NFL faces biggest test in London with crowded weekend schedule
LONDON – The NFL strides boldly into Britain’s capital again this weekend, Wembley Stadium’s 12th game in nine seasons, surely providing enough of a body of work to suggest such journeys are no longer an experiment, but an entrenched part of the pro football season.
Yet Sunday morning’s clash (9:30 a.m. ET) between the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins faces a challenge no other previous incarnation of the series has — landing in the middle of a bonanza weekend in British sports.
“It was always going to be the test for us here,” Mark Waller, the NFL’s executive vice president, international, told USA TODAY Sports. “Could we establish ourselves as a proper part of the sporting calendar in the United Kingdom? That’s what has happened.”
With competition from major attractions, including soccer’s English Premier League and the Rugby World Cup, the NFL might come across as an underdog in the weekend’s battle for public attention.
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Instead football is digging in its cleats.
“The NFL has such momentum behind it in London now that it doesn’t need to worry as much about (soccer),” said sports marketing and public relations expert Paul Ridley, formerly sports editor at The Sun, England’s biggest-selling newspaper. “There has never been another sport that could match up crowdwise against the national game. But the NFL is doing it and doing it successfully.”
Indeed, Wembley will be at its full NFL capacity of about 84,000 for the AFC East showdown.
The sellout comes despite the second half of the game conflicting with the kickoff of Arsenal vs. Manchester United, two of the most popular teams in the Premier League, meeting at the Emirates Stadium, which is 8 miles away.
Further claims on the consumer pound will come a day earlier as England’s hopes of remaining in rugby’s biggest global tournament will be determined when it meets Australia at Twickenham Stadium, 9 miles south of Wembley.
If ever there was a time when the NFL could get lost in a frenetic sporting shuffle, this would appear to be it.
But even though the Jets-Dolphins game is not the most marquee of matchups, it is being treated by the British sporting community and news media as a key part of a celebratory weekend of athletic competition, shoulder-to-shoulder with the other showpieces.
“That has been hugely encouraging to us,” Waller said. “With the (soccer) and the rugby, you are talking about huge events that are captivating this country. But we are still selling out, right in the middle of it all. It shows us that there is demand for what we have to offer, there is passion for it and commitment to it, whatever else is happening.”
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That passion in the face of such competition can only increase the likelihood of an NFL team making London its permanent home, which Waller says could become a reality as early as 2022.
Perhaps out of everything that has happened since the NFL first brought a regular season game to London in 2007 — the Dolphins lost that one to the New York Giants — this weekend is the biggest indicator that a genuine base of support is in place, one that cannot be easily distracted by other interests.
According to Ridley, the NFL has done a strong job of marketing itself to families, with a high proportion of women and children at games.
Meanwhile, the NFL is pushing ahead with three games in London this year, and there might have been a fourth if not for venue constraints caused by the Rugby World Cup.
While Wembley, home of England’s national soccer team, has hosted every International Series game to date, the new home venue for Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur will begin to feature a minimum of two NFL games a season for 10 years starting in 2018.
The facility, which will be less than 10 miles north of central London, is being designed with the NFL in mind, with a retractable artificial field, NFL-sized locker rooms and tunnels at the corner of the end zones (as well as the soccer norm of tunnels at midfield).
“Given the flexibility the second pitch provides, the short setup time required for it and the dedicated facilities throughout, (eight home games) would be possible, subject to planning permission,” Tottenham executive director Donna Cullen said in an email.
There is heavyweight political support behind a London franchise too, with Boris Johnson, the mayor of London and regarded as a future contender to be prime minister, strongly in favor.
Before he crossed the Atlantic Ocean, Jets quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick seemed to have no doubt that London would have a team to call its own before too long.
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“It will happen,” Fitzpatrick said. “It is just a case of when.”
But for the league’s first fully fledged overseas club to gain traction, it will need to overcome a trait of the British psyche: loyalty.
British sports fans are a peculiarly and admirably honorable bunch, and it is considered nothing less than sacrilege to shift support from one team to another.
Given that British-based NFL fans have their own favorite clubs — be it the Dallas Cowboys, Green Bay Packers or Oakland Raiders — that might present a quandary.
“I got into American football in the 1980s,” said London accountant Ian Pooley on Wednesday. “There was tremendous glamor. English sports at the time were very staid and dour by comparison.
“I fell in love with the San Francisco 49ers, larger than life characters like Jerry Rice. I couldn’t get enough of it. They will always be my team, even if London gets a club.”
Phil Dorward, public relations director of the English Premier League, noted that the concept of UK sports fans sticking by their team and not switching allegiance was a “very British thing.”
Nevertheless, more than 40,000 fans bought package tickets for all three of this season’s London games, which could indicate a season-ticket base would be easily found.
European-based fans, about 2,000 of whom will again take cheap flights, ferries or trains to get to Sunday’s game, have shown a willingness to get behind an English team, with a caveat.
“I could support a London-based team, but I hope they would market it as a team representing Europe,” said Joachim Schulze, a systems analyst from Hamburg who will attend his fourth International Series game. “I like the (Pittsburgh) Steelers, but I’d make a London team my first choice.”
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