Sounds as if the Rams to London could become a regular thing from this article. http://www.stltoday.com/sports/foot...cle_dd9d3468-4330-11e1-aa72-001a4bcf6878.html Despite being based in the UK, I'm not sold on the idea of a London franchise. A lot of other NFL fans I know feel the same - though no doubting there is a certain level of support for the idea here. Mostly, logistical problems aside, it's because we already have a team to follow (in my case Miami), so I'm not entirely sure if there would be enough levels of support for a team here. Heading to a one off game each year to see teams I have varying degrees of interest in is one thing, a bit of an event really, but would I follow a team here for a full season? Unlikely, unless they were hosting the Dolphins. Just wondered what the take on this idea was from your side of the Atlantic. Most articles I've seen that allow comments seem to be hugely negative on the whole thing.
To answer your question, we should ask you a question: How likely do you think it is that an American football team could fill a venue the size of Wembley week in, week out? Everyone is afraid of a financial failure for lack of consistent interest. If they can, and if the London fans can be as rabid for American football as they are for soccer, by all means bring the London Royals into the NFC East, and balance them with a new Los Angeles franchise. One major problem is that the game isn't played in Europe at the collegiate level. Can you consistently support a team made up wholly of foreigners (other than the kicker)?
I thought about this and ruled it out as logistically stupid, but thinking about it, London to New York is a shorter journey than Miami to San Francisco? Correct?
2500 or so air miles New York to San Francisco. 2700 air miles Miami to Seattle. 3460 air miles New York to London.
Personally, I don't think a team would consistantly fill Wembley over the course of the season. There would of course be peaks of attendance as the more popular teams come to town (San Fran, Miami & Chicago seem to be very popular teams here - probably down to them being the teams to watch when coverage first started on our tv stations), but by and large I think the attendance would drop off from the one-off games we're currently getting. I don't think Wembley has sold out for one of the games yet actually - although it's still attracting healthy crowds of course, which do compare favourably with the crowds seen in the States. How much of this is because it's seen as an annual event, and how much could carry through a season I'm less sure about. For example, from memory, I think I paid £72 (about $110) for an upper tier seat for the Bucs/Bears game this year. As a one off annual social event with friends, that's just about acceptable, but there's no way I'd be looking to pay that sort of cash out on a regular basis to watch a team I wasn't really a fan of. This was kind of where I was heading with the logistics of it all. More so that I'm not entirely sure London would be able to attract and retain the top talent in the NFL. Would a kid straight out of college really want to uproot and move to a different country? It's not quite the same as being drafted across the breadthe of the States (from Stanford to Miami for example) as you're moving to an different culture entirely, not just a different city. Travel & time zones wouldn't be a total disaster - in fact I'm pretty sure it would hit the London franchise harder than any visiting team, as they'd be doing it 8+ times a year opposed to the 1 time each opposition team had to do it.
Having spent some time in London (Notting Hill), I seriously doubt that it would be difficult to transplant players there.
