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.