NFL eyes consecutive London games; team?

Miami Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill signs an autograph for a fan in London. (USATSI)

The NFL's movement toward moving a franchise to London, perhaps by the end of this decade, continues to gain momentum within the league office and is championed by many of the game's most influential owners.

According to Mark Waller, the NFL vice president overseeing the league's international growth, the next step in the eventual placement of a franchise in England is to evaluate how London responds to hosting games on consecutive weeks.

The NFL has gradually expanded its international season at Wembley Stadium to include a record three games this season, one in September (the Dolphins and Raiders Sunday), one in October and one in November. All sold out quickly and the league has no doubt that adding a few more games would continue to produce positive results. But as soon as next year, Waller said, the goal will be to see how Wembley's infrastructure could handle games on consecutive weekends and possibly even three in a row at some point.

Back-to-back London games

Eventually, should a team move to London, the schedule would likely feature clusters of home games (homes stands of 2-4 four weeks) and then a group of 2-3 road games in a row in the United States, and this experiment would mimic that process and also provide a more accurate gauge on fan interest and ticket sales if the games were all occurring in a short period of time, rather than giving UK fans a chance to cherry pick a game to attend over a period of three months.

“I don't think the next step is just adding games,” Waller, a native Englishman, said during a lengthy phone interview from London, assessing the state of the NFL's advances into England. “I don't think we need to do four, to do five, to do six, but I do think there are things we need to prove out.

“For example, we've never played back-to-back games at Wembley Stadium, and proved that the playing surface can handle two of our games in a row, and in similar vein, Wembley is also the home of the English National (soccer) team, so we'd want to show that we could play our games and England could play its games on the same surface without any issues.”

The NFL is already working with British officials about trying to schedule next year's games, which is complicated by the fact that Wembley is hosting contests that conflict with the NFL season as part of the 2015 Rugby World Cup. “We'll be at Wembley next year, but we're trying to work out whether we'll have the opportunity to test back-to-back games,” Waller said. “It's something we're focused on for next year but we're still trying to see if we can make that happen in 2015.”

Waller said the league has built up a very strong relationship with the management of Wembley as well as its field and grounds crews, reaching a point where this kind of experiment seems realistic. Also, in future games already planned for Wembley it's possible that teams playing there will not be guaranteed a bye-week following the contest, unlike every game played there to this point.

“If we want to move to the goal we've laid out for London, we can't play every game with a bye week,” Waller said. “We're going to have to address that at some point in the future. “There are operational elements we need to prove out, and the reason that's so important is that ultimately, it's only worth putting a team here if it can be competitive. There's no point in putting a team here just to have a team in London. It's got to be able to compete at the highest level and be able to compete for Super Bowls.”

NFL owners have continued to study the feasibility of the league possibly purchasing land and building its own stadium in London as well, a project that Waller said is ongoing, but very complicated, and ultimately moving ahead with Wembley as the full-time home of an NFL franchise – at least for the short term – may end up making the most sense. “It's not easy to build a new stadium in London in the same way it's not easy to build new stadium in LA,” Waller said.

Scouting, taxes and skeptical players

As for the traditional arguments against the validity of an NFL team operating in London, Waller was fairly dismissive of many of them. It's an attitude very representative of Commissioner Roger Goodell and many owners as well when these matters come up (which is at every owner's meeting at this point). The travel would be difficult, but it's the same for the Seattle Seahawks who won the Super Bowl and teams like San Francisco have been stationed in-season in places like Youngstown, Ohio, for several weeks during an NFL season before during extending East Coast trips and still managed to reach championship games and/or the Super Bowl.

The issue of how to work-out and sign players in season is not deemed a major hurdle either. The London team would have a United States base of operations – for part of training camp and to use while based in this country for road trips – with personnel and football ops people always present. And footage of workouts and tryouts could be viewed instantly by the London-based coaches and staff on Skype and/or sent to their computers in essentially realtime.

“In the modern world we live in, with the technology that exists,” Waller said, “you can speed any footage anywhere in the world almost immediately. From technical, football-scouting standpoint, that's easily solvable.”

Waller said that, when inevitable questions come up about potential tax ramifications and European Union issues with a United States pro sports league having a team playing in London, “just look at Pepsi. Look at any global company of that sort. There are ways to solve any of those potential problems that might exist.” As to the idea that players wouldn't want to play in London, free agents wouldn't sign there, etc, the larger reality is that money always talks, and this franchise, given the amount of potential corporate sponsorships, would be positioned to spend very competitively (the fact that the pound has been much stronger than the dollar I suppose wouldn't hurt, either).

“We hear that a lot, about players potentially not wanting to come here,” Waller said, “and the way I answer that is, tell me what young man doesn't want to be a part of something truly new, truly unique, and truly exciting? And as long as all the logistical and infrastructural work is complete, that's the environment we should be able to provide.”

Waller said the feedback from owners who have played games in London has been overwhelmingly positive and the league's exploration of this market only continues to grow. In turn, he says, the degree to which the NFL is growing and cultivating real football fans continues to ascend as well.

“I believe we are now an established part of the UK's sporting calendar,” Waller said, “and when started here we were very much a one-off and the reaction was very much, ‘it's the circus coming to town.' And the UK sporting calendar and culture is as powerful and strong as the American sporting calendar and culture, so to be able to create your place in that means we have real traction in that market, and that is a really important thing.”

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