As the long summer months roll on, NFL columnists, writers and journalists desperately attempt to tap every well of discussion left available to them, in a futile attempt to generate hits and comments on their news stories. As a fan of two decades, it is always odd to remember a time when there was not an over-saturation of information from the media and some days I do long for the simplicity of that era.
Anyway, nostalgia aside, the - somewhat vague - proposal of a London NFL franchise is a sure-fire winner in this context, touching heavily on the emotive concept of sovereignty and provoking outrage and tension throughout America. Want more comments from people quoting the bible, or expressing outrage at 'big business'? Oh man, you have found your topic. Put that 'Gay football players' article you were considering on the back-burner and get cracking, because nothing incites people's ire like the idea that a franchise will be forcibly relocated on another continent.
I don't usually use this blog to discuss serious things that are non-pick related, but it is worth pointing out a few home truths for those who defend or advocate a London NFL franchise. The following five issues have been - in my view - completely overlooked by a combination of the NFL's hubris and a determination on the part of British NFL executives to get their franchise - regardless of the cost to the integrity of the game.
Here's part one of five, the other four parts will be up later today. Follow me on Twitter for links to the other parts.
Five Key Questions for the NFL regarding a London Franchise:
Question 1: Do British fans want it?
This is one of the points that is often overlooked in the debate about bringing a team to London. It's hard to quantify 'support' for a team that doesn't actually exist yet, or at least not in the form it would take should a franchise be relocated, yet arguably it is the most important factor in the whole exercise.
I've got a really good analogy for this: If someone asked Americans if they'd like Hull City to be uprooted and play all their games at Metlife stadium, how many would say 'no, we don't need them here'? Probably very few, after all, it is a novelty, would bring some jobs and money to the city, but primarily, the city would feel like it had been chosen to do something unprecedented in the history of sport. The problem is that such emotions aren't 'real'. They wouldn't make New Yorkers soccer fans overnight, and the fans in the stadium wouldn't have anything invested in whether the team succeeded or stayed for the long term or not. There may be a short-lived boon period in which Hull City made money, but with no substantial established soccer fan base and the competition of Premier League giants like Man Utd and Chelsea on TV for those that are, how many genuine Hull fans would there be?
These are all the same emotions that people feel about the NFL in Britain. There really aren't many negatives for us on a personal level, in fact mainly they're positive. I could have an NFL franchise within 400 miles (a 3-4hr train journey) and could choose to go and see them whenever I wanted. The Bears would be sure to travel over at some point, so I'd increase my chances of seeing more of the team I love, and the same would apply to millions of others who have allegiances to existing teams,.
BUT...
How does that translate into meaningful support - both in terms of enthusiasm and money?
My biggest beef with the assertion that British people want an NFL franchise is that there's very little evidence to suggest that they do. An unscientific forum poll on NFLUK suggests that support amongst current NFL enthusiasts remains low, even with the increase in NFL games here to two per year. Sure there's a healthy 35% who - while nobody is asking for their money - claim they'd attend every home game, but is that enough?
It is perfectly reasonable to assume that many of those fans who intend to travel to London for every game, if faced with the financial reality of buying a season ticket - and the associated hotel and travel costs for most fans outside of London - would not be as enthusiastic. I made a quick estimate the other day and came to a rough figure of some £1300 ($2000) for me to see 8 games a year, an amount that would likely deter many of the casual fans that Roger Goodell and the NFL need to give all of their money attract to a London franchise on a regular basis.
To put it bluntly though, the biggest problem may be that in the last twenty years, most British NFL fans have already adopted teams that we follow and love just as passionately as U.S. based fans. I've watched the Bears for over twenty years now and frankly, I'd rather spend $2000 once a season and go to Soldier Field, than spend it on 8 games for a franchise I didn't have any real link to - games I could watch on TV at home if I was really that bothered.
The same goes for thousands of other hardcore fans who have followed other teams for decades now. That allegiance will not disappear for long-term supporters of existing NFL teams overnight, and they'll be hard pushed to justify spending money on a team they aren't affiliated to in any active way.
I question the ability of the NFL to attract tens of thousands of fans to 8 games a season, in a new market, to a team that may be less-than-competitive. Think about that just for a moment. In America, the home of football, teams regularly fail to sell out. Some teams have struggled to fill stadiums for many years now, and yet for some reason the NFL believes that a nation that is largely ambivalent to the NFL - bar a few hundred-thousand die-hards - will throw money and time at it in spades? If the target was 30,000 fans per game, I'd say that was a really good starting point, but the target isn't that. Wembley holds 80,000 people and even half of that may be optimistic for some of the less stellar matchups. Feel like paying $100 to watch Cleveland at Jacksonville? Me neither, yet that's the very minimum price (ie: just a ticket) that fans would need to pay. Frankly, that matchup could deter them from every watching the sport again, even on TV.
Worryingly, British NFL fans have fallen by the wayside in this discussion. Neil Reynolds of NFLUK.com suggested on a podcast last week that existing fans are not the target, that a new breed of supporters will emerge who (presumably) don't have allegiances to NFL teams and would be prepared to shovel gold bullion in the direction of the league's safe. That's a gamble the NFL seems willing to one day take, considering the Jaguars' commitment to playing more over here.
The problem is, the majority of people attending these games are still existing fans, the same ones that NFLUK seem happy to ignore on this matter. New fans will still continue to see the Jags as what they are - a poor franchise, with little history or personality to attach themselves to. Most of this new breed of fans will still gravitate towards the more popular teams until the London franchise is heavily established over a period of a decade or longer. Can the NFL take that medium-term hit?
If I was Roger Goodell, I'd be concerned that any novelty value that a London franchise had might not translate into medium-long term financial gain at all. If an NFL team were to come to Britain, I would expect that attendances and revenue would be a huge worry over the first 5-10 years at a minimum, and the concern must be that genuine, active fans would be very hard to come by in an organic fashion after the initial honeymoon period.
And one last thing: If the London franchise isn't competitive on the field, it has no hope of being a success off it... some of the upcoming posts will deal with just how the team could be competitively disadvantaged compared to rival NFL teams.
Part 2 of this series will be up in a few hours and will look at the attitude of American fans towards a London team.
Part One - British fan opinions
Part Two - American fan opinions
