As the Minnesota Vikings ‘host’ the Pittsburgh Steelers at London’s Wembley Stadium on Sunday, Britain’s premier handicapper Simon Milham looks at the potential for a UK franchise and draws some obvious conclusions…
The buzz at the combine in 2006 was that Jay Cutler was a safer pick than Vince Young.
A career 57.2% passer, Cutler had tossed 23 more touchdowns than interceptions in two different offenses over four seasons as a starter. He had a strong enough arm for the pros and good mobility.
Cutler was a pro-style quarterback from Vanderbilt. Young a talented runner from Texas with an unorthodox passing delivery.
“I think they want pocket guys who can move a little bit,” Cutler said before the draft. “You are not going to make a living running around in the NFL.”
Tennessee took Young at No.3 overall. The New York Jets, Oakland Raiders and Arizona Cardinals – all in need of QB help – passed on Cutler, who wound up as the fourth quarterback selected, drafted at No.11 by Denver. Despite being traded, his talent shone through. Cutler is now the face of the Chicago Bears franchise and led his team to a Super Bowl. Young has not appeared in an NFL regular-season game since 2011 with Philadelphia. The Bills released him last August. The Packers did the same before the season began this year.
For every Randal Cunningham, Donovan McNabb, Robert Griffin III and Russell Wilson, there is a Kordell Stewart, Michael Vick, Tarvaris Jackson and Tim Tebow, each of whom tried to establish their credentials with their arms and who were, at times, effective. But mostly, when their running game was taken away, they were ineffective.
Yet, like magpies, NFL general managers seem enamoured with these bright, shiny run-first QBs. They sell jerseys. They sell tickets. We buy the dream.
Many observers feel the NFL’s attempts to go global is yet another example of endemic, but ultimately flawed, infatuation.
In the finest tradition of American commercialism, what the NFL would like us to believe is that it is selling us a vision.
The NFL is, by almost any definition, more popular in the US than ever, with another attendance record expected this season. But the sport is also pushing closer to saturation point in North America.
Witness the Jacksonville Jaguars, a team that, historically, struggles with attendance.
The 740 million-person market in Europe, however, offers plenty of potential for revenue growth and the quest for international revenue growth has been the rare common ground between NFL owners and the players’ association.
Roger Goodell is a bundle of encouragement, a glass half-full guy who could set the world record for long-distance smiling. But he appears to have the memory of a Dory fish.
Haven’t we been here before, commissioner? It has been six years since the death of NFL Europe. At its final snap, it comprised five teams in Germany and one in Holland.
While attendances climbed steadily in its last three years, with Frankfurt Galaxy averaging 33,043 per game (almost double that of QPR’s average attendance in last season’s Premier League campaign), the NFL was losing around $30 million a season and it simply didn’t make good business sense to continue.
While the UK market was no less sophisticated than the German market, the London/England Monarchs had seen attendances drop from a first season average of 40,483 in 1991 to 5,944 in 1997, the year before they folded.
Fans in the UK wanted the real deal, not cast-offs, re-treads and back-ups. And the NFL listened.
When it was announced that the New York Giants would play the Miami Dolphins at Wembley in the first regular season NFL game held outside of North America in 2007, 40,000 tickets were sold in the first 90 minutes. Six years on, London will host two regular season games for the first time. Both games sold out quickly.
“The goal is to be a top five sport in the UK,” says Chris Parsons, vice president of NFL International. “Right now we’re around No.7 and we were down around No.18 when we started [in 2007].”
Players seem to like the experience. Fans certainly do.
So, like the running quarterback, is this a fad or can London truly sustain a franchise?
After 17 years, the NFL is still unable to place a franchise in Los Angeles, the nation’s number two sports market. Until that happens, it is unthinkable.
Owners like Robert Kraft back a London franchise option, as they see the potential – or rather the potential dollars – in such a move. It helps that Kraft’s New England Patriots have been the road team twice in London. Let’s see how positive he’d be if he was asked to lose a home game and face irate fans in Boston.
But selling out Wembley twice a year does not mean a franchise could be sustained. The majority of the 80,000-plus do not support either of the teams and while a good percentage know what a cover-2 defense is and understand a zone blitz, the game is still has a novelty value to the majority. They do not know when to cheer, when to keep quiet or when to stop the infernal wave.
There is no question the popularity of the sport in the UK has grown since the arrival in London of the regular season games. But the only newspaper that devotes regular coverage of the NFL is the Racing Post, which has provided betting analysis for 27 years.
Sports editors of national newspapers – the bulk of them public schoolboys reared on a diet of rugby and cricket – are simply unwilling or too dense to believe there is a world outside of the Premier League, with its dullard participants espousing dreary, sanitised quotes (that’s when you can understand them). And be honest, only three teams can buy/win the Premier League title. Yawn.
How thrilling it must be for your team of foreigners, whose names you can barely pronounce, much less spell, to be perennially in a relegation battle or attempting to finish fourth. Yes, fourth. Big whoop.
No wonder the NFL spies an opportunity.
Fortunately, the advances in satellite TV technology and internet means sports editors of national newspapers are no longer as important as they think they are.
And for any still left in doubt how popular the NFL has become in the UK, it is worth noting that the FA Cup final, England’s one-off Wembley showpiece, failed to attract a full house even with Premier League champions Manchester City involved. Yet both NFL Wembley games sold out quickly – even with the Jaguars as a participant.
However, even if the logistics of travelling, jet lag and scheduling could be somehow overcome (hint, they can’t), there are other major hurdles that prevent the NFL from placing a franchise in London.
Of course the city would welcome the NFL. It has the Olympic Stadium white elephant to fill and one NFL game at Wembley is estimated to be worth £20m to the economy.
The political will is also there; London mayor Boris Johnson would like nothing better than to add the delivery of an NFL franchise to his list of achievements.
Yet the fan-base still won’t sustain a team that suffers a 4-12 season for long, certainly not a fan-base that already aligns itself to other NFL teams. No matter how it is spun, British fans will not support the Jacksonville Jaguars at the expense of the teams they have followed for up to 30 years.
A new franchise would still be a second team for the vast majority of fans.
The government would also need to relax or change the taxation laws. As it stands, approximately half of a player’s salary would be allocated to the UK and taxed at a maximum rate of 50%. By comparison, the maximum rate in the U.S. is currently 35%. Would players want to move to England for at least six months, especially with children in American schools? Will they be happy with the higher cost of living on simple things like food and petrol?
Sure, London would love a franchise. As would Germany, Austria and Finland, European markets that have always had an affinity for American Football. A weekend in Frankfurt for an NFL game, for example, would be enticing and ultimately very pleasurable for most Brits.
But the obstacles in the path of a permanent franchise are immense. And it is a racing certainty that it will not happen at least within the next two decades. The franchise talk is just that: talk.
While UK sports editors had better get used to the idea that NFL is here to stay, a franchise in Europe is just a flight of fancy, a passing fad, just like the run-first quarterback. “You are not going to make a living running around in the NFL,” Cutler rightly prophesised.
The NFL needs to solve the attendance issues in Oakland, Tampa Bay and Jacksonville, and put a franchise in Los Angeles before even thinking about a permanent move to Europe.
Cutler might as well have said: “You are not going to make a living running around with the NFL” – not unless it is a showcase game in an emerging market just once or twice a season.
What we currently have is as good as it should get. And long may it continue.
This article first appeared in the UK edition of Lindy’s 2013 Pro Football Edition