Throughout the wide world of sports, there are many different sports leagues that compete against each other to become the best in either an entire region or large sections of the world.
From cricket to soccer to rugby, different leagues compete to make their respective sport better and as popular as they can throughout the world.
Here in the United States, the National Football League has become one of the newest entity to start contending in the world sports market due to the sport's tremendous popularity in America.
After nearly two decades of NFL Europe and preseason games in places such as Berlin, the NFL was an extremely slow mover in making itself a global brand.
The only place outside of North America that actually seemed to like the NFL is Germany, which had five out of the six NFL Europe teams before the league shut down in 2007 (the only NFL Europe team that was not located inside Germany in 2007 was the Amsterdam Admirals).
During this time, the NFL had started playing NFL games at London's Wembley Stadium, beginning in 2007 with the New York Giants facing the Miami Dolphins.
Also, the Buffalo Bills played one game in 2009 away from Ralph Wilson Stadium at Toronto's Rogers Centre as part of the Bills' Toronto Series.
Over the years, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has stated he wants to either put two NFL games at Wembley Stadium each year or add an NFL franchise in London by relocation or expansion.
But with the NFL having been "rushed" into globalization, is it too little too late?
The reason why I ask this question is because the NFL has been trying to globalize at a fast rate during the last three years, but it has never has been able to truly gain a foothold except in Germany and Mexico.
In both of these countries, the NFL has experienced some popularity. But for some reason, the NFL will not expand in these markets.
Mexico has a bigger population than the United Kingdom and way more NFL fans right now than there are in England.
In 1994, a preseason game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Houston Oilers garnered a crowd of 112,246 at Mexico City's Estadio Azteca. In the only regular season game held in Mexico, there was a then-record NFL attendance of 103,467 at Azteca.
There is a growing amount of NFL merchandise being bought in Mexico, and the NFL is really hurting itself by not tapping the key market that exists in Mexico.
Attendence has steadily grown for the annual NFL games staged at Wembley, but there has been no big boost for the NFL in England. The English Premier League is not only the most popular sports league there but in the world.
Where the Premier League has been able to succeed is where the NFL has become a failure: globalization.
The NFL has never been able to garner as many fans as it should in the Asian market and has not properly used any of the other markets it has attempted to break into.
For example, look at Germany. The NFL has never put a regular season game there despite the success of NFL Europe there. Germany has stadiums that are more than capable of hosting NFL games.
A 1:00 p.m. EST game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Miami Dolphins would start at 7:00 p.m. German time, which would be in prime time for the German audience. It would broadcast at the exact same time as the other games for that week in America, which wouldn't interfere with the normal NFL television schedule.
But the possibilities for Germany do not end there. The NFL could put this game during the middle to end of December, the exact same time that the German Bundesliga (the top German soccer league) takes its annual winter break.
So, the NFL could put a game between two potential playoff teams in a foreign country right before the NFL playoffs and garner more cash than they would back here in America.
But of course, the NFL will never do that as they consider that British market too important.
Next, there is Mexico, a potential gold mine with its growing NFL fan base.
If the NFL were to put a game in Azteca, they would be able to have a higher attendance there than any other NFL stadium (except Cowboys Stadium).
In this situation, the NFL should actually take a page out of the Buffalo Bills' notebook, and move either a San Diego Chargers or the Arizona Cardinals game to Mexico City.
If they did that, the NFL would easily sell out Azteca, and it would be able to appease the Mexican fans that love the NFL.
But of course, the NFL will not do that either as it sticks to its plan that will doom the league to failure.
how is the NFL dooming itself for failure you might ask? It all comes down to globalization.
Instead of gaining large potential audiences to help make the sport bigger worldwide, the NFL is instead sticking to its plan of isolation.
Basically, Americans have seen themselves as the best with the best of everything, but that no longer is going to work with the global market that now exists around us.
Every other league in the United States has taken way bigger steps to not only become a better league on the world stage, but also to have stars from other countries now able to play in their respective sports.
