NFL games in London

What you chaps think of NFL expanding games to London, and even a franchise?

What do you think of American football, yay or nay?

Its just a brilliant game. I think the London franchise idea and the others in the pipeline now and over the years are a distraction - don't see how it improves the game, could tip the entire structure off-balance.

tomorton said:

Its just a brilliant game. I think the London franchise idea and the others in the pipeline now and over the years are a distraction - don't see how it improves the game, could tip the entire structure off-balance.

Click to expand...

Because the NFL is a business. Viewership in the U.S. is declining slightly and so are the numbers of young boys entering youth leagues. They have already saturated the U.S. market as deep as it is ever going to be.

There is a lot of competition for people's time...specifically computer games and soccer (football).

There has also been a lot of negative publicity about injuries, especially concussions.

If they expand the league to London, Moscow, Berlin, Vancouver etc....they would have new audience potential. More young people playing the game in youth leagues that play in college and move to the NFL. More teams, more broadcast revenues, more profit sharing, more money...

Believe it or not, the NFL is a non-profit organization. The league is non-profit but the teams are not. They pay taxes. But the teams generate billions of dollars every year and the players make millions...sometimes tens of millions of dollars a year with endorsements.

It's all about the money.

Hard to see much room for expansion in the UK at least. There's very limited American Football interest here now and its even declined in recent years. It used to have national TV coverage on Sunday and Monday nights with a round-up show. There was even TV series of college games. Lots of local teams sprang up here. But its faded to become pretty much invisible apart from the London NFL fixtures.

tomorton said:

Hard to see much room for expansion in the UK at least. There's very limited American Football interest here now and its even declined in recent years. It used to have national TV coverage on Sunday and Monday nights with a round-up show. There was even TV series of college games. Lots of local teams sprang up here. But its faded to become pretty much invisible apart from the London NFL fixtures.

Click to expand...

admittedly its a bit slow compared to soccer. esp since the advent of play review only made it worse. if you can't count on your officials getting it right, who can you count on?

Soccer has such a grip here, no other field sport is going to get close. On top of which its so international, so there's the attraction of a national pecking order and pride - cross-border competitions run continuously at country and team level.