Pats’ Robert Kraft wants NFL team in London: “We’re starting to tap out in the U.S.”
 

“I think we’re starting to tap out in the United States. If you look at the last Super Bowl we were in this past season, we had over 180 million people watching – that’s almost two thirds of America. So for us to grow the game, we have to expand globally. Having seen the kind of support we have received here in London, it is the intention of the NFL owners to get two games here, starting next year.

Pats

Anyone see the irony of an owner of a team called the Patriots wanting to start a team in London?

And he claims they are the most popular team NFL team in the UK!

Stupid idea. It's football ... American football. If they simply must do it, put a team in Canada or even Mexico, not some place like London. Forcing a team to travel 12+ hours for one away game, or the London team traveling 12+ hours for EIGHT away games, is just absurd.

Ok then, move your team over there.

No. No teams there or in Canada or Mexico.

I would say Canada.

I guess they would become the EX Pats.

It's insane & stupid.

I think there is no way they can only add one european team. Because just like you're saying, the tavel would be insane. Its better if they just restart the NFL Europe. I'd like to see the last 6 teams in Germany/Netherlands, 2 teams in the UK and preferably a Snadinavian team in Stockholm or Copenhagen. Paris would be a good option too.

Again with the London NFL team ...

While I am sure there are a number of hardcore American football fans in Europe, just planting a team in London is not going to bring in massive numbers of fans. I doubt the market would support a bona fide NFL team. Sure it may be an attraction for a while (like NFL Europe), but that is just it, an attraction.

Never mind the passion for Soccer, the NFL is going to have an issue with fans identifying with the team: should the NFL put a team in Europe, it'd have to be with American players. There is no way you can field a competitive NFL team with European players. Sure they may throw in the token English dude to play special teams, but the skill players would have to be from the US. Think about it: would people in the US be as passionate about football if all the players were foreigners?

San Antonio, LA, ATL, and Oklahoma City all come to mind as cities that might support pro teams before the NFL has to go international

The game doesn't NEED to grow anymore. It will continue to gain popularity here in the U.S. as long as Roger doesn't destroy it. To try to make this an international sport would just be greed, and it's bound to backfire. It would be a logistical nightmare of epic proportions. People who follow the NFL in Europe or wherever else have done so without having a team over there this whole time. Bringing a team to London wouldn't change anything.

I can tell you that if they started a rugby team here in Louisiana, I wouldn't care because I think it's a boring sport. On the other hand, a few people here might would enjoy it... But that's just it, a few. I have a feeling that's probably how people view American football in Europe.

I would have used Soccer for that analogy, but we've already had soccer teams around here. And as you can tell, it isn't very popular. I'm not trying to dis anyone who enjoys watching or playing soccer, but this is just the way it is by and large.

kind of a slap in the face to Canada....

Actually you guys are kinda wrong about the interest in europe. The NFL has a massive fanbase over here but the interest in the local teams are not that great. NFL Europe however was a different story, the quiality of the product was so high that interest was high too. It was not a mere attraction but had a big and devoted following. The last year of th leauges existance they set attendence records in all 5 German cities. Frankfurt had an average attendance of over 30,000 in 2007. Average attendance that year for the whole leauge was 20,020. The last World Bowl played in 2007 had 48,125 people in the stands.

The biggest problem the leauge had was spending. It would have been wiser to cut costs and increase revenue instead of folding the leauge.

I played the Europan championships in 2010. They were held in Frankfurt, Germany, and 3 years after the leauge folded the most common jersey in the stands were not one of the national teams there competing but Frankfurt Galaxys purple one. A lot of the German fans I talked to are still longing to get "their" team back. For the Galaxy to disappear for them was as bad as if the Saints would be relocated to LA for example. They are just as passionate.

Like I said, the best thing NFL could do would be to start the leauge again and really focus on getting european players on the field, that would help to fuel the interest and there are many european players playing D1 ball right now so finding them players is not a problem.

Hmm the turncoats or Arnolds ?

You know the London team will be named the RedCoats :) Starting a UK old colony rivalry between Patriots and the RedCoats.
Which would quickly make the Patriots as popular as Dallas, and substantially increase Krafts revenue.
Hmm wonder what his motivation is....

The "Old England Patriots"?

One of the major problems with putting the NFL in europe is you would have to create a entire Conference because of the travel to and from the US, I think.