Meanwhile, the NFL has an overwhelming majority of American-born players, and it cannot get players from overseas due to a lack of exposure that it gets outside of North America.
With globalization, each sports league has been able to become popular all across the planet, especially in Asia where the NHL's New York Islanders have been able to play a preseason game before the NFL, which they plan on doing this upcoming summer.
In case you were wondering, the closest NFL has gotten to playing games in China were 13 preseason American Bowl games held in Toyko from 1989 to 2005. A preseason game was supposed to be played on China in 2007 but was postponed until 2009 and then got scraped altogether.
Currently, there are no plans for a preseason game in the country that has the world's fastest growing economy.
Also, in the other countries that are known as the "Asian Tigers" (South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong) along with Japan, there have been no new developments of even a preseason game happening in the near future.
Meanwhile for the NBA and the EPL, they have had preseason games in these countries over the last several years. MLB has had several regular season games in Japan since 2000, and a growing number of foreign players from these countries.
In 2002, the FIFA World Cup was co-hosted by South Korea and Japan.
From this, the three leagues have been able to gain money and have growing fan bases in each of those countries, and FIFA was able to help start a fan base for soccer there with the World Cup.
With all of this in mind, the NFL might have continued to grow as an American sports league, but it will ultimately fail due to globalization.
Every sport's league that contends against the NFL in America has been able to make its sport more popular overseas and get a bigger fan base, while the NFL is still living off of the U.S. dollar.
One might think that might not be bad at all with the NFL's success, but the dollar continues to lose its value, and dependency on the U.S. market is not the best idea for the NFL.
That is part of the reason why there is a 10 percent unemployment rate in America, and why people outside of the United States are able to gain jobs.
Granted, the world economy is starting to recover, but sports for the most part have been unaffected. It continues to grow with the many personalities that exist in their respective sports.
But during the time in which the NFL truly is in a must expand situation, the NFL will ultimately fail because it is failing to truly globalize. Other leagues are able to get into new markets and gain more money.
This has been a problem that no one wants to face, but the NFL must realize that they will need a miracle if they are going to continue to succeed in the long term.
Football is no longer just an American sport anymore. With American servicemen playing football on their off time, the game received notice from the people of the countries these servicemen were stationed. American football, or "gridiron football," has been going strong for some time now. Football is being played in several countries around the world.
Here's a list of countries playing (American) football:
American Samoa, Argentina, Austria, Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Costa Rica, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Chili, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Moldova, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Scotland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United States (of course), Uruguay, Thailand, Australia, and Venezuela.
In the not to distant future, the United States will be introduced to just one of the players from Germany who was selected in the second round (58th overall), of the 2009 NFL draft by the New England Patriots. Sebastian Vollmer, who is an offensive lineman, has become the first European-trained player to be drafted. He began his career with the Dusseldorf Panthers (Dusseldorf, Germany). Vollmer played for the University of Houston, and was noticed by the scouts of several NFL teams.
The National Football League has made the claim that they introduced football to the world. When the real trans-Atlantic carriers of the game, was actually our servicemen. However, the NFL failed to keep it's NFL Europa going. NFL Europa was originally thought to expand the game to Europe, gathering it's players from the host countries.
Why did NFL Europa fail? The league was designed to get it's players from the host country. But the original plan changed to only two players from the host country, were on each team. The host country players mostly rode the bench.
If the NFL thought that the plan to incorporate just a few players from the host country would gain them some notice, they did, but in the wrong way. Europeans are like us—if we are not able to watch players from our home country, we’re not inclined to be a part of the game.
The game of football is a unique sport where it's players learn to plan strategies, use tactics, speed, agility, and sometimes brute force to achieve the goal of the game. All human beings have the drive to be competitive; it's just human nature. With the expansion of football around the world, it may not be to long in coming, when others will want to make the sport a national competition.
OK, we know of the NFL and the NCAA, but what about these other (American) football leagues?
