The Super Bowl in London?

[SEMOSTLfan]

Sweet lets play the Rugby world championship in the United States next year. That's about how much sense this makes.

[Fred T. Jane]

Sweet lets play the Rugby world championship in the United States next year. That's about how much sense this makes.

So the US hosting the FIFA World Cup in 1994 didn't/doesn't make sense either?

[Alphabet Man]

Bring it to Melbourne and the MCG!

You'll get 95-100K to it, which is more than most SuperBowls of recent times.

It's in February so it will be summer and therefore warm weather.

Yes, I'm not serious at all.

But, keep it in the US. Maybe move the ProBowl to Wembley, Millenium, MCG, wherever.

[Mac the Knife]

c) If it isn't FAR south it sucks! See Raliegh NC, Kansas City MO.

Uh, Kyle? I don't take offense or anything, but both my adopted hometown of Raleigh and Kansas City have what would be at least palatable conditions for a Super Bowl. There exists the possibility of bad weather in each location, sure, but generally speaking the January/February weather here is pretty mild.

[Mac the Knife]

This troubles me. It's bad enough they're playing a regular season game in Europe, now they want to move the Super Bowl there too? Fine, whatever. I'm so freakin fed up with sports anymore that I'm just about to the point of apathy. If the powers that be don't give a crap about the fans who support them, then let them go shove those Euros up their collective (censored).....

Might as well play it elsewhere, since this country is being infiltrated every day with illegal aliens anyway. The United States as I once knew it and loved it, is over, this news just is the frosting on the battery acid laced cake anyway.

You aren't related to Tank by chance, are you?

[BlueSky]

I have mixed feelings about this. On one level, I really don't like it. NFL football is a uniquely American game and IMO trying to "globalize" it is going to dilute the quality (just like more U.S. expansion would) and ultimately reduce fan interest. And ever been to London in winter? It gets dark about 330pm (seriously) and can be very cold, dank, and...what's the word here...depressing? Not sure but you get my drift. I really think the game would seem even more remote to the average fan (who pays the league's bills at the end of the day) than it already does.

As for preseason/regular season games, it annoys me for some reason but whatever as long as my team isn't participating. Having traveled internationally on business, I know how much very long trips take out of you and how it disrupts your schedule in every way. It often seems as if teams who take those trips feel it for quite a while, and I think that'll be true with regular season games even if it's a bye week.

With all that said, I ask myself whether I'm just being a closed-minded isolationist. Globalization in trade and finance is a reality that can't be denied. Is it wrong to want to keep NFL football immune to it? I don't know.

[njmeadowlanders]

Sweet lets play the Rugby world championship in the United States next year. That's about how much sense this makes.

So the US hosting the FIFA World Cup in 1994 didn't/doesn't make sense either?

Is the US a soccer hotbed? No.

But the US was participating.

The World Cup is the WORLD CUP...it rotates AROUND THE WORLD.

When has a team from London or Tokyo or Paris or wherever ever taken part in an NFL season?

The NFL isn't a worldwide event like the FIFA WC is...that's why the U.S. hosting it is completely different.

[Moser316]

They can have a Super Bowl when we get an FA Cup final. Seeing as that's never going to happen, a Super Bowl in London should never happen, either.

[Geoff]

I would NOT support this 110%! When you have cities having or owning NFL franchises getting passed over ALL the time because...

a) It's too cold that time of year, they have an outdoor stadium! See Foxboro MA, Chicago IL, Seattle WA, San Fransisco CA, Oakland CA, Denver CO, New York/Jersey Meadowlands aka Giants Stadium (yeah I know it's gonna be there soon but took a lot of arm twisting), Washington D.C., Nashville TN, Orchard Park/Buffalo NY, and the coupe de gras Green Bay WI, Lambeau Field the MECCA of all Pro Football and the NFL!!!

b)City has a roof over their stadium, but it's too cold of a climate! See Minneapolis MN, Detroit MI(they actually got one last YEAR!), St. Louis MO.

c) If it isn't FAR south it sucks! See Raliegh NC, Kansas City MO.

d) They must be warm! See Miami FL, Tampa Bay FL, Jacksonville FL, Houston TX, Glendale/Phoenix AZ, Los Angeles CA, New Orleans LA, San Diego CA, and the big WTF??? Pasadena CA (they DON'T have a franchise yet get the Super Bowl!)

e) Where's the party at?! See Florida, NO, SoCal, Atlanta GA

f) Based on these findings it seems like there is a complete an obvious rotation goin' on! With the exception of Atlanta. Only one in the last what 20 years??? Or at least since the Georgia Dome was built?

g) MLB seems to WANT to take their show on the road every year. Why not the NFL?

h) If you want a party or nightlife. Why not even Chicago? Oh yeah it's cold??? Isn't that what FOOTBALL is all about? If the hot actresses and musicians you want to attract have to wear the fur coats they own that's cool! Or better yet rent out the entire suite level for the pampered type!

i) If this is the NFL, the NATIONAL Football League we are talking about? Why not hold a Super Bowl at the MECCA of all MECCAS of PRO FOOTBALL, that being Lambeau Field before heading' out of the Country all together for the Biggest Game of the Year??!!?? Yeah it's cold, yeah GB doesn't have most of the things talked about here, Milwaukee does HOWEVER! Hell we've supported the MLB AS GAME with flying colors!

j) Let the US cities state their case before takin it "OVER SEAS!"

