Why regular season games in London??

I don't like the London games. What I do favor, however, is bringing back the NFL Europe league and making Goodell the commissioner of it. Then put it out of business again. This is a scenario that I am very intrigued with.

 

Awesome

 

If he wants football so bad in London, let him go there and stay there!

 

Well for what it's worth the one good thing about this is that the Steelers are very popular all over the world and any game for them outside of the U.S. would probably seem like a home game to the players

 

croke park in dublin seats close to 70,000 and has a full capacity of close to 82,000. with rooney being the ambassador . . . i'd be all over a steelers 'home game' in dublin. i'd DEFINITELY attend and i know A LOT of steelers fans would make that trip. barhop the temple bar, get back to the guiness factory, spend some time in cork and galway . . . maybe they'd make a terrible towel that looks like the irish flag and 70,000 people can be twirling that. bring another entire country onto the steelers bandwagon. we've got room. i think it'd be awesome.

i met a couple of brits at the steelers/bucs game in tampa in 2010 and they were blown away by how many steelers fans were there and they informed me there was no tailgating in the uk. they said everyone drank in the pubs prior to the game but there was no tailgating. they loved it.

 

That would be cool. How bout down under in Sydney ? I've got a business associate who lives in Australia. He's a big Steeler fan and he's told me there are many Steeler fans there. I've been to sydney several times over the last 10 years. Even without the Steelers its a beautiful and very friendly city to visit. Throw in a Steeler game and that would be icing on the cake

 

i would be ALL over that!! my business model requires me to travel around the country while living in cities for 3-4 month cycles. i have been wanting to do a cycle in sydney for a variety of reasons (namely, to be in sydney - AND, it happens to be their summer while it's our winter). the ONLY reason i haven't made the journey is because i didn't want to be that far away during football season. the time zone difference is crazy. i had a girlfriend who lived in papa new guinea and when it was sunday afternoon (or evening or something - i forget) in the states, it was like monday morning in sydney. also, i don't know how accessible the games are over there. do they offer directtv/nfl package? do the bars play the games? would they play 'em on a monday morning? the entire idea became overwhelming when i started to dissect it. the moving process would be a pain, i wasn't sure how my merchant services would work over there in relation to credit cards and australian money . . . still, i'd DEFINITELY buy a ticket and fly to sydney if the steelers were playing over there. i don't see it happening in the near future though.

ireland remains a real possibility.

 

This discussion reminds me of the commercial where they had Steelers fans with their Terrible Towels, all over the world (ex: someone was on the Great Wall of China with their towel.)

 

HERE WE GO!

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You ask, "Why?". I ask,"Why not?"

 

I've been to Sydney 3 times for only a week to 10 days on each visit but never during our NFL season. However my friend who lives there tells me they do have sports bars and some do show NFL games but like you said the time difference makes it very difficult. I mean my god it's tomorrow morning over there already LOL. If you ever have the chance to go you MUST do it. It would be one of if not the best overseas trips you've ever taken. My job has taken me to a number of different cities / countries over the years and the only place I liked as much as Sydney Australia was Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Now if Amsterdam could have Sydney's weather you'd really have something

 

I get to Australia every two years or so, mostly to Perth, but I occasionally overnight in Sydney. Beautiful City. A lot of Aussies are very familar with the NFL and follow it. It's reasonable popular over there. And I'm sure they'd fill Olympic Stadium or the MCG in Melbourne for a NFL game.

One thing I get a kick out of over there is that for a small population (about 25 million, think the population of PA and NY state combined), they follow fairly passionately 3 different kinds of 'football'. Aussie Rules, Rugby Union and Rugby League.
I went to Aussie Rules match once when I was there, very fast, very athletic game.

 

I wonder if the move to give the game to St Louis is a way of progressing the idea.

We used to have in London the American Bowl, which was a preseason game. The first few years were HUGE, as in the 80's people in the UK were getting to know the sport and there wasn't so much coverage on TV. Then, popularity waned, lost interest, and the American Bowl died.

There's still huge interest in the Wembley games, but I could well see that in 3 years time, the shine might have worn off a little. So the next step is to get a kind of "home team" that can give the event more of a distinctive flavour.

The problem for me with a lot of the marketing the NFL does over here (as well as the TV coverage) is it tends to act like we Brits have never heard of the game before. The superbowl has been televised here since 1983, I think (I've been following since '86), and yet every year when it's shown here, we still get the international commentary that explains the rules and gives really basic analysis. People here have been following the game for nearly 30 years, can have seasonwide coverage through GamePass - but often the coverage of the Wembley game is fairly patronising. We're not a new market, after all.

So when they announce that the Rams are going to be the kind of London "home" team for 3 years, it's not like all the NFL fans in the UK are going to start supporting the Rams, because they know how awful they are.

The coverage isn't always bad, I should add - Goodell often makes an appearance for a Q&A with the fans, and has been given a bit of a grilling about rule changes and so on. Don't think he was expecting it...

 

i wonder what the demographics are for those who attend an nfl game in london. i wonder what the percentage breakdown is among specific groups . . .

*die-hard fans - i mean, come on, if the steelers are playing out of the country for the first time in team history, i'm going. and i'm sure there are A LOT of steelers fans out there like me who are, even if they don't have the means, going to save up for a once-in-a-lifetime trip (wherever that may be) and kill two birds with one stone (a trip to london, see the sites AND a steelers game).
*nfl fans from america who live abroad - i would imagine if i moved to london that i would probably always buy a ticket for the game at wembley no matter what team was playing.
*europeans - i wonder if the locals in the uk really get excited about this game or if the attendance is dominated by the previous two groups.

 

I have a few friends who go every year, and there sense of it is, while there are a fair few Americans, it's primarily Brits. As I said, it's not a new market at all, there's a huge following in the UK, and the tickets get snapped up pretty much as soon as they're on release.

BUT that's so far been on the basis of the spectacle. If it becomes more regular, I ahve a feeling the shine might come off. For example, I really wanted to go to the first game, but couldn't make it. A few seasons later, I got offered a ticket to Pats-Bucs. Was I going to spend money I didn't have on watching two teams I can't stand? No, I'll wait until next year... once it becomes clear that the games are here to stay, I think attendance may well start to dwindle like they did with the American Bowl.

 

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