Here is a list of leagues:
Italian Football League, International Federation of American Football, Norway American Football Federation, German Football League, Liga Nacional de Futbal Americano (Spain), American Football Bund Osterreich (Austria), Japan American Football Association, British American Football League, Urban Football League (Japan), Norwegian Football League (Norway), Football Americano Argentina (Argentina), Commonwealth American Football League (Bahamas), Associacao de Futebol Americano do Brasil (Brazil), Federacion Mexicana de Futbol Americano (Mexico), Uruguay Football League, European Federation of American Football, Belgian Football League, American Football Croatia, Ceske Asociace Americkeho Fotbalu (Czech Republic), Danish American Football Federation, American Football Association of Finland, Union of American Football of Russia, Central European Football League, Swedish American Football Federation, British American Football League, Israeli Football League, etc.
If the game of American football is on a continued path of growth, it will require further media coverage. Knowledge is key. Though soccer is the world's most popular sport, American football should give it some stiff competition.
Will we see the emergence of a World Super Bowl? Only time will tell.
In America, people go to watch football several times a year to see their favorite club play. It has recently become a "national pastime" here, but the NFL has bigger plans than just here—they want to expand the NFL across the pond to Great Britain to get the English more involved in the American game.
They have already have started to do this, as they have had a regular season game there for the last two seasons and have had exhibition games in Europe for the last several seasons in the NFL's master plan to get the game to grow throughout England.
Also, the NFL created NFL Europa, which became a success in several European countries.
Here in America, people believe that this plan can work out, as they believe that with time, the NFL will become a major sport overseas.
However, there are several problems with this theory that the common fan either doesn't understand completely or doesn't want to understand about why this plan will never work out.
Here are 10 reasons why American Football won't work in England.
1. Isolated for too long
The NFL never took the initiative to spread their game overseas until the 21st century, which is an extremely long time considering that baseball, hockey, and basketball, the three other biggest sports in America, had all been spread across the pond many years ago, unlike American Football, which has waited too long to expect immediate successes in England.
2. Travel
To go to London or any other major city in England, a person would have to take a seven-hour and 25-minute flight to go from New York City to London.
With the long travel and multiple time zones that the players will have to deal with, the NFL won't be able to succeed overseas.
3. Lack of a major stadium
Whenever the NFL plays their only game in London, they always play at the new Wembley Stadium.
However, what many Americans don't realize is that the new Wembley is the most expensive stadium ever built, and the Football Association (which own the stadium) had to pay so much money to build the stadium that they will now give the stadium temporarily to multiple groups in order to regain money that they used on the stadium.
Also, the FA will have other events, such as concerts, rugby, English football championships, and English National team games all ahead of the NFL, which would force the NFL to not be able to use Wembley as their home stadium.
4. No current fanbase
Right now because of American Football's lack of time in England, there is no true major fanbase of English people in the UK, which would lead the NFL to not be able to establish its popularity as it has in the United States.
5. Rugby
Currently the most popular sport in the world that isn't in the Olympics, Rugby is a game that is not only tougher than American football, but also is rooted into the British as a game that they will always love more than American Football, which gives players 30 seconds to recuperate after just one play and has a TV timeout after nearly every five minutes. This is rather unlike rugby, which is fierce, doesn't ever stop, and has very few TV timeouts.
6. The REAL Football
In something that I still don't understand, American football is a game NOT PLAYED with their feet, which makes the entire name of the game untrue.
In England, football (which is played with people's feet, not their hands) is the most popular game in the country by far.
The Barclays English Premier League (EPL) is not only more popular in England than the NFL is in America, but is also considered by many to be the most popular league in the world.
The fans there love it, and if their team is not in the EPL, they will still support their team if they are in the Football League Championship, or in a league that is way below the EPL.
Also, fans have competitions such as the FA Cup and the UEFA Champions League, which all are more important to anybody than one NFL game (including the Super Bowl) will ever be there.
In addition, most of the teams in Britain have existed longer than the NFL has ever existed, which makes their influence extremely important to each individual community that exists there.