A Super Bowl in London EN, would SUCK if you look at all of these. Let's keep it here! If this isn't a Goodell, call your office moments, I don't know what is?

Kyle

You ever been to ATL in the winter. It's really bright and sunny and warm. You could go to your roof and just sit there for hours tanning.

Yes, those cities have been passed over, but a lot of time those places don't even submit applications. It's not like the NFL goes "YOU! You're hosting this year, get ready." The cities submit applications. And if you knew how it was done, Pasadena wouldn't surprise you because it's not the teams that submit the applications but the cities themselves.

For instance: If someone had the money and wanted to play the SB in Ann Arbor in the Big House and they had the money and a plan and all that shiz, they could apply and they wouldn't need the Lions to tag along as the team pushing the application.

[quantum]

I think rewarding a European city with the Super Bowl is reasonable considering the support given NFL Europe. [/sarcasm]

Support for the NFL needs to be in establishing a successful European league. Instead of a spring league, a European league should play in the fall. Create a minor league and create an interest in those markets with local talent. I believe sending our championship abroad does more damage to the dedicated fan base then it does growing interest oversees. Considering sports teams in other countries are sponsored entities, I have a hard time believing that fans oversees will swallow the ticket prices the Superbowl commands.

[-Helix-]

When a team from London enters the NFL and is capable of winning a Super Bowl, then they can host one.

Makes no sense to have two American teams playing for an American championship in the UK. Pretty sure we won this thing called the revolutionary war and got our independence.

I'm sure the owners are drooling at the prospect of raking in those valuable Euros. But why not a pointless game that nobody here cares about? Like the Pro Bowl? Rotate that game around Europe every year or something.

[xxjdm66]

The NFL already tried to globalize american football (NFL Europe), nobody cared. The super bowl in London would be like a traveling side show circus. The English only care about one thing The Premier League (EPL).

[nyk]

The NFL already tried to globalize american football (NFL Europe), nobody cared. The super bowl in London would be like a traveling side show circus. The English only care about one thing The Premier League (EPL).

I agree that since NFL Europ failed, Europe does not have a huge interest in American football. One game a season can work like the Giants and Dolphins game. but to have one of America's biggest stages in a country that really doesnt care for it is not going to work.

[cappital92]

I dunno why everyone thinks the NFL is going to get lots of Euros in London, when they use Pounds as their currency.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Vince McMahon was smart enough to realize that Wrestlemania in London wouldn't work, simply because of time zone issues. The show has to be live, but it can't be at 12:30 a.m. Eastern. Otherwise, it certainly would have been broadcast from there by now because he could clearly fill an arena, stadium, pitch, whatever.

Roger Goodell will eventually realize this as well, and the Super Bowl in London talk will die down. It's too bad too, because I'm actually all for it. The Super Bowl is nearly always anti-climatic, and treating it more like a spectacle than an actual game has been the NFL's M.O. for some time now, if not the entire history of the game.

[HedleyLamarr]

My main concern about a Super Bowl being played outside North America is the quality of play during the game. It just wouldn't be fair to the teams to train and prepare for months, and have the championship game played in a location where the body clock gets affected. This week's Dolphins-Giants game will be a big determining factor in whether London is a feasible Super Bowl location.

Other than that, I don't have a problem with the Super Bowl being played in London. Most folks don't care about the location of the game once the ball's been kicked off.....

[Alphabet Man]

When a team from London enters the NFL and is capable of winning a Super Bowl, then they can host one.

Well, why not eliminate Arizona then?

[RetroDan#16]

Hi all, my first post here.

Reading this thread gives me an interesting and even surprising view on how the US sees the global fanbase, especially in England. I'm using England as the obvious example, and because I live here.

The crowd for the Wembley game is set to be around 80-90% British football fans, and I honestly think that you guys underestimate the fanbase we have here. Tickets on sale to the general public and through the NFL's uk site sold out in 90 minutes, and a Wembley ticket is just about the hottest ticket in the country at the moment. Within the first hour of tickets being announced, there were 250,000 enquiries as to their availablility - hardly the response of a country that doesn't care for the sport at all. The NFL's UK website membership is huge, with extremely knowledgeable and longtime supporters of the game offering opinions that are any bit as good as seen in the US. But I digress...

