NFL comes to England

[Mr I]

I hope there is more of this to come, maybe one day there could be a word cup like in rugby, I'd love to see and England national side, maybe they could do it with baseball as well and have a real 'world' series

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...icle394082.ece :bravonew:

[Mr I]

BTW who will win Miami or New York?

[Bouncer]

BTW who will win Miami or New York?

hahaha, New York will crush them. miami sucks balls.

[babyblues]

Nope, it'll never catch on. They tried the world league and that flopped. They think it's kind of a novelty, but that's about it. American football just isn't something the rest of the world is interested in that much. Besides, football to them is soccer.

[Scrumhalf]

Hey Mr. Incredible, are there real American football fans in Blighty or is it just catering to an expatriate audience or just a novelty audience who will lose interest after a few games?

[Shibby]

Until the U.S. can catch onto soccer, I don't think the rest of the world will take interest in our football.

[Bouncer]

Nope, it'll never catch on. They tried the world league and that flopped. They think it's kind of a novelty, but that's about it. American football just isn't something the rest of the world is interested in that much. Besides, football to them is soccer.

thanks nostradamus. :hang:

[Mr I]

LOL guys throw me a fricken bone and read the article before you write it off.

Two points;

1) someone i the states obviousely thinks socer is catching on there otherwise LA Galaxy would not be paying Beckham £25m (like $50M) a year in wages and advertising.

2) Read the stats on worldwide AF fans, oh and by the way, what isn't mentioned is that our national sports stadium, nearly 90,000 seats virtually sold out within 2 hrs of the tickets becoming available!

The best thing about it is its on mainstream sky sports 2, no trouble geting it whereas over the Altantic I gather they didn't even show the Rugby World Cup, only on ppv

[Shibby]

I read it before, but here's my take on it. With the decline of baseball and the fall of hockey (still struggling to regain it's popularity) there is some room for a third sport behind football and basketball. They paid Beckham all that money to try and help bring publicity to the sport and get a lot more new fans watching. The thing is you don't get any MLS games unless you subscribe to a channel.

As for the Washington Redskins gathering the largest crowd; That's simply because they have the largest stadium. All but maybe 5 or 6 teams pretty much have a sold out crowd each week. Here's a list of the stadiums capacities. http://www.stadiumsofnfl.com/capacity.htm

[Scrumhalf]

1) someone i the states obviousely thinks socer is catching on there otherwise LA Galaxy would not be paying Beckham £25m (like $50M) a year in wages and advertising.

2) Read the stats on worldwide AF fans, oh and by the way, what isn't mentioned is that our national sports stadium, nearly 90,000 seats virtually sold out within 2 hrs of the tickets becoming available!

The best thing about it is its on mainstream sky sports 2, no trouble geting it whereas over the Altantic I gather they didn't even show the Rugby World Cup, only on ppv

From the looks of it, American Football seems to be a lot more popular in Europe than rugby is over here. I don't think there were more than 10,000 people here to watch the Eagles play the Springboks a couple of years ago.

It also illustrates the difference between the farsighted NFL and the myopic IRB. I bet the NFL made a deliberate and conscious decision to allow the game to be telecast on regular TV *even* if they would have made more money by ppv. They are keeping their eye on the long-term prize - establishing a robust presence on the other side of the pond.

The International Rugby Board on the other hand couldn't be more myopic. They could have negotiated a deal with ESPN or, heck, even Versus to show the Rugby World Cup games here. At least they could have been on cable TV. They could have also had lots of commercials inviting the American football diehards to watch the rugby matches - I bet most football fans, once they got the hang of the rules, would appreciate the skills, tackling, and physical nature of the sport.

Instead they pick Setanta Sports, an outfit that isn't even available on Comcast. They are making no attempts to make rugby popular in the US. The funny thing is that America is a natural place for rugby to take hold, compared to say Romania or Kazakhstan or whoever the favorite IRB minnows are these days. We have a long oval ball history - rugby would have been the national sport but for the intervention of a certain Walter Camp. Americans play a hugely popular football code that is very similar and we love physical contact sports.

I would argue that rugby has a much better chance of catching on in the US than does soccer simply because of the oval ball history here but if the IRB can be trusted to do anything, it is to screw up.

[Mr I]

God post SH, what tends to happen is kind in europe go on holiday to the US or have freinds that have and watch a game whilst there. As they get older the lack of availability dries up their interest. We do have American Football teams over here but they don't get the coverage.

It should be an international sort and a world cup would do it.

In terms of rugby, thats why we need someon like Martin Johnston ( a massive N/AFL fan by the way) as director of rugby for England with the IRB, they are a bunch of old fogies.

I' watching the build up now on sky at Wembly, lots of ex players there talking about previous meets between the team, cool

[Mr I]

Hey Mr. Incredible, are there real American football fans in Blighty or is it just catering to an expatriate audience or just a novelty audience who will lose interest after a few games?

Ticket invantry; 87% english, 7% american the rest european (outside uk)

[Shibby]

From the looks of it, American Football seems to be a lot more popular in Europe than rugby is over here. I don't think there were more than 10,000 people here to watch the Eagles play the Springboks a couple of years ago.

It also illustrates the difference between the farsighted NFL and the myopic IRB. I bet the NFL made a deliberate and conscious decision to allow the game to be telecast on regular TV *even* if they would have made more money by ppv. They are keeping their eye on the long-term prize - establishing a robust presence on the other side of the pond.

The International Rugby Board on the other hand couldn't be more myopic. They could have negotiated a deal with ESPN or, heck, even Versus to show the Rugby World Cup games here. At least they could have been on cable TV. They could have also had lots of commercials inviting the American football diehards to watch the rugby matches - I bet most football fans, once they got the hang of the rules, would appreciate the skills, tackling, and physical nature of the sport.

Instead they pick Setanta Sports, an outfit that isn't even available on Comcast. They are making no attempts to make rugby popular in the US. The funny thing is that America is a natural place for rugby to take hold, compared to say Romania or Kazakhstan or whoever the favorite IRB minnows are these days. We have a long oval ball history - rugby would have been the national sport but for the intervention of a certain Walter Camp. Americans play a hugely popular football code that is very similar and we love physical contact sports.

I would argue that rugby has a much better chance of catching on in the US than does soccer simply because of the oval ball history here but if the IRB can be trusted to do anything, it is to screw up.

See these are the reasons I think soccer has a much better chance than rugby. I just don't see America settling for something "like football", when actual football is available. I think it would be like the Arena League in comparison to the NFL.

[Bouncer]

LOL guys throw me a fricken bone and read the article before you write it off.

Two points;

1) someone i the states obviousely thinks socer is catching on there otherwise LA Galaxy would not be paying Beckham £25m (like $50M) a year in wages and advertising.

2) Read the stats on worldwide AF fans, oh and by the way, what isn't mentioned is that our national sports stadium, nearly 90,000 seats virtually sold out within 2 hrs of the tickets becoming available!

The best thing about it is its on mainstream sky sports 2, no trouble geting it whereas over the Altantic I gather they didn't even show the Rugby World Cup, only on ppv

i definitely think the NFL can be bigger in the UK then rugby or soccer is here. i think other countries are more open to trying knew things. and like you said, if the media coverage is good, there will at least be the option to watch. if rugby was on espn or the networks here, i would watch. as far as soccor, i actually did watch the world cup that they showed on network tv and i loved it. the games they show in espn just dont have that excitement though so i haven't watch them.

[Mr I]

Josleyn Brown did the NA