London Calling: The Globalization of the NFL

The NFL has been debating over the idea of whether or not to make American football an international thing. While the Jaguars may be for this as one of their last ideas to save their team, I feel that the National Football League is doing this for one reason, money. Since interest in american football is starting to grow overseas, they see this as their chance to expand revenue and grab a whole new international fan base. This new fan base could raise sales in merchandise, tickets, and television views. The issue is whether or not expanding the league internationally will create a lot of issues that would need serious reorganization of the way the league runs in order for it to work. Many people wonder if making a little more revenue is worth all the trouble.

The NFL has chosen London to be the place where a new international team would be located. They chose to go with London due to its easy access and its progression into a "renowned city"(Barnwell p.1) They also have a newly built stadium that fits NFL requirements. However, during the last international games that were hosted, many of the fans that came down were not from London but instead were die hard fans from other countries who made the effort to travel to London. This brings up the issue about who the real fans would be if they tried to make a London team and if they would even bring in the revenue they think they will. Some positive aspects of this move could be the possible money it would bring in, the second chance for the Jacksonville Jaguars to restart, and the chance to bring together a closer international community between the United States and Europe. However i personally feel that there is more barriers they would face that makes it not seem so worth it. The issue of travel time and constant changing of timezones would seriously mess up the players schedule. Also, they would have to compensate with long travel by either changing the schedule or building a place in the states that could temporarily house players. As mentioned the issue of whether they would get enough consistant fans to travel to the games in London is skeptical. In addition they would have to do something to gain interest from player to keep them on their team with either extended contracts or increases in money. Overall they would have to completely rearrange many logistics that have worked in the NFL for many years. And for what?

Football is something that our american culture places a lot of value in. If we were to expand this to an international league, it would take away some of the pride americans place in this sport. It would no longer become our original american football that it is today, which could lead to loosing some support by extreme nationalist citizens. While I think it is a good idea to bring different countries closer together, I feel like messing with something like the NFL won't bring more rewards over the trouble it will cause to make it successful. 

References

Barnwell, Bill. (2013). London Calling