Also, the fans will not like having the NFL take away their stadiums and their time when their teams are playing there, as they don't want anything interrupting them from watching their football.
If the NFL were ever to put a team in England, they will be forced to play on another day, which would cause confusion throughout the league, as teams need a full week to recuperate from their game the week before.
7. American Influence
In Britain, the odds that a game that only American players play in becoming successful are slim to none.
This is mainly because not one English person wants to see a game that no English players are playing in.
8. Failure of NFL Europe/London Monarchs
In 1991, the World League of American Football (WLAF), which was the predecessor to NFL Europa, created a team called the London Monarchs.
In the Monarchs' first year of play, they won the first ever World Bowl, and it appeared that the team was going to become successful, as they also were able to bring in over 40,000 fans a game on average to the old Wembley Stadium.
However, the league had a two-year hiatus, and when it came back, the Monarchs were forced to move to White Hart Lane (the home of Tottenham Hotspur FC), and attendance then fell by half in the Monarchs' return to play in the WLAF.
Afterwards, the Monarchs moved to Stamford Bridge (home of FC Chelsea), and with even more dwindling attendance, the Monarchs had to play in three different stadiums for the 1998 season. But attendance fell under an average of 6,000 fans per game, and the NFL Europe then replaced the Monarchs with the Berlin Thunder.
Because of the failure of the Monarchs in England after their first season, fans never showed up, and the Monarchs lost so much support that they moved between to many home stadiums, which forced the team to eventually fold.
9. The Financial Crisis
For the last year now, the world has been in a worldwide recession, which makes it hard for people to enjoy leisure events, which includes sports.
Also, in the last year, the NFL has been impacted severely by this recession, as they have been forced to cut 10 percent of jobs at the end of 2008. Commissioner Roger Goodell took a pay cut in order to help with the league's survival.
Because the NFL has been impacted by the recession more than nearly any other sport in America, they won't be able to create teams in cities such as Los Angeles and San Antonio, and this will also hurt the impact of the sport in England, as the NFL will be using fewer resources to expand interest in Britain.
10. Fans not accepting the NFL
Finally, many people in England just don't want to have the NFL become a part of their sporting culture, as they already have enough sports to keep them entertained. They also don't want to have a game that isn't as fierce as rugby or a sport that takes away the name of the country's favorite game (football/soccer).
Finally, as hard as the NFL may try to get the English to become fans of the game, it won't succeed because of lack of fan support and the fact that the British fans won't grow towards a game that they just don't like, among other things listed above.
However, if the NFL wanted to go back to a different country to try to spread their game, they should go to Germany to spread their game, as five of the final six teams to ever play in NFL Europa played there, and the German fans really took a liking to the game.
Finally, American Football will never succeed across the pond in England for many different reasons. The NFL should realize this, as they are trying to get something to succeed in a place that won't accept it for what it is.
If anyone has any opinions about this article and the NFL's impact in England, please don't hesitate to post a comment telling me about how you feel about this issue.
Every year, the NFL has games in England, and they seem to be very successful. It looks like many fans in England are interested in the NFL; just look at the way they show up to the NFL games there.
All this begs a natural question: Should the NFL expand to England?
There are a few reasons why some people will say "No" to this idea; here are a five of them.
1. You cant ask players to fly back and forth to England every week; it is not fair to the players (or coaching staff).
2. It may never catch on there, so why take the risk?
3. Now is not the time to try new things with the economy's downfall.
4. There will be scheduling problems due to not having an even number of teams, not to mention the difference in time zone.
5. The NFL is perfect; we do not need it to change.
I do not think that these are good reasons to let go of this idea when there are so many positives to doing this.
But before we go to why, let's look for answers to the why nots.
About the poor players flying back and forth between the US and England, I think that it is not asking too much.
It's not every day that they will be flying; just twice in a week when applicable. It's not baseball, so you only have one game each week.
These players make a lot of money. They are already flying twice a week, and it's not that bad to add some travel time if you are making millions of dollars. We are not asking them to slay a dragon.
