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http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...-franchise-in-london-a-realistic-possibility/
Goodell calls a franchise in London a “realistic possibility”
Posted by Michael David Smith on February 6, 2016
Reuters
Although the NFL is focused more right now on making regular visits to London, the league may eventually have a team there permanently.
Commissioner Roger Goodell said Friday that he sees continued growth in the NFL’s popularity in the United Kingdom, and it could continue to grow to the point where a franchise is there.
“Every time we give our U.K. fans, and I think this is true on a global basis, an opportunity to engage with football, the fans want more, and the key to our strategy several years ago was to give them the real thing, regular season games, and I think that’s worked,” Goodell said. “I think fans have appreciated that.
Every year I go back to London, I see the fans are more sophisticated. They understand the game more. They’re following it more. We expect a big audience will be in the U.K. watching the Super Bowl on Sunday, Monday morning I think their time. That’s exciting for us. We are considering playing more games in the U.K. It’s a balancing act with our schedule.
As you know, we’re playing in two different stadiums this year, so that gives us a little bit more flexibility in how we do that, but I believe the future will see more games in the U.K. As far as a franchise, let’s continue to grow. Let’s continue to see that excitement and enthusiasm, passion and support continue to develop. If it does, I think that’s a realistic possibility.”
The league would still have to figure out all kinds of logistical issues before a team in London could be feasible, and a franchise there is several years off if it ever happens. But now that the NFL has finally filled its vacancy in Los Angeles, speculation may now turn to whether a team will move to London.
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Goodall will do what he always does – jam his agenda down other people’s throats.
Listen up UK, whether you want it or not you’re getting a franchise. To the American players, enjoy the 6 hour plane rides just to get to NY.
------------
There is as much chance of London landing an NFL franchise as there is of Johnny Manziel starting for the Browns or any other team in 2016.
-----------
The time difference between here and the continent would make it horrible. A 4:30pm Sunday start is 9:30pm in London. You could never have the London team play a night game away; it would be cruel to their fans to have a game start at 1:30am their time (8:30 pm in the east). That is start! It wouldn’t be over until 5:00am Monday or Tuesday morning.
Stick to having a couple Sunday morning games with existing teams going to London and then getting a bye.
----------
Whilst there’s arguments against, to those who say London is simply too far, you’re wrong. Firstly, these guys don’t fly in cattle class, and in 2019 Virgin Atlantic plan to have a next-gen supersonic business jet in the air, in service 2023, just 7yrs from now! And even with current jets, it’s only 2hrs luxury first-class travel further than going from the East Coast to Seattle, expedited through customs into limos to a luxury suite. Hardly hellish. And London has a state-of-the-art desso field (natural grass but interwoven with artificial fibres for durability, safety and consistency) to play on that puts many current NFL fields to shame.
My suggestion would be a renewed, separated Europe or World Conference, that maybe 10yrs from now played concurrent with the NFL, and if competitive by then it’s winner gets the lowest (i.e. travelling) seed into the playoffs if it’s record is better than the worst AFC or NFC candidate.
----------
As much as I enjoy attending the games over here, the thought of the Jaguars moving to London doesn’t really fill me with much excitement.
Keep sending three games a year over here, and we’ll be happy.
---------
Every time I watch a London game the stadium is packed and they ooh and ahh on every exciting play. Why wouldn’t they love the sport if they had their own team? It’s the greatest sport there is. People posting here are too hung up on their anti-Goodell agenda and don’t give the Brits enough credit. The sport would thrive there.
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I’ll bet there is no shortage of players who would love to live in London and play football there. They are very enthusiastic about the game there now, and fill Wembley everytime there is a game. That is more than you can say here, about some of the stadiums.
So what someone says a plane ride from London to NY is 6 hours.
It’s 5 hours to the west coast here, and they go backwards and forwards all season. Most people here, have never been to London, so don’t talk about something you know nothing about!!
----------
I’m British… I’m in the UK… I follow all Minnesota sports through choice… yet even I can see that a franchise in the UK just won’t logistically work.
First off, the team will almost certainly carry out its entire off season in the US – this includes all but perhaps the end of training camp.
How are street free agents brought in for a look see going to be covered? This will again be in the US where it is easier to execute. How is this going to affect the team if it’s currently playing a string of games in the UK?
