A Sea Of Red

Goodell: Super Bowl may someday be held in London

Oct. 15, 2007

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona -- A future NFL 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 Wembley Stadium would make a great candidate for American pro football's biggest matchup, given the opening of the stadium's lastest incarnation and enthusiasm overseas for the game.

Full Article: http://www.sportsline.com/nfl/story/10410478

That would be a bad decision in my opinion. While I understand wanting to expand the game, there also needs to be some type of loyalty to the faithful home crowd. Plus, with the time difference would they play the game at 1 or 2 A.M. over there so they could show it live at 7 P.M. here? This would not be a good move. The only other country that I would be ok with having this is Canada.

Here's the thing, fans really don't go to the Superbowl. They watch it on TV. Famous people, football players that didn't make it and media members are who attend the superbowl. They'll still go if it's in London. However, the SB does benefit the city that it's in, economically as was pointed out to me by ALUmnus. So it is sending money overseas when you could be putting it back into our own economy. But other than that, this effects about .000001% of the football fan population.

I do wonder how they'd handle the time difference. Good point, ATrain.

worst idea ever!

stupid....I thought it was stupid enough to have a regular season over in europe...now they want to do a Super Bowl?? come on now...I understand wanting to reach a global audience...but you can't alienate your core audience here in the US in doing so

wouldn't that be like having soccar in America? Dumb idea!

I think you guys are crazy. I would expect 50% of superbowl atendees to be acutal fans of the teams. So that's maybe 30k-40k people. That's how many fans this would affect. And those fans had to fly to the Superbowl anyway, because it's at a neutral site. I'm sure they wouldn't mind flying to London. I think this affects very little. Although the time concept would be interesting. Probably late at night in London but early afternoon here?

LUconn wrote:I think you guys are crazy. I would expect 50% of superbowl atendees to be acutal fans of the teams. So that's maybe 30k-40k people. That's how many fans this would affect. And those fans had to fly to the Superbowl anyway, because it's at a neutral site. I'm sure they wouldn't mind flying to London. I think this affects very little. Although the time concept would be interesting. Probably late at night in London but early afternoon here?

2 things:
1. Some people can't afford plane tickets overseas. They may be big fans that scrape together whatever they can get to drive to a southern city to see their team win the big one. Last time I checked, they hadn't finished the Atlantic Ocean Bridge-Tunnel.

2. Late night in London, early afternoon here (eastern time zone), mid-late morning on the west coast. Not going to fly with the sponsors.

As someone who has witnessed Super Bowls up close firsthand, I can assure you that percentage of actual fans of the teams involved in the game is probaly in the 15-20% range. And those fans probably wouldn't bat an eye at round trip airfare to London or Frankfort.

Sly Fox wrote:As someone who has witnessed Super Bowls up close firsthand, I can assure you that percentage of actual fans of the teams involved in the game is probaly in the 15-20% range. And those fans probably wouldn't bat an eye at round trip airfare to London or Frankfort.

or even Frankfurt.