SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) -- A future Super Bowl champion may someday be crowned overseas in a game witnessed predominantly by a foreign audience, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said.
"There's a great deal of interest in holding a Super Bowl in London," Goodell told reporters Monday. "So we'll be looking at that."
The commissioner said London's new Wembley Stadium would make a great candidate for pro football's biggest matchup, given the enthusiasm overseas for the game.
The NFL has been expanding its overseas presence for years by televising games around the world. It's held preseason games in numerous countries in Europe, Asia, Mexico and Canada, and in 2005, the Arizona Cardinals and San Francisco 49ers played the first regular-season match outside the United States.
The game at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City drew the league's largest crowd to date, 103,467.
On Oct. 28, Wembley will host the first regular-season NFL game outside North America. It took just 90 minutes to sell the first 40,000 tickets for the game between the Miami Dolphins and New York Giants. Goodell said event organizers have sold 95,000 tickets in all.
Goodell spoke about the possibility of a British Super Bowl after a luncheon Monday in Scottsdale sponsored by the host committee for the 2008 Super Bowl in Arizona.
The more I hear about Goodell"s ideas, the more I don't like the guy. You want to play a couple of preseason or regular season games a year outside the US? Fine. You want to take the Super Bowl and have it played somewhere other than the United States of America? HE SHOULD BE FIRED!!! Where is it going to stop? I bet he is already planning a playoff game in Germany or some crap like that.
Is Wembly an outdoor stadium and if it is, what's the weather like in early Feb in England? I seem to recall that one of the major reasons why DC and NY have a problem getting a SB is the weather.
DesertSkin wrote:Is Wembly an outdoor stadium and if it is, what's the weather like in early Feb in England? I seem to recall that one of the major reasons why DC and NY have a problem getting a SB is the weather.
* Move a regular season game overseas (effectively stripping a home game from a team)
* Put radio receivers in the away team's helmets on offense, to negate "unfair" crowd noise
* Punishes 'thug' players an entire season for running with the wrong crowd; suspends a player indefinitely for being involved with dog-fighting; suspends a Dallas coach 5 games for personally using hormones to deal with diabetes (who never shared them with anyone);. . .and makes Belichick pay 5 dollars for being caught cheating during the game
That's insane... I will be highly upset if they move the Super Bowl outside of the United States. I didn't like it when they moved a game to outside the US, this is blasphemy....
...any given Sunday....
RIP #21 Sean Taylor. You will be loved and adored by Redskins fans forever!!!!!
GSPODS:
The National Anthem sucks.
What a useless piece of propagandist rhetoric that is.
Steve Spurrier III wrote:Like it or not, at some point the NFL is expanding internationally. As American fans, it might not be fun, but that doesn't mean it's bad business.
If Roger wants overseas competition, the first thing he's going to need to do is change the name from National Football League to International Football League.
Steve Spurrier III wrote:Yeah, that's the pressing issue. Let me know when the National Basketball Association changes its name to the International Basketball Association.
Why would they? Canada is not "International". Thus, the NHL.
GSPODS wrote:Why would they? Canada is not "International".
Quoted for posterity. "International", is literally, between two or more nations. And even though sometimes Canada doesn't really seem like a real country, they do indeed qualify. The NHL and NBA are misnomers - the reason they haven't changed their name is because everyone agrees it's not really a big deal.
GSPODS wrote:Why would they? Canada is not "International".
Quoted for posterity. "International", is literally, between two or more nations. And even though sometimes Canada doesn't really seem like a real country, they do indeed qualify. The NHL and NBA are misnomers - the reason they haven't changed their name is because everyone agrees it's not really a big deal.
I was being sarcastic. The actual point of my post was that if the NFL wants to go international, they should start with Canada.
Someday, the NFL probably will be in Canada, but for now, they're working with the CFL and have been careful to stay out of the Great White North. The CFL isn't exactly the most stable sports league in the world, and taking away a market like Toronto would destroy it.
Besides, the benefits of expanding to Canada are minimal - the real gold mine is in Europe.
Someday, the NFL probably will be in Canada, but for now, they're working with the CFL and have been careful to stay out of the Great White North. The CFL isn't exactly the most stable sports league in the world, and taking away a market like Toronto would destroy it.
Besides, the benefits of expanding to Canada are minimal - the real gold mine is in Europe.
Gold mine for the NFL itself, not for the teams. What is the split on ticket revenue, parking and concessions and who is receiving the advertising dollars for these potential games? Is the NFL paying for the international airfare? Whose assuming every NFL player can get a passport? I think that eliminates Dallas right off the bat. There are too many issues to resolve for Roger to arbitrarily throw out "Let's have a SuperBowl in Europe". If Roger took an owner's vote right now, it would not be in favor of this idea.
No, only joking. The capacity of senior officials at the governing bodies of the world's sports to make absurd suggestions/pronouncements/comments is a wondrous thing. Absolutely stupid idea.
NFL fans in Europe have proven unable to sustain a successful professional league more than once - how exactly does that justify the reward of seeing the Superbowl played on European soil?
UK Skins Fan wrote:NFL fans in Europe have proven unable to sustain a successful professional league more than once - how exactly does that justify the reward of seeing the Superbowl played on European soil?
Perhaps that’s the point – the NFL hopes that giving Europe the Super Bowl will lead to Europe one day being able to sustain it’s own professional league. Just look at what the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona did for basketball in Europe.
You're exactly right Chris - the NFL did not start the NFL Network for any other reason than eventually all NFL games will be "pay per view" and they want to be one of the networks "competing" so they can make even more money.
The top 2 sports franchises in the world are the pukes and the Washington Redskins - the NFL will be able to (OR, at least they think they can) have Super Bowl games wherever they want because TV will make it worth it - the gate revenue is nothing to the NFL - this is all about more money.
I hope that if they ever try this it really comes back to bite them
Until recently, Snyder & Allen have made a lot of really bad decisions - nobody with any sense believes this franchise will get better under their guidance Snyder's W/L record = 45% (80-96) - Snyder/Allen = 41% (59-84-1)
Goodell is an idiot, plain and simple. His entire dictator approach to punishing players is getting out of hand and his new rules are starting to make the moniker "No Fun League" ring true. For example, the delay of game penalty for spiking the ball is pointless. The NFL is hugely popular and Goodell needs to stop tinkering with every rule that he can think of. As for this Super Bowl in London idea, there is no way that that is ever going to happen. Goodell might like it but the fans will hate it, the players will hate it, and I suspect that the owners will be against in as well. There are so many problems with this idea that I'm surprised that Goodell would even talk about it publicly. For starters, at what time would they play the game? To make the game prime time in the US, which I suspect the sponsors require, the game would be at late in night in England (6 hour time difference from the east cost). Making the game in prime time in London would in the game being aired in the morning or early afternoon on the west coast. No way that any of this would fly. Secondly, jet lag would be a significant problem. I remember the Skins players complaining about this when they played in Japan during Spurrier's first preseason. Thirdly, I've been to London in the winter and the weather stinks. Cold, wet, and generally miserable. So the bottom line is that Goodell's wet dream isn't going to be coming true anytime soon.
Aussie Rules Football is not rugby union.