The League hasn’t had the greatest track record recently regarding the behaviour of some of its players. How can some players who perhaps have been charged or even accused of serious offenses going to be granted permission to travel to the UK – let alone earn a living there?
Finally, the League will try to ‘force’ season tickets on the UK supporters. While that might work for two or three games a season, try getting that functioning with eight games.
Maybe if the UK and US build closer political ties if the UK exits the European Union (EU), and maybe if a faster means of transport across the Atlantic can be sourced, then MAYBE a franchise could be successful in the UK.
-------------------------------
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/20...inching-forward-on-permanent-london-franchise
Surely but slowly, NFL inching forward on permanent London franchise
The NFL plans to expand the number of games played in the UK from three to eight, perhaps the final test before placing a permanent team in London
Les Carpenter in San Francisco
@Lescarpenter
Saturday 6 February 2016
When Roger Goodell took over as NFL commissioner in 2006 he had three clear priorities: deal with a festering labor dispute, decide which teams would play in Los Angeles and see if it was possible to put a team in London. Then came the link between head trauma and long-term effects on players’ health and Goodell’s plan was derailed.
But over time Goodell has made progress on his initial agenda. The lockout in 2011 created a tentative peace with the players’ union and Los Angeles has finally been resolved enough that London is now a top priority. The next few years will be critical toward deciding what the NFL ultimately wants to do in the UK.
Friday’s announcement that the NFL will play a Monday Night Football game in Mexico City on 21 November should not be interpreted as a sign the league is looking to put a team in Mexico. Rather, it is a piece of a larger experiment to extend the game beyond the borders of the 48 contiguous states and expand the game into new markets. The regular-season game the league will play in Mexico are more a showcase in a neighboring country where the NFL has long tried to build a fanbase.
London remains the place where the league is interested in placing a franchise several league sources said Friday.
“It’s not dead at all,” replied Kansas City Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt, he head of the league’s international committee, when asked if the NFL was still serious about an actual franchise in London as opposed to a series of games.
The momentum that seemed to stall toward putting a team in London is pushing forward again, albeit slowly. This is not a league that moves quickly. “Look, it took us 20 years to get a team in LA,” one NFL executive said on Friday. A long list of logistical issues remain before the NFL could transfer a team or create a new one in London but there are definite signs that a top priority is finding answers for those problems.
One of the biggest concerns league officials have is in making sure that teams don’t feel a competitive disadvantage when playing in London. Hunt said clubs that have gone to the UK in recent years have said they did not find the experience to be nearly as big a distraction as they thought it might be. But so far the London games have been a bit of a controlled experience.
The NFL has been sure to schedule bye weeks after the games for those teams that have gone to London, but as the league adds more games in the UK they won’t be able to guarantee byes for every club. Someone soon, perhaps as early as this fall, is going to have to play the Sunday after a London game. What will happen when one does? Will the coaches and players complain? Will this frighten other teams from agreeing to go overseas? Does the movement toward putting a team in London then come to a stop?
“If our teams aren’t comfortable with the strategy then the strategy will fall apart,” Mark Waller, the NFL’s vice president in charge of international operations.
Answering this question is one of the immediate priorities for the league as it slowly pushes toward a London resolution.
On Friday, Goodell said he was thrilled the three NFL games in London next season have already sold out and said the league’s full-time move to the city could be “a realistic possibility” if there continues to be an enthusiasm for the NFL. But privately, league executives are overwhelmed by the amount of excitement they have found for the NFL in London and are cautiously optimistic that they have a true base of fans in the UK. One official pulled out a phone and showed a picture he has kept for 2½ years of the throng of people who filled Regent Street in London before one of the 2013 games.
“Not all of those were expats,” he said.
The same official said the next step for the NFL is to gradually push the number of games in London to eight – the amount of home games a team will play in a regular season. The hope is to do this over the next few seasons. If the NFL can sell out eight games in a year, with fans continuing to show the same enthusiasm as they appear to do now, then – he said – the NFL can seriously move toward putting a team in London.
Selling out eight games instead of three is a huge step. A lot has to happen in the next few years. Scheduling eight random games in a season will be hard. Waller said he couldn’t pull together a fourth London game this year because he couldn’t find a team willing to give up a home game. He said he has not approached a team about playing in the UK without a bye but admitted that it will eventually have to happen, even if that test doesn’t come this year.
