that to happen, just proves it isn't viable from the outset. By definition if you have to fly in to play home games then it's not home team or a true franchise.

Or rather it would be a franchise in the same way that every Starbucks in London is a franchise.

Found this definition:

1. A privilege or right officially granted a person or a group by a government, especially:
a. The constitutional or statutory right to vote.
b. The establishment of a corporation's existence.
c. The granting of certain rights and powers to a corporation.
d. Legal immunity from servitude, certain burdens, or other restrictions.
2.
a. Authorization granted to someone to sell or distribute a company's goods or services in a certain area.
b. A business or group of businesses established or operated under such authorization.
c. A brand name under which a series of products is released.
3. The territory or limits within which immunity, a privilege, or a right may be exercised.
4. A professional sports team.
tr.v. fran·chised, fran·chis·ing, fran·chis·es
To grant a franchise to.

So I assume we are talking about a blend of 4 (A pro sports team) and 2 (the right to sell a brand in a certain area; the NFL being the brand; and London being the location).

No mention of where the employees live.  So I guess it could still be a London franchise, if they play their home games here, and are called the London Somethings?  Even if the players live wherever they find reasonably practicable for domestic and professional reasons.  JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD. 

I mean WALOFS.   If you don't like the idea of a London team fair enough; but the idea that where the players live is important is fkin bollox.  Who cares where they are when they're not on the pitch?....

there'll be people who love the idea, and people who ignore it. There's not going to be some negative groundswell of opinion in the public at large against the activities of a minority sport, playing 8 games a year at Wembley.
And the promo activities will be done when the players are in town to do the matches.

My old feller used to go home on t'bus with the star left winger at York City in the 1950s, but you think that's a necessary prerequisite for fans these days in any sport?  come off it.  Millionaire sports people (who are domiciled in the UK) may as well live on another planet anyway.  They're whisked in, play the game, do their little clap of the fans at the end and fk off back to the gated community where they live...Why does it matter where that is?  They're not queuing up next to your missus in Asda on a saturday morning are they?

So, how do you make it a "London" team, with a "London" identity? Solve that problem and you might have a way forward - if not, forget about it.