Football
Related: About this forumJT45242
(2,917 posts)You know that the NFL will not rotate this loss of a real home game though the league.
There will be no Dallas Cowboys as the home team in Germany. There will be not be Kraft's Patriots as the home team.
If they are going to do this, it needs to rotate through the league rather than force the Germans to watch the Jags, Lions, etc. as a home team every year.
The NFL won't rotate all 32 teams thourgh a home game in England, Germany, or Mexico -- but if they are going to play there, they should.
ArizonaLib
(1,265 posts)Remember how awful the football was during the Euroleague years? The worst Jags/Lions games are much better than the best Euro games I remember. Not sure what information they are collecting with the foreign games, but their short term greed will push out any viable foreign market for decades at this rate.
If they were interested in developing those markets, they should find a way to get Europeans on rosters, either through colleges (Aussies wind up on college teams as kickers) or athletic rugby or soccer players. So many baseball and basketball players make good football players - quick running baseball fielders make great special team returners. Showing up to watch a home town player on an NFL field should draw some support. If the foreign games come at the start of the season, the players don't need to finish the season on the roster as regulars. If the NFL kicked in league minimums for those players, or added slots for international players, it would be a very small investment for a potentially crazy big return if the NFL were ever able to market blocks of 4 or 5 games as season tickets in Europe. Season tickets would help produce family attendance traditions that would anchor the generations of fan revenues the NFL probably already drools over. They won't though. These billionaire owners probably wouldn't live long enough to see anything come of any effort, so the support will remain luke warm at best.
I remember growing up in the 70's and the push to get young kids involved in soccer would produce American celebrity players like Pele. So there was a big push for youth soccer and pro soccer never remotely measured up to minor league sports. Kids didn't see themselves playing soccer on tv, and high schools were slow to the sport, so it took all of these decades to get where it is now.
Xavier Breath
(5,076 posts)I wish they would just expand/relocate teams to Toronto and Mexico City. Congrats, you're now international. And since those teams would play in the same time zones as the US, everyone can watch. It's simplistic, I know, but a man can dream.