But the league is at least ready to answer these questions now. The Rams’ move to Los Angeles has freed Goodell to pursue the last big project on his list. Maybe the NFL ultimately decides they can’t put a team in London, but they are moving forward on finally answering whether they can.
-----------
I was in Wales with a group of young to middle-aged Welsh to watch the Giants comeback drive against the then undefeated Patriots in the Feb 2008 Super Bowl, a game regarded by many as one of the greatest ever played. Most of my mates there were pretty passe about the NFL as Rugby is the sport. Still, at 3am they were on the edge of their seats watching the final Giants drive to defeat the Pats. I think they saw where it can be a fantastic game.
----------
I have a hard time seeing this as anything more than a passing fad for Britishers. Which means it will fall to the Expat community to support it in the long-term...are there enough of them?
---------
I met quite a few British NFL fans while living in the UK and they were all older blokes who had been following it for 15 or 20 years. I don't know that its a fad.
-----------
From my experience as an expat living in the UK 6 years it will take some getting used to for the players. Will they blend into the British culture (I did, there were no Americans anywhere where I lived in South Wales) or will they band together and insist they have all American products and only hang with other Americans? Will there be British players as well?
It's an interesting experiment but I'm not at all convinced its all been thought out enough to actually work. The alternative might just be 8 games a season in London like the article mentions.
-----------
What to do with all the players with criminal records? Will the UK allow them in?
----------
We play the NBA in Canada, why not the NFL in London? Besides the obvious logistics issues?
----------
If it ever happens then I would like to see a new team, better than the likes of the jags moving here. It would be better to have our own team, rather than another city's rejects. As for a name I would have British bulldogs. Because we have so many stadiums that could be used I think it's important that Britain is in the name not just London. The NFL would have a unique chance to have a team that represents all of Britain. Which we don't have in any other sport.
----------
Air miles from Seattle to Miami is 2724, and that is the maximum for US teams. Most are much less. From London, most are much further--
To Seattle, 4,800 miles
To Miami, 4,400 miles
To Houston, 4,800 miles
Goodell calls a franchise in London a “realistic possibility”
Posted by Michael David Smith on February 6, 2016
Although the NFL is focused more right now on making regular visits to London, the league may eventually have a team there permanently.
Commissioner Roger Goodell said Friday that he sees continued growth in the NFL’s popularity in the United Kingdom, and it could continue to grow to the point where a franchise is there.
“Every time we give our U.K. fans, and I think this is true on a global basis, an opportunity to engage with football, the fans want more, and the key to our strategy several years ago was to give them the real thing, regular season games, and I think that’s worked,” Goodell said. “I think fans have appreciated that.
Every year I go back to London, I see the fans are more sophisticated. They understand the game more. They’re following it more. We expect a big audience will be in the U.K. watching the Super Bowl on Sunday, Monday morning I think their time. That’s exciting for us. We are considering playing more games in the U.K. It’s a balancing act with our schedule.
As you know, we’re playing in two different stadiums this year, so that gives us a little bit more flexibility in how we do that, but I believe the future will see more games in the U.K. As far as a franchise, let’s continue to grow. Let’s continue to see that excitement and enthusiasm, passion and support continue to develop. If it does, I think that’s a realistic possibility.”
The league would still have to figure out all kinds of logistical issues before a team in London could be feasible, and a franchise there is several years off if it ever happens. But now that the NFL has finally filled its vacancy in Los Angeles, speculation may now turn to whether a team will move to London.
--------
Goodall will do what he always does – jam his agenda down other people’s throats.
Listen up UK, whether you want it or not you’re getting a franchise. To the American players, enjoy the 6 hour plane rides just to get to NY.
------------
There is as much chance of London landing an NFL franchise as there is of Johnny Manziel starting for the Browns or any other team in 2016.
-----------
The time difference between here and the continent would make it horrible. A 4:30pm Sunday start is 9:30pm in London. You could never have the London team play a night game away; it would be cruel to their fans to have a game start at 1:30am their time (8:30 pm in the east). That is start! It wouldn’t be over until 5:00am Monday or Tuesday morning.
Stick to having a couple Sunday morning games with existing teams going to London and then getting a bye.
