The NFL released the first part of the 2018 schedule this past week with the announcement of the three games to be played in London as part of the London NFL series. The NFL cut back from four to three games across the pond this year, but it sees some exciting and new blood in London and at new venues.
The Seattle Seahawks will see their first UK trip in 2018 and will be take part in the first NFL game to be played in the new Tottenham Hotspur in Oxford. They will take on the Oakland Raiders Week 6 on October 14th. The Philadelphia Eagles will play the Jacksonville Jaguars and finally, the Tennessee Titans will play the Los Angeles Chargers. The last two games will be played either week 7 or 8, October 21st or 28th.
Honestly I was a little disappointed in the teams going, but not for conventional reasons. My daughter is a huge Seahawks fan and of course is dying to go for the London game. Problem is we just went this past October for the Saints/Dolphins London Game. So while I have to try and figure out if my budget and the school schedule will allow us to make this trip again, I thought I would share some history and our experience at the game this past year in case anyone is on the fence about making the trip.
The NFL in Europe has had a bit of a bumpy road and definitely has not lived up to the original idea behind it. Birthed in 1991 by two NFL commissioners, Roger Goodell and Paul Tagliabue, as well as, owners and executives, it started life being called the World League of American Football. Until its final game on June 23, 2007, the league struggled as revenues were not what the NFL hoped. Instead, it provided lots of ups and downs along the way, and the league ending up being called NFL Europa. The idea behind the league was to bring to Europe more than just meaningless preseason games that saw starters playing just one or two series.
The idea was to base teams in Europe and build a fan base. The league was meant to serve as a “farm” league for the NFL, pulling players from Australia, Japan, England, Italy and Germany to name a few. The three teams, London Monarchs, Barcelona Dragons and Frankfurt Galaxy, saw 30,000 fans turn up for the first game in April of 1991, in a stadium which tends to draw crowds of 30-70,000 for soccer matches. And while 30,000 fans a game sounds great consider that Clemson’s Memorial Stadium, aka Death Valley, seats 81,500 and is almost to capacity at most home football games. And even though fans turned up, the tuning in back in the US wasn’t pulling in the big numbers. Fans viewed the NFL Europe teams and players as “second-rate” or “amateur” and why waste time on Europe teams when you have 31 right in the US (the Carolina Panthers didn’t come into existence until 1993).
The NFL International series came to fruition in 2007 after the official demise of NFL Europa. The series has seen games in London and Mexico (starting in 2016). The popularity of these games can’t be argued. Tickets go on sale roughly nine months in advance and tend to sell out within 2-3 days. The current international agreement runs through 2025. The first game in London on October 28, 2007 saw a muddy mess in Wembley Stadium between the Miami Dolphins (home) and New York Giants (visitors) due to the design of the stadium. Wembley features a partial roof covering for fans, but the field is totally exposed to the elements. The 40,000 tickets for this game sold out in 90 minutes.
So now that we have all that history out of the way, what does the International Series really mean? Sure you have the downside of a team having to give up a home game, even though they receive a significant payment of $1 million for giving up that game, and the season ticket prices are dropped for season ticket holders, to play in what is probably the least home-like environment possible, considering the climate change, culture change and vast time zone change. But what does it mean for the fans? Before we embarked on our London game adventure I had always heard that Europeans think American football is a bit of a joke. We found nothing could have been further from the truth.
Our trip saw us spending five days in London and four days in Paris, arriving into London on a Friday morning. That gave us two days to do some other fun sightseeing, take in a theater show on the West End, and get somewhat caught up to the time change. Sunday morning dawned cold and dreary. They weren’t kidding about the rain in London! Before the game we spent time at the Tower of London, and then hopped the tube to Wembley. One of the most amazing things about London is that the tube stations are immaculate. It’s similar to NYC, but you could honestly eat off the platforms they were so clean. It took about 30 minutes total to get to Wembley, add in a nice 15 minute walk afterwards. We had been seeing jerseys on folks since we arrived, but that day the trains were packed with NFL fans… from all teams. That was by far the most fun part of the game. While there were clear pockets of Saints or Dolphins fans, almost every single NFL team was represented. The only two teams we didn’t see were the Browns and Cardinals. Sitting in front of us at the game was a group from Germany that featured a Vikings’, Patriots’, Packers’ and Seahawks’ fan. Getting into conversations with them about why they chose the teams they did led to some interesting answers. Some were fans because they had been to see that team in a previous International game. One just liked the colors, and another had American friends who had made them drink that team’s Kool-aid. But instead of the clear derisive, my-team-vs-your-team nature of the game day atmosphere in America, it was really refreshing to see such a blend.
It was easy to tell the American Saints fans to the European. My daughter learned this the first couple times she hollered “Who Dat” to people in Saints garb that gave her a very blank stare. Also, the difference in what we think of as “football etiquette” was astounding. Much like a soccer match the fans just yell… the whole game. There was a couple in Dolphins jerseys that kept yelling the whole game, and my daughter asked if we should tell them that they aren’t supposed to yell when their team was on offense.
The really fun part was that when Ed Hochuli and his crew had a flag the penalty and the definition was put up on the Jumbotron to help clarify what happened to the crowd. I wish we could do that in high school games, might help the coaches understand the rules a little better themselves.
All in all, and while the Saints shut-out of Miami at 20-0 helped, it was a game day like no other. London fully embraced the NFL fans and gave a unique perspective to us crazy Americans of how much our sport is enjoyed throughout the world. Now I don’t think American football will ever replace soccer, but it was perfectly evident that the Europeans enjoy their NFL. And they showed us Yanks a jolly good time too! So for anyone looking at the schedule and wondering if it is worth it, I’m here to tell you it’s a priceless experience (that will cost you about $5,000 for two people), but can you really put a price tag on memories like this?
