If it solves the problem of financing our stadium, it's certainly tempting. The pitch is an enormous problem, though. I've just found out roughly half of NFL teams do play on plastic. All I know is that the Steelers have the hardest time keeping their grass decent, and they don't swap it out every week. Though maybe giving grass six days in the sun might make it easier, I don't know... In any case, it's interesting, though I wonder how significant the negatives will be. Massively overweight men in tights playing a misnamed game every week may just be the tip of the iceberg.
The real question is if the London NFL franchise is a white elephant (and it's possible) would there be a clause in place to buy them out of their share of the stadium, and if so what is that figure? The worst case scenario is paying their share for several years after they move on or fold.
I do hate that game the Americans call "football"! Hillairious really. They call this game,where they throw the ball(?) and run with it,football. They call the game where you use your feet,soccer. They call the "game" where you sock your opponent,boxing. Wonder what they call making boxes?
the games at Wembley seems to show that a franchise here would be well supported,and that the NFL are looking at a London Franchise,so i can't see them moving on or folding,my concern would be the pitch
There's a difference between one game a year with established NFL teams, and eight games a season from a startup franchise that's got the Atlantic Ocean between them and the rest of the NFL. The idea seems to be the ex-pats in London would abandon all loyalties when a new franchise shows up in London, but if there's one thing we know about Americans is they love their tradition and would sooner die before changing it (see: their slavish devotion to an archaic document signed in 1776 that is hopelessly out of date in the modern world)
Sky want us to get enthused about this game, but they are wasting their time. Tesco might be able to persuade kids to show American like zeal for Halloween, but British sports fans will never embrace American football - it's the antithesis of all our great sports.
Hi there lads, crossing over from the NFL section on this forum, yes Not606 has an American Football section. I highly doubt WHL will host an NFL game. Wembley has been the venue for years now and the two games that were played there this year were sold out within weeks. Wembley has the infrastructure, tickets are almost catching fire at the box office that's how fast they're sold, and the on top of that, they don't have to ship some of the revenue to a football club and take most of the earnings back to the US. Unless they're going build a new 75-90k seat stadium in North London, can't see it happening.
The real question is if the London NFL franchise is a white elephant (and it's possible) would there be a clause in place to buy them out of their share of the stadium, and if so what is that figure? The worst case scenario is paying their share for several years after they move on or fold. The difference this time is that it would be an NFL franchise. The marketing budget would be mindboggling and the way things work, each team shares in the wealth of the entire league ie, if the Patriots sell a shirt, each team gets a share. The NFL would not readily let its first foreign franchise fail. Also there are transport links from Paris Brussels and Amsterdam (from 2015 I think) that get folk into the capital from Europe. It would really be considered a European franchise. The transport links would have to be improved though. I always thought the Olympic stadium would have made a good NFL venue. Championship football with the occassional visit to the EPL, is hardly fitting for a stadium with such great transport infrastructure. If we get the transport right at WHL, it could bring even more money into the area as well as jobs.
When will this stadium ever happen? Does it just go and on ,in the ever-changing planning phase? When will it be completed?
i'm surprised it didn't already have a banger racing circuit on the outside, with NCP style expensive parking underneath. Any other ways they can squeeze money out of this venture?!
Wouldn't surprise me - the Bale poster in Times Square, our links with Under Armour etc. all suggest to me that we're trying to break into the US market.
Well said SF, there are many things I have found frustrating and worse about ENIC, (and yes they have done many good things too), the transfer window 'missed opportunities', our atmosphere becoming a toxic cocktail of bile and negativity, partly because of their pricing and ticketing policies, etc. But this stadium business easily annoys me the most. THIRTEEN years we've had since ENIC took over and we're still playing in a 36k stadium, such a wasted opportunity. THE NFL question looks like another complete and utter time waster to me. Maybe they might play the occasional game there, maybe not. No way do I see WHL becoming a two sport stadium, with NFL being the other sport. It will cause endless problems, it won't happen in the next twenty years anyway, and meanwhile our football stadium still hasn't been built. White elephant? Red herring, or duff McGuffin more like.
At the risk of resurrecting the thread... Here's the logic behind the proposal: if a team gets better and attracts more fans, they'll send them to the other side of the Atlantic to start from scratch...which in no way shafts their fans back in the USofA, nor does it reek of corporate greed.
What a shocking way to treat fans. I know the previous attempt to raise a team was not successfull (went to see them once - they lost heavily to a team from Frankfurt at the Crystal Palace sports arena) but surely the best way to get Londoners into a team, is to feature a team from London, non? They need to really work on the production line of talent in this country, maybe look to poach people from both Rugby codes, and then ease in the London team into competitions not unlike the Emirates cup. This way the team will only be playing 3-4 games or so a year, so will still be a novelty and attract good crowds. If the fans really show signs of getting behind the team, then maybe turn it into a full recognised team. With a few splrinkled accross Europe you could then start to see some European growth, maybe some international union leading to a World cup - which would obviously be won by the US for the first few iterations at least depending on the take up. For me, the idea of relocating a team from Jacksonville is not what sport is about, and I think the idea will fail.
While it is not sport as we know it, American Football is based on franchises which move about relatively frequently. If there is insufficient support in one city, the owners simply take the team somewhere else.
If the talk of moving Jacksonville over rings true, it also shows the NFL's attitude towards moving franchises in a remarkably poor light. The Jaguars have only been in the NFL since 1995, so moving them because they're the new boys (or, to be more accurate, the less successful new boys - the Carolina Panthers came into existence at the same time, but they've achieved a modicum of success in that time) is pretty damning. It also needs to be argued that, if they want bigger crowds, surely they shouldn't be moving a middling franchise over to England? If they want to attract fans it should be either a long-established franchise (for the sake of argument, the San Francisco 49ers), or if they want to fill the stadium with plastics both native and expat they should move the New England Patriots over here. Alternatively there's the third option: as there's a lot of middle class white people telling American Indians they should be offended by a team called the Washington Redskins, why not move the franchise to London to make the "controversy" go away?