----------
Whilst there’s arguments against, to those who say London is simply too far, you’re wrong. Firstly, these guys don’t fly in cattle class, and in 2019 Virgin Atlantic plan to have a next-gen supersonic business jet in the air, in service 2023, just 7yrs from now! And even with current jets, it’s only 2hrs luxury first-class travel further than going from the East Coast to Seattle, expedited through customs into limos to a luxury suite. Hardly hellish. And London has a state-of-the-art desso field (natural grass but interwoven with artificial fibres for durability, safety and consistency) to play on that puts many current NFL fields to shame.
My suggestion would be a renewed, separated Europe or World Conference, that maybe 10yrs from now played concurrent with the NFL, and if competitive by then it’s winner gets the lowest (i.e. travelling) seed into the playoffs if it’s record is better than the worst AFC or NFC candidate.
----------
As much as I enjoy attending the games over here, the thought of the Jaguars moving to London doesn’t really fill me with much excitement.
Keep sending three games a year over here, and we’ll be happy.
---------
Every time I watch a London game the stadium is packed and they ooh and ahh on every exciting play. Why wouldn’t they love the sport if they had their own team? It’s the greatest sport there is. People posting here are too hung up on their anti-Goodell agenda and don’t give the Brits enough credit. The sport would thrive there.
----------
I’ll bet there is no shortage of players who would love to live in London and play football there. They are very enthusiastic about the game there now, and fill Wembley everytime there is a game. That is more than you can say here, about some of the stadiums.
So what someone says a plane ride from London to NY is 6 hours.
It’s 5 hours to the west coast here, and they go backwards and forwards all season. Most people here, have never been to London, so don’t talk about something you know nothing about!!
----------
I’m British… I’m in the UK… I follow all Minnesota sports through choice… yet even I can see that a franchise in the UK just won’t logistically work.
First off, the team will almost certainly carry out its entire off season in the US – this includes all but perhaps the end of training camp.
How are street free agents brought in for a look see going to be covered? This will again be in the US where it is easier to execute. How is this going to affect the team if it’s currently playing a string of games in the UK?
The League hasn’t had the greatest track record recently regarding the behaviour of some of its players. How can some players who perhaps have been charged or even accused of serious offenses going to be granted permission to travel to the UK – let alone earn a living there?
Finally, the League will try to ‘force’ season tickets on the UK supporters. While that might work for two or three games a season, try getting that functioning with eight games.
Maybe if the UK and US build closer political ties if the UK exits the European Union (EU), and maybe if a faster means of transport across the Atlantic can be sourced, then MAYBE a franchise could be successful in the UK.
-------------------------------
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/20...inching-forward-on-permanent-london-franchise
Surely but slowly, NFL inching forward on permanent London franchise
The NFL plans to expand the number of games played in the UK from three to eight, perhaps the final test before placing a permanent team in London
Les Carpenter in San Francisco
@Lescarpenter
Saturday 6 February 2016
When Roger Goodell took over as NFL commissioner in 2006 he had three clear priorities: deal with a festering labor dispute, decide which teams would play in Los Angeles and see if it was possible to put a team in London. Then came the link between head trauma and long-term effects on players’ health and Goodell’s plan was derailed.
But over time Goodell has made progress on his initial agenda. The lockout in 2011 created a tentative peace with the players’ union and Los Angeles has finally been resolved enough that London is now a top priority. The next few years will be critical toward deciding what the NFL ultimately wants to do in the UK.
Friday’s announcement that the NFL will play a Monday Night Football game in Mexico City on 21 November should not be interpreted as a sign the league is looking to put a team in Mexico. Rather, it is a piece of a larger experiment to extend the game beyond the borders of the 48 contiguous states and expand the game into new markets. The regular-season game the league will play in Mexico are more a showcase in a neighboring country where the NFL has long tried to build a fanbase.
London remains the place where the league is interested in placing a franchise several league sources said Friday.
“It’s not dead at all,” replied Kansas City Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt, he head of the league’s international committee, when asked if the NFL was still serious about an actual franchise in London as opposed to a series of games.