So their would have to be the..
AFC
NFC
EFC (europe)

with each each team in AFC,NFC, and EFC doing 1 plane trip a season for an away game. This is the only way I see this working, or becoming popular.

Thats 4 Divisions and 16 teams threw out europe. Thats countess billions of dollars as startup. Years to plan and pull off.

In what division do you put 1 or 2 UK teams ?
And I don't see any american taking a UK division of 4 teams seriously , when all they do is play against themselves.

They need to give the small market owners or new owners a shot 1st in canada, mexico, europe, etc.., before they start handing contracts to Jerry Jones, or Kraft. That has monopoly written all over it.

I personally agree. The talent pool is already stretched pretty thin with just 32 teams, and adding would dilute the product even more.

Think about it, are there really 32 starter-quality QB's in the league? Some teams (Cleveland, Jacksonville) don't even have a quality #1 WR, even fewer have a quality #1 RB (although committee is the way of things now). The story repeats itself in every phase of the game.

Averaging 30,000 fans might have sounded good to that league, but it isn't close to the average attendance here. I know you guys get way more fans in the stands for soccer than you did for NFL Europe. The point isn't that no one cares over there, but it's that not enough of them do.

Also the majority of the players were NFL players sent over there, almost as a minor league type of deal. So the players weren't very high quality in general, and you weren't really seeing a true european league. That makes it harder for fans to identify with their team when they don't have a lot of their countrymen playing. So it didn't make any sense to keep throwing money down the drain for something that was basically just an NFL minor league. Now, if we include European teams in the real NFL you have to deal with the logistics of crossing the ocean and dealing with jet lag almost every week. Those teams would also have one less day of practice then everyone else because of the incredibly long flight. It would never work.

I agree Burn. Football would have to be introduced at the collage level in these countries, so they have their own countrymen playing, and canada is the most logical 1st place because they are already into it.
Adding the CFConference to the NFL, and signing 3 more teams , so there are 12, with 3 divisions, makes the most sense.

I don't know , maybe one of the teams added could be from england.
But, I do not see europeans cheering for americans representing their country in a american game.
Same as I don't see baseball being as popular here if 95% of the players were from japan. Theres nothing to identify with.
Probably better for the NFL to start at the high school and college level in europe, and let american teams draft players from those schools. Until enough of a fan base is built to sustain a Conference .

Kind of like cuba. Baseball is huge because we sign players from there, and they could have 1-2 teams there, if they were not a military dictatorship.

I used to hate the Patriots...
 

and while I still do because they are cheaters,I don't mind them so much anymore since we pretty much rape them every time we play them. :P

Regarding the games in London,I'm all for it. I've been wanting to go to London for years and what would be more awesome than going to a soccer game and a Saints game while I was there! It would be as if a little piece of L.A. came with me.

Not to mention the games get great support there. Also if they go global maybe they'll have to have a global President/CEO and he'll get rid of Goodell. Hey I can dream! :)

What Kraft doesn't get is that the Patriots do really well there, because they are a really good team, playing in London against bottom feeders, so the travel and distance and energy drain isn't a factor.

You can sorta cobble together a stat, or a theory, that the team that loses in London, pretty much never does anything much the rest of the year. No team that played in London has ever advanced to the Championship game or past the divisional round that same year. The only ones that make the playoffs lose quickly. I can't prove any of this, but it's got to have some kind of effect, especially on making a mediocre team tank and check out for the rest of the season. Just look at who's played and what's happened to them. Including the Saints the year we played. Last in the division.


I think he is more likely talking about having 8 teams play "away" games in London, against a London "home team," instead of 1 game a year there with 2 teams; and then the London team would travel to the US for lengthy road trips of 2-3 games each, where they would play "on the road" and then the players from the US would be spending all of their time except for "home" games, in the US. They would practice in the US, probably hold their training camp in the US, etc. You don't need to create 4 new teams or a whole new conference or anything. Think of it like 8 London games, and for the London team players, the "home" games are really likr "away" games and the "away" games are really like home games.

It'd be hell on the players, all the travel, but for a shot at the NFL? They'd do it.

And I'd add to my own comment, that for the players, it would permanently be like the Saints' 2005 season: all of their games would feel like exiled road games, including the supposedly "home" games. And it'd be really super hard for a team facing that, to very successful on the field.

