The San Francisco 49ers will play the Denver Broncos next season at Wembley Stadium, the fourth straight year the NFL will hold a regular-season game in London. The 49ers will be listed as the home team for the Oct. 31 game. More than 80,000 fans have attended each of the last three games in London. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell notes the "extraordinary passion that exists for NFL football in the UK." Source: Yahoo Sports
The second game plan has gone out the window. Thank god. Once again I'll probably be attending, and for the first time, I'll be supporting a team at the IS. Shouldn't be too hard to guess who I won't be backing :icon_smile:
Screw Godell. He seems to have a short memory (Monarcs) and forgot to mention the fans from continal Europe.....
You don't have a very good knowledge of NFL in Britain, so I'll fill you in. Through out the 80's, tbe upstart Channel 4 would routinely pull in multiple millions of viewers with a one hour highlights, the sport became huge, and this carried on throughout the WLAF, when the Monarchs in two seasons averaged over 50,000 gate a game. Suddenly, the NFL was pulled from Channel 4 and dissapeared along with the WLAF. When WLAF came back in the mid-90's the sport had been off screens for years and along with the creation of the Premierleague (Soccer), the interest had faded. It was nearly 15 years when the NFL made it back onto the main stations, when ITV got live coverage of Superbowl XXXIX (May have been XXXVIII). Since then, the old guard have rekindled their interest plus along with the new breed, and support of the league has expanded since. Easy to slag us off with the Monarchs, but when coverage was so god**mn hard to find it's hard to maintain a wide support. What I do agree on however is that Germany should get a game, I still don't quite know why you've been ignored.
We didn't had any worthable coverage since the start of the WLAF/NFLE too, but supported finally 5 teams. Galaxy and Fire always had a lot ot butts in the seats, even if the numbers went down after the stupid relocation of the Barceona Dragons to Colonge (Centurions). It's not that I'm going to say Brits are bad football fans, but I hate the fact Godell never mention the huge numbers of fans at continental Europe, nor that a lot of them help to fill Wembley. I have no idea, if the UK could fill it alone For the game at Germany, I don't even want it. All I'm asking for is a improved NFLE, even knew that it won't haqppen with Godell under helm
We're the home team??? wtf...hey Goodell...FREAK YOU PAL and your ridiculously stupid NFL games overseas....why not send teams who don't sell out their stadiums you doofus.
I'm not sure how you can justify keeping a league up and running when it is hemorrhaging 30 million dollars a year, especially doing so with such a short season and so few teams (relatively). That doesn't sound like butts in the seats to me. The Galaxy, which was the team with the highest attendance, put an average of 33,000ish butts in the seats at their best, which is less than half of the NFL average. The NFLE average was around 20,000 in 2007 when it was disbanded. If I was Goodell I would have abandoned the project as well. If the fan support is truly there, there's no reason a European entity couldn't start it's own American Football league outside of the NFL's umbrella. The reason that hasn't happened is likely because there is NO WAY IT COULD EVER MAKE MONEY. I caught an article in the SJ Merc (IIRC) a while back when the talk of the Niners playing in Europe was first getting kicked around, and if I'm not mistaken, your boy young Jed said he would prefer it to be a home game because the team would make more money playing a home game abroad than it would at the Stick.:icon_cheesygrin:
Blame Jed York, he obviously was a driving factor just by the fact that he was mingling with the fans at this years tailgate. 49ers Home Game here was one of the worse kept secrets in the NFL.
You don't know, what you're talking about, huh? We already run semi professional leagues over here (I started a thread in the General Football Discussion a while ago) The idea behind the WLAF/NFLE was a) to run a farm league in spring, b) to establish football at Europe and c) to test players under real conditions. I don't think it ever was created to make money, bc you can't make money with it (here I agree). Another funny thing are the costs of 30 millions a year (less than 500,000 for each team). The NFL never released how much money they earned with the league with merchandise from the NFLE and the NFL teams, advertisement tickets etc. Most owners supported the NFLE, bc they tought is was a good thing, till Screwdell wanted to go on with NFL games overseas. Something most of you hate too...
Just wondering. I would just state that the majority of the people who snitch about the Wembley Games are the ones who don't attend their teams home games in the first pace, therefore the only difference to them is a different backdrop and atmosphere on the TV.