People often bring up the case of NFL Europe failing here in England - the simple reason this happened as much as anything was that the fans here are truly hardcore, and we felt we were being dealt second best in terms of players and quality. England always wanted a true NFL franchise. NFL Europe/Europa whatever, succeeded in Germany more because they were content with any kind of football, and were happy to settle with a lower league.

General opinion here is that the SuperBowl in England would actually be wrong. There are plenty of cities in the States which could hold a SuperBowl, but have never had the chance. SuperBowls tend to be played in kind weather locales, of which London in February generally isn't. Logistically it would be a nightmare I'm sure, and there's always the case of perhaps the losing team offering excuses and what-if's because of where the game was played - strange place, different environment etc. The same way that British people would object to the FA Cup final being held overseas, I fully understand Americans not wanting their biggest game shipped off elsewhere. Personally, I'm don't particularly think even a regular season game is all that good an idea, not on a regular basis anyway. Obviously I think it's great that football here is getting more coverage than ever at the moment, but the NFL should have made that effort before, without having to drag two teams halfway across the world to play a meaningful game.

We had the American Bowls, yes, and they were great - but they also grew stale, because there were enough hardcore fans to realise that they were simple preseason games and felt shortchanged again because they wanted to see the starters for a whole game playing for something that actually meant something. We were grateful for the chance to see Pro teams, but sometimes felt patronised as if we only followed the game as a novelty.

The attitude we often see here was epitomised last night while watching the Dolphins/Pats game, when the announcer commented (something along the lines of) that 'the Dolphins are going to be 0-7 going into the Wembley game. Will the Brits even know what 0-7 means?" A very naive and ultimately patronising comment.

Really, there is so much support for the game here, so much that the NFL in the UK has actually took corporate seating away from some ticket holders and sold them to the public because the game could have sold out 3 times over.

There's more depth to our sports here than the Prem for example. yes, football is still perhaps considered a minority sport, but in the last twenty years coverage of the game has grown and grown (we get a huge choice of NFL games here every week, a combination of 6 games over a Sunday and Monday), and in the last 5 years since the coverage grew, a whole new generation of fans have developed an interest in the sport. I've been following the game since 1986, back when we had nothing but tape delayed games and extended highlights once a week! In the 21 years I've followed the game, I'd like to think that I'm above the general level of knowledge that most Americans think we have here, and I, like many others do find the attitude of some people in the States a little 'head in the sand'! I might add that usually, this is only the minority - many people seem to be surprised as much as anything that we even know about the sport.

Just to reiterate, I'm personally not in favour of overseas games, I love American Football to be just that - American. All I'm saying is don't be blinkered in how you perceive 'foreign' fans of the game are - we do understand that the quarterpounder is trying to throw the rugby ball to the one with the tight end for a try.

[RetroDan#16]

I don't know if my first post above is showing up properly but to add to it:

There's as much talk of a London franchise as there is a SuperBowl being held here one day - what are American's general views on this? Again, I'm actually against the idea, but some further points with regards to this topic:

Some teams have to travel right across the breadth of the US for games. How far is the West Coast to the East Coast, approximately? The East Coast to London is about 3500 miles. How much of a logistics problem would travelling cause, say for a once a year game even?

Please take this tongue-in-cheek - if the SuperBowl was to be played outside of the US, would this bring more justification to the title 'World Champions'?!

[Brian in Boston]

I'm sure the owners are drooling at the prospect of raking in those valuable Euros. But why not a pointless game that nobody here cares about? Like the Pro Bowl? Rotate that game around Europe every year or something.

Precisely because it is - as you point out - a "pointless game that nobody cares about". What would be the incentive for anybody to purchase tickets to a pointless game.

The reason the NFL is considering playing a Super Bowl in London is because said game is a huge draw regardless of the market in which it is played. We've already established that the NFL's corporate partners and deep-pocketed fans will attend the game in London. While the vast majority of middle-class NFL fans will spend Super Bowl Sunday in their living rooms, as they always do, there will be those fans who will scrape together the means to attend the game in one of the world's greatest cities, just as those same fans have always managed to scrape together the means to attend Super Bowls in much more mundane locales such as Detroit, Michigan... Greater Phoenix, Arizona... Houston, Texas... Jacksonville, Florida... Minneapolis, Minnesota... San Diego, California... Tampa, Florida. I mean, aside from Greater San Francisco (Palo Alto), Los Angeles and Miami (maybe... MAYBE... New Orleans and San Diego make the short list, and that's due to restaurants/bars and weather, respectively), what Super Bowl host cities measure-up to London as a world-class destination? A Super Bowl in London would be a once-in-a-lifetime event for many Americans. Add some lucky locals to all of the aforementioned American-based fans and you have the makings of a Super Bowl the likes of which has never been seen before.