About the risk of it not catching up in England, I do not agree. I think that this game has the potential to be big in England.
England has great people and great soccer/football fans. Why can't they be great American football fans? I know this sounds like kissing up to England, but we need to give their fans the respect they deserve.
And it is not that far away; it's only about 2,000 miles.
And what about the economy?
Is this a bad idea in this time?
I do not think so; it looks like things are slowly getting better with the economy. So the NFL does not need to expand to England right now. They can wait three or four years before even announcing it.
What about the uneven number of teams? Well, the answer is easy.
You guys will say I am crazy, but why not add two team to England?
One in London, where the population is 7,172,091, and one in Birmingham or Liverpool. As long as it is in the Metropolitan district where the population is 2,284,093. (Correct me if I am wrong; I am reading this in Wikipedia.)
And with the people that say the NFL is perfect and that making change is a waste of time, I do not agree.
Yes, the NFL is great. The NFL is the most successful sport in the USA, but it can always get better.
Having a team in England means more fans, more games, more love of the game, and, at the end of the day, more fun. And that is why the NFL should do this...it has so much upside.
Think about it: You can plan a summer vacation to England and match it up with when your team is going to play there.
It would be amazing. Let's get this message to Roger Goodell.
Football to England!
I’ve been reading your articles for months now, so I decided to join the community and become the first French writer on this website (I think).
You might be wondering why a French guy would like to write something about football. Do they even know that sport?
Yes, we do and we play it as well. This isn't enough to write an article, but you will admit that the current NFL's roadshow overseas, foregrounded by the NFL Europe and the past and future games in the UK, puts me in a good position to learn you some stuffs about football in Europe and in France, my beloved country.
First of all, you need to know that in Europe, "football" means "soccer," so we call it "American football."
It was introduced in France at the beginning of the 1980s by a sports teacher coming back from Denver.
At that time, the players usually played on rugby fields and nobody knew what the sport was.
Today, it's more recognized thanks to movies (primarily Any Given Sunday), but most of the population still ignores its rules and confounds it with rugby.
Moreover, the football players are often called steroid addicts and pussies for wearing helmets. Other people think the pads are made of metal like during the Middle Ages.
There is always a comparison with rugby in Europe because of the physical aspect of these sports. It's that true that the league nicknamed football, "Rugby à XI."
Our clubs/teams are nothing like yours. Indeed, the budget of our league (FFFA) is only 1,000,000€ and there are only 15,000 players for 194 clubs. Moreover, our players don't come from a draft because in Europe the sports system works thanks to federations (leagues) that join each team together. So, to belong to a team you just need to hold a license that you pay.
There is no selection and everybody, even the skinniest guy, can join a team. The French teams play the Football World Cup each year, which is led by Japan. After summarizing football in France, I'll introduce our guys.
You may have heard about Richard Tardits, former Patriot linebacker (1990-1992), and first French player in the NFL. He also played in the USA during the 1999 Rugby World Cup.
But you surely have heard about Phillipe Gardent, who played for the Centurions (NFL Europe) and won Defensive Player of the Year in 2005. He was the first ever non-American to win the award. This enabled him to join the NFL, or at least the practice squad of the Washington Redskins.
Unfortunately, they released him, but he signed a 2-year contract with the Carolina Panthers, but didn't pass the summer camp because he was too old.
Then, he decided to join the CFL, but finally ended up in Cardiff to play "Rubgy à XII" (I think you notice how rugby is close to football in the French mind).
Finally, there are no French players in the NFL, but we've got some good players in NFL Europe who might reach the league. Fortunately for us, Tony Parker saves us, but this is another topic...
To conclude, I really hope you had a good time reading my work because it took me time, so if you enjoyed it I'll reiterate. I'm all ears if my grammar is horrible; I did my best to not make many mistakes.
Clément.
Some links:
Phillipe Gardent's official website: http://www.philgardent.com/
FFFA's official website: www.fffa.org
