London calling: maybe the time has come for some real patriotism in the NFL American football franchise

 
P57 Tom Brady
Ken Elliott29 October 2012

London edges closer to securing its own NFL American football franchise with every regular season game the League stages at Wembley Stadium. Yesterday’s 45-7 win for the New England Patriots over the St Louis Rams fuelled what is now more than just speculation.

“I think London has shown, with the way they’ve handled the Olympics and every other major sporting event, that it’s time for you to have your own NFL franchise, based in London,” said Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft.

A crowd of 84,004 endorsed that in the sixth year of NFL transporting a league game from its fixture list to the capital and next year, those fans will get two games — The Pittsburgh Steelers v the Minnesota Vikings on September 29 and the Jacksonville Jaguars v the San Francisco 49ers on October 27. The attendance for the Wembley games has only dropped below 80,000 once in those six years but the fans who make their way up Wembley way wear game shirts of all 32 teams in the NFL. Now, would 80,000 swap those and unite in the replica jersey of a London franchise? A generation of fans did in the early 90s when the London Monarchs of the WLAF attracted 40, 50 and 60,000 crowds at the old Wembley.

Brit fans wouldn’t have wanted to adopt the Rams yesterday with Patriots quarterback Tom Brady throwing for four touchdowns and 302 yards in a one-sided drubbing.

Next autumn’s pair of games will further test the waters, and pockets, but will still leave another question unanswered. Would fans pay top dollar for an eight-home game regular season in the NFL, let alone travel to the odd away game in the US?

Franchise hopping has a history in the NFL and nothing moves a team out of town quicker than failure and the resultant dwindling crowds and there are candidates to be picked off. London’s watching every move.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in