The momentum that seemed to stall toward putting a team in London is pushing forward again, albeit slowly. This is not a league that moves quickly. “Look, it took us 20 years to get a team in LA,” one NFL executive said on Friday. A long list of logistical issues remain before the NFL could transfer a team or create a new one in London but there are definite signs that a top priority is finding answers for those problems.
One of the biggest concerns league officials have is in making sure that teams don’t feel a competitive disadvantage when playing in London. Hunt said clubs that have gone to the UK in recent years have said they did not find the experience to be nearly as big a distraction as they thought it might be. But so far the London games have been a bit of a controlled experience.
The NFL has been sure to schedule bye weeks after the games for those teams that have gone to London, but as the league adds more games in the UK they won’t be able to guarantee byes for every club. Someone soon, perhaps as early as this fall, is going to have to play the Sunday after a London game. What will happen when one does? Will the coaches and players complain? Will this frighten other teams from agreeing to go overseas? Does the movement toward putting a team in London then come to a stop?
“If our teams aren’t comfortable with the strategy then the strategy will fall apart,” Mark Waller, the NFL’s vice president in charge of international operations.
Answering this question is one of the immediate priorities for the league as it slowly pushes toward a London resolution.
On Friday, Goodell said he was thrilled the three NFL games in London next season have already sold out and said the league’s full-time move to the city could be “a realistic possibility” if there continues to be an enthusiasm for the NFL. But privately, league executives are overwhelmed by the amount of excitement they have found for the NFL in London and are cautiously optimistic that they have a true base of fans in the UK. One official pulled out a phone and showed a picture he has kept for 2½ years of the throng of people who filled Regent Street in London before one of the 2013 games.
“Not all of those were expats,” he said.
The same official said the next step for the NFL is to gradually push the number of games in London to eight – the amount of home games a team will play in a regular season. The hope is to do this over the next few seasons. If the NFL can sell out eight games in a year, with fans continuing to show the same enthusiasm as they appear to do now, then – he said – the NFL can seriously move toward putting a team in London.
Selling out eight games instead of three is a huge step. A lot has to happen in the next few years. Scheduling eight random games in a season will be hard. Waller said he couldn’t pull together a fourth London game this year because he couldn’t find a team willing to give up a home game. He said he has not approached a team about playing in the UK without a bye but admitted that it will eventually have to happen, even if that test doesn’t come this year.
But the league is at least ready to answer these questions now. The Rams’ move to Los Angeles has freed Goodell to pursue the last big project on his list. Maybe the NFL ultimately decides they can’t put a team in London, but they are moving forward on finally answering whether they can.
-----------
I was in Wales with a group of young to middle-aged Welsh to watch the Giants comeback drive against the then undefeated Patriots in the Feb 2008 Super Bowl, a game regarded by many as one of the greatest ever played. Most of my mates there were pretty passe about the NFL as Rugby is the sport. Still, at 3am they were on the edge of their seats watching the final Giants drive to defeat the Pats. I think they saw where it can be a fantastic game.
----------
I have a hard time seeing this as anything more than a passing fad for Britishers. Which means it will fall to the Expat community to support it in the long-term...are there enough of them?
---------
I met quite a few British NFL fans while living in the UK and they were all older blokes who had been following it for 15 or 20 years. I don't know that its a fad.
-----------
From my experience as an expat living in the UK 6 years it will take some getting used to for the players. Will they blend into the British culture (I did, there were no Americans anywhere where I lived in South Wales) or will they band together and insist they have all American products and only hang with other Americans? Will there be British players as well?
It's an interesting experiment but I'm not at all convinced its all been thought out enough to actually work. The alternative might just be 8 games a season in London like the article mentions.
-----------
What to do with all the players with criminal records? Will the UK allow them in?
----------
We play the NBA in Canada, why not the NFL in London? Besides the obvious logistics issues?
----------
If it ever happens then I would like to see a new team, better than the likes of the jags moving here. It would be better to have our own team, rather than another city's rejects. As for a name I would have British bulldogs. Because we have so many stadiums that could be used I think it's important that Britain is in the name not just London. The NFL would have a unique chance to have a team that represents all of Britain. Which we don't have in any other sport.
----------
Air miles from Seattle to Miami is 2724, and that is the maximum for US teams. Most are much less. From London, most are much further--
To Seattle, 4,800 miles
To Miami, 4,400 miles
To Houston, 4,800 miles
