Posted on 01/20/2016 3:05:47 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
The NFL are 'on track' to deliver a permanent UK-based American football franchise within the next six years, spokesman Mark Waller has insisted.
Since 2007, London's Wembley Stadium has been home to the National Football League's International Series by hosting regular-season matches.
Jacksonville Jaguars ‒ who are owned by Shahid Khan, the Fulham owner ‒ have played a game a season there since 2013 and now a permanent move for an NFL team appears to be likely.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
“Or change the rules in football. Get rid of the helmet. Minimize the equipment. Max weight = 250 pounds.”
Yep. Get rid of the fat boys. I have always hesitated calling 325 pound fat men athletes. It would change the game, but for the better.
And while we are fantasizing, get rid of the thugs... We already have one professional thug sport (i.e. the NBA).
I realized one of the reasons I enjoyed football much more in the earlier days. One thing was you could actually relate to the players, they weren’t these huge behemoths that you see today, if you saw them in person out of uniform, and didn’t know any better, you wouldn’t think they played football. And because of that it was more about actually developing real skills instead of just being big and/or fast. A guy like Fred Biletnikoff, wasn’t particularly fast, but he was the master of running routes.
The NBA is already getting the benefits of international popularity. They sell jerseys all over the world, and they pull in talent from all over the world. The NFL is doing OK on the jersey selling, but they’re not pulling the global talent. And given that American Football will never be in the Olympic (which played such a big part in basketball’s growth) or any other international competition if the NFL wants to get audience (and talent) from outside America they need to grow it themselves. That’s really what the American Bowl series (going all the way back to the 80s) has always been about.
And if there’s always cities out there willing to pony up the market isn’t saturated. Only empty seat situations I hear about are the usual suspects (Jax, Tampa), and late in dead seasons. Eventually people do get tired of watching their team get their asses kicked.
I was on the west coast on a football Sunday. The shows started at 7am. It was glorious to wake up and watch football. TV runs football. They will schedule games accordingly.
The numbers I would find most disturbing as an NFL executive are the Giants (#18) and Jets (#21). These two teams play in the biggest market, and they used to have waiting lists for season tickets that numbered in the tens of thousands and took decades to clear.
I think it will be decades before the NFL ever puts a team in Europe. It isn’t much of an international sport at all. We’ll see NFL teams in Canada and Mexico before we see them over there.
Notice those are all bottom feeder teams, the only two of which who’ve made the playoffs recently largely doing so because somebody has to win the NFC East. I think all those teams are under 500 for the 21st century, most WAY under. Plays right into what I said, watching your team get killed isn’t fun, especially not when it’s expensive.
Of course with all the money they get from the TV contracts, attendance is really pure gravy money.
Canada is a no go without serious negotiations, they actually have a non-compete with the CFL. There was a lot of chatter when they played a couple of Bill’s games in Toronto. The problem with Mexico is they’re poor and the country has been a mess for over a century, I don’t think the NFL wants to put 100 kidnapping targets in there. Europe has money, already sells out 3 games a year, stability, and they don’t pay their athletes much so the NFL can be a serious lure for talent. Yeah, the travel situation is nasty, but with a once a week league that can be dealt with.
Which begs the question of why they need to put any teams in Europe at all instead of just cutting deals with European networks to broadcast NFL games.
Can you think of any other league in professional team sports that has successfully covered Europe and North America?
International fans and international talent. European TV revenue is nice, but they know that the personal touch of having athletes in the city, at charity event, at school events, “preaching the message” is what build fans to the point of them actually wanting to play. And they need the players. International players have done wonders for the MLB, NBA and NHL. But they’re all aided by being truly international sports. The NFL wants and needs to become an international sport to keep those pumps primed. Soccer and hockey both have at least as much of a concussion problem and American football, but you don’t see anybody talking about them running out of players because of it. Why? International footprint. Even if 10% of prospective soccer and hockey players are kept from the sport by their moms when you’re pulling players from the entire planet that 10% is easily overcome. As a purely American sport that can kill the NFL. They NEED to be able to pull talent from the other 6.7 billion people. They needed it even before the concussion issue started, it just helps the sport to have that wider pool, improves the talent, improves the quality of the game. But now it’s imperative.
No other league has needed to try. All the other sports were already international. That’s why the NFL is trying to swim up this stream. They don’t have an Olympics spawning the game in other countries, they don’t have a FIFA (badly) overseeing the sport globally, they don’t have any kind of international competition inspiring the next generation of players. Heck even NASCAR can pull talent from around the globe because everybody races something. It might be an impossible task, but it’s a mountain they need to climb.
Attracting talent is a whole different story. The NFL doesn’t need to put any teams in Europe to attract talent — because the NFL doesn’t groom their own talent anyway. The NFL already has a great avenue for getting talent from around the world, and it doesn’t cost them a dime. College teams have been recruiting foreign players in droves, and they are now showing up all over the NFL. I think it was the 2013 draft where 5 foreign-born players were drafted in the first round alone.
Not at all. They’re the exact same story. With rare exceptions any athlete playing your sport starts as a fan, people who don’t want to watch your sport aren’t going to play it. The NFL certainly does groom their talent, they hand them off at the college level, but it starts in Peewee and Pop Warner, both of which are heavily supported by the league. Without the players there you’re not getting the players in college.
The foreign born player list is still minuscule, especially when compared to other sports. Close to half of any round of the NHL draft is going to be player from outside North America (lump it together because Canadian players skew the numbers). According to this site:
http://www.growthofagame.com/2015/03/the-complete-list-of-european-nfl-players/
there were 18 foreign born player in the NFL at the end of November. The NFL has the most teams, the largest rosters, and the fewest foreign born players. 18 for the whole league is basically none. That’s less than half of one team if you put them all together. To be a healthy league, and survive the concussion problem, they really need at least 10% of the league to be foreign born, probably closer to 25%. And to get that you need fans in foreign countries. People who like the game enough to let their kids play, kids you like the game enough to want to play.
I don't see how the NFL can get to that 10% level -- let alone 25% -- anytime soon.
I'd be curious to know if organized American football is played anywhere in great numbers in Europe these days -- among players at ANY age.
Alright, 30%, compared to 1% for the NFL. It’s still quite a few on one side, and basically none on the other. Really look at MLB, with the way the audience is shrinking here the Latin in flux is propping up the whole sport.
It isn’t soon, this is playing the long game. It’s the same as their investment in Pop Warner, winning them over when they’re 5 so you can draft them when they’re 21.
There is a British American football youth league: http://www.britishamericanfootball.org/ and a European one: http://www.americanyouthfootball.com/membershi/international/ Don’t know about great numbers, but these are the starting signs. Grow the audience, grow these leagues, prime the pump, have a future. It’s not possible to have too many people from too many countries trying to play in your league, it is highly possibly to have not enough people from not enough countries trying to play in your league.
ff
Not impressed with the attendance. It’s a couple games a year. When the Jags were over a reporter said he saw no people wearing NFL gear in London.
I think this is more about the NFL maxing out growth in the US and looking overseas to grow.
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