It was a minor leauge and should be a minor leauge. No need to mix it up with the big boys.

That attendance was high enough (and increasing) for a minor leauge, spending was the problem.
There is not a problem having american player but having some from europe helps. Compare it to european soccer where a English team might have 2 guys from england and then the rest from everywhere else. Its not the nationality that is important but what club you represent. An like i previously posted, it should only be a minor leauge, that is enough.

Speaking as an Englishman:

I don't think nationality matters. We could live with that. What does matter, and would make the whole thing a flop IMO, is that everyone who is interested in American Football in England is already a fan of someone else. A UK New Orleans fan wouldn't become a London fan overnight. Remember that in NFL Europe, the London team dropped out because there wasn't enough support.

The other problem is that we're much more parochial over here. I live 200 miles from London - that probably counts as local in the US, distances are so much greater. It's not local here. If I go to a 4pm kickoff at Wembley on Sunday, I won't be able to get home on the train on Sunday night. And driving, it takes a good two hours to get away from Wembley - the traffic arrangements are hopeless, London was not designed like American cities - and I'd be home well after midnight. Fair enough for a one-off, or I can stay overnight and take a day off work for a one-off, but not all season long.

Also, Wembley cost a fortune to build, way over budget - which means its owners (the Football Association, that's the soccer lot) charge an absolute bomb to rent it out. The annual London games cost about the same in pounds as your games do in dollars, which means translated cost is about half as much again as you pay. That's more than all but the most extreme Premier League soccer, for example.

Finally, a trend - the first London game sold out on the first day the tickets were offered. The second, took a week or two. Last year, there were tickets at face value close to the day of the game. Interest fades as the game gets less special. Certainly it takes a hit because there isn't a home team atmosphere, and lack of atmosphere takes a lot away from the game. But don't rely even on a second London game filling Wembley, let alone a full season's worth.

(I don't think the distance and time difference is an issue. New York to London is only 800 miles further than Los Angeles to Hawaii, and college teams cope with that. You'd just have to make an allowance for west coast teams travelling to London - put the bye week in the right place, something like that.)

Name 1 English team with only 2 English guys in it :)

And maybe for you a minor league is enough, but that is not what the NFL wants. The NFL wants NFL-type gate (as in NFL-type revenue). They don't want a stadium with 20-30,000 people who bought a ticket the week before... they want PSL owners, and luxury suite owners, people sitting on the bleachers paying $5.00 for bottled water, $10.00 for beer in a plastic cup, $7.50 for nachos, $20.00 for parking... oh! and TV contracts.

If a minor league with 20-30,000 people a game was enough for the NFL, there would still be an NFL Europe, but obviously, since it no longer is, it wasn't enough.

That'd be too late... has to be from High School.

Yeah that would probably be the best way to go about it if they seriously want NFL teams over there. Don't know how feasible that would be, but it would be necessary.

I just have to agree with Burn and Tobias on this. The NFL wants a large cash cow foot print and to eventually be the #1 or #2 sport where they decide to go.
They want 60,000- 120,000 seat stadiums filled with fans , and merchandise flying off the shelves.

For this to happen the culture of europe and canada has to buy into the traditions, legions, and history of the NFL. Passing teams down from father to son and daughter. I don't think football being 2nd to soccer is bad. Their is plenty of money to support football and a secondary sport, and soccer stadiums can be used as football stadiums, they are huge,lol.

I just don't see this happening until Germans, french, Italians, and British are packed in a pub or Wirtshaus on draft day waiting for their favorite player from Oxford, Freie Universität Berlin, to come up for draft.

Football is as much as cultural thing as a sport in america. Thanksgiving day traditions and so forth. It just can't be shrink wrapped , like so many american products, and shipped to other countries.
ITs also one of the most complicated and technical sports created. You might be right on this , but I just think a minor league won't fly over there, with only american boys.

I think Burn is right to this probably should be started on the high school level, have the NFL fund European colleges to start programs. Then is 10-20 years try to start some Pro teams. Until then only canada has the culture to support a money cash cow immediately.

Its going to take a real commitment, and years of building and supporting school programs. But, Im with you, I think this is the only way for the NFL to be a solid sport over there that will grow every season, and became part of the culture.

Never happen... The Euro is about to spin, crash, and burn!