Hype Machine in Overdrive, N.F.L. Pops Back to London
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Version 0 of 1. LONDON — The N.F.L. shield is flying over Regent Street, Adrian Peterson and the Minnesota Vikings have invaded Hertfordshire to practice and, for a few days, Big Ben will also refer to Roethlisberger, the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback. For the seventh year, the N.F.L. has returned to London in another attempt to convince sports fans here — and the league’s wary owners back home — that people outside the United States can fall in love with blocking, blitzing, tackling and punting. Eager to expand its empire, the N.F.L. has for decades tried to make inroads overseas, playing dozens of games as far away as Sydney, Australia; as high as Mexico City; and in as unlikely a city as Gothenburg, Sweden. The Buffalo Bills play a home game each year in Toronto, even though many Canadian fans prefer to see them in Buffalo. N.F.L. Europe, with teams like the Barcelona Dragons and the Berlin Thunder, is now a memory. So since 2007, the league has focused on London, hoping that soccer-mad Britain can make room for the un-British sport of American football. On Sunday, the Steelers and the Vikings, each winless, will battle at Wembley Stadium, the country’s cathedral of soccer. As a novelty, the games have done fine. The 80,000 tickets for Sunday’s game sold out in hours, and television ratings have been strong enough to encourage the league to add a second game in London this season. The Jacksonville Jaguars have committed to play a game here each of the next four seasons, giving rise to talk that they or another team will one day move to London and become the N.F.L.’s first franchise overseas. “We are going to be aggressive because we see the fans’ reactions to football and we want to be there on a more regular basis,” N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell said in May. But trying to place a franchise in London would be difficult because the people who matter most — the league’s 32 owners — have little appetite for adding an expansion team that would dilute their share of leaguewide revenue. Moving an existing team to London could be problematic because of relocation fees, stadium leases and other costs. It is also unclear whether enough fans in London would buy a full season’s worth of tickets and whether companies would pony up for a luxury box or a significant sponsorship. A London-based team would face longer trips and higher expenses, and some players and coaches might shy away from living overseas. Other teams in the London club’s division would have to be persuaded to play a road game here each year. With all the logistical and financial hurdles, the owners may decide that the league would be better served by adding a team in Los Angeles, the second-largest news media market in the United States. “Roger has a vision for a permanent team in London, but he’s one of the very few that does,” said Marc Ganis, the president of SportsCorp, a sports advisory company that works with N.F.L. teams. “Commissioners get pie-eyed about international. What he got was an agreement to put on two games, maybe three, but he didn’t get a timeline” to establish a team in London. So Goodell continues to make inroads into a market that on paper should generate more income for the league in broadcast deals, sponsorships and merchandise sales. The N.F.L. claims to have more than two million “avid” supporters in Britain who watch games weekly and buy merchandise. This season, the N.F.L. returned to Channel 4, a free channel, to go along with Sky Sports, which sells a sports package that includes featured games each week. About 30,000 fans bought tickets to the two N.F.L. games in London this season, a sign that a core group of fans is willing to pay for tickets with an average price tag of about $110. The league sells more than $1.5 million in N.F.L.-licensed merchandise at its games, according to Chris Parsons, an N.F.L. senior vice president in charge of international matters. Despite all this, Parsons said that the games in London were only “close to break-even,” and that did not include the significant marketing expenses. To many of the league’s hard-nosed owners, the math does not yet appear compelling. The N.F.L. is not alone in trying to break into markets overseas. Major League Baseball has opened its season abroad several times and runs the World Baseball Classic to generate global interest in the game and tens of millions of dollars. The N.B.A. has played games in Tokyo, London and beyond, and has a slew of international television deals. But the N.F.L. is at a disadvantage because unlike baseball and basketball, football is not widely played outside the United States. In Britain, the game is anathema to those hooked on soccer, which does not have the breaks in action and hard hitting prevalent in American football. “One of the tensions for the English audience is our favored sports have an element of flow,” said John Williams, the director of the Center for the Sociology of Sport at the University of Leicester. “Play is not broken for tactical talks or timeouts. That’s always been a mystery for British fans, who think the games are too contrived and made for TV and too brutal.” The differences raise a deeper question: is it possible to get fans hooked on a game they may be unable to play? Because basketball is played around the world, the N.B.A. was able to cash in when international stars like Yao Ming (China), Tony Parker (France) and Ricky Rubio (Spain) entered the league. Baseball profited handsomely when Ichiro Suzuki arrived from Japan. Yet although the number of foreign-born players in the N.F.L. has risen, the league has never had an equivalent overseas sensation. “The European athletes we had all played at an amateur level, but their organizations were challenged to teach the game,” said Oliver Luck, who ran the defunct N.F.L. Europe in the 1990s. “It was difficult to overcome that deficit, especially when you’re 17.” Of course, plenty of sports are popular with fans who are unable to play them. Formula One, for instance, has a global following even though most fans will never sit in a racecar. The N.F.L. hopes that is true in London, even though it has proved illusory elsewhere. The N.F.L. first played outside the United States in 1950, when the Giants beat the Ottawa Rough Riders. Games have been played in Montreal; Toronto; Hamilton, Ontario; and Vancouver, British Columbia. Dating to 1976, the N.F.L. has made 14 trips to Japan, hoping to tap into the country’s giant economy. But the game is a niche sport there, at best, with baseball and soccer reigning. The N.F.L. also held a regular-season game in Mexico City in 2005 that drew more than 103,000 fans to Estadio Azteca, but the league has not returned, reportedly because the stadium is considered inadequate. A sprinkling of preseason games have been played in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Spain and Sweden. Since 2008, the Bills have played some home games in Toronto as part of a deal with Rogers Communications, a Canadian wireless company. Goodell has said that he hopes to turn the N.F.L. into a $25 billion business by 2027, from $10 billion now. To do that, the league would need fresh sources of income, including from overseas. “Certainly, the league has grown substantially here in the United States and continues to do so,” said Clark Hunt, the chairman of the Kansas City Chiefs and the head of the league’s international committee. “But at some point, to keep that growth rate up, the international opportunity for the league is very important.” |