This week the NFL sent their third game to Wembley Stadium in London, England. I’m not a fan.
Don’t be fooled by what the NFL is doing, it’s not about sharing the brand and spreading out football to an international audience. It’s about money. The NFL doesn’t care that they took away a home game from the Tampa Bay Buccaneer fans, they made their money from the 80,000 people in London.
But, I don’t care about that. I know that the NFL is a greedy, money grubbing league.
What I don’t like is the thought of trying to spread football to an international audience. Putting a game in London is unnecessary, but adding a team their (which is the rumor) is absurd.
The international fans will never latch onto football like they do soccer or even other sports like rugby. I attended several NFL Europe Frankfurt Galaxy games and most of the fans didn’t even understand the game. They did attend and they were loud (much like London), but besides getting drunk and blowing whistles, the fans in Germany really didn’t have a clue nor did they care.
Frankfurt was one of the popular NFL Europe cities before the league folded. They won the World Bowl while I was in Germany, though you would have never known. London struggled to even field a team.
If you look at the fans in the stands, they are all wearing different jerseys. I saw more Jets and Bills jerseys in the Pats/Bucs game then I did either of the two games playing.
The NFL has enough teams in the US that are not competitive, adding another team across to pond would hurt the NFL’s image and start to destroy the competition that we love as fans.
