Interest building in London ahead of Giants v Dolphins on Sunday

As a Brit who loves American football I'm obviously really excited about the game on Sunday. I still haven't given up hope of getting a ticket, but with a poorly wife to look after it's probably just as well I haven't got one.

For the first time in a long while Gridiron is on the main sports pages and main newscasts. Usually it's only shown on subscription-only sports channels and if the NFL results are published in the newspapers you'll find them somewhere between the Russian table tennis scores and the results from the Mongolian goat-herding championships. Here's an example from the London Times; it's of additional interest to me as it's set in my home town of Brighton:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/us_sport/football/article2733423.ece

Let's hope the NFL can build on this interest and not just cut the British game adrift like they did last time we'd built up some interest.

 

I watched the game on TV here in the US. It was a good game. Did you get a ticket?

 

Sorry to SeaGullSid about the teams we sent over. Miami is a mess and New York is a good team but nothing special. Too bad you didn't get the other Manning playing against the Patriots. I am surprised they didn't send over the team that markets itself as America's team.

Did the game get much notice over there, Sid?

P.S. Wouldn't a nice retractable roof be a good investment??

 

Not really no, wembley is only really used for football and players have no problem playing football in the rain. Wembley covers every fan from the rain so a retractable roof would serve no purpose..

 

Yeah, I didn't think it was a particularly good game, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. No MammaRose, I didn't get a ticket, but as I mentioned earlier I wouldn't have been able to go so it was just as well.

The game DID get a fair amount of coverage, both before and after. Some of it was the usual sneering at the pads and helmets (someone described it as resembling a convention for motor cycle couriers) but quite a lot of it was positive. Sadly it's been and gone now and this week the NFL was back to its usual level of coverage.

With regard to the roof as jabb said Wembley is primarily an association football arena and the rain is part and parcel of the British game. There is a venue (in Cardiff) with a roof but whenever they close it for sport you get a lot of harrumphing that it's not 'right'. I noticed during the broadcast they kept focussing on the pitch and one of the U.S. commentators mentioned that even the natural pitches in the States have some sort of artificial base and therefore don't cut up as much as 100% grass does.

 

Sneering is a pretty good term. I would assume England could support several major sports league (20 or more teams with venues of 20,000 for indoor and 45,000 + for outdoor) but it seems like many would want to stick with only footie as the only one nearing those numbers.

Regarding the roof, it would help out an offensively challenged game like association football, personally I liked attending games at the Pontiac Silverdome and it wasn't just because of the -40 wind chill factor outside, it had a great modern feel to it. The fact that the turf wasn't taking the Lions down like a wet or icy field was nice but that also help the Packers, Vikings, Bears, and whoever was in town.

 

If you want to follow the NFL teams, I just started a forum www.sportsforumz.net. You can see how the season turns out.

 

Good point about the English (and Scottish) obsession with footie. (I'll accept 'footie' as a nickname as opposed to soccer!). Rugby Union internationals are about the only other sporting events that match footie in terms of attendance. Even Test cricket (which sells out) is played in venues with much smaller capacities of around 20,000. Rugby (League and Union) is the next biggest with crowds numbering a few thousand - 15,000 is considered a 'big' crowd for a club Rugby match. Domestic Ice hockey and basketball barely register and aren't televised, indeed speedway and golf have bigger fanbases and more coverage. This wasn't always the case. Ice hockey was very popular in Britain after the war up until the early 1960s. Interestingly my home town of Brighton is planning to build a 15,000 capacity ice rink and re-establish the Brighton Tigers, who were one of the top sides in the 'golden age'. Pity the basketball team's folded.

Getting back to the roof, I take your point but we don't get the extremes of weather here in England - indeed it's not uncommon for all four seasons to pass in a bland, drizzly monochrome.

 

In the US on any given weekend, a major city might have 100,000 in attendance at a college football game, 80,000 at a pro football game, 45,000 at a baseball game, 20,000 at a basketball game, 19,000 at an ice hockey game, 25,000 at a Major League Soccer game, and many more at high school and amateur games. So are the English sitting at home or at the pub watching the games rather than attending?

 

Those are impressive attendance stats - especially the college one. Obviously in England probably only London would class as a 'major' city in terms of population (when compared to the U.S.); places like Birmingham and Manchester are probably only 'small' cities in your terms. I have no statistics to hand so I could be wrong.

However as mentioned earlier footie is literally the only game in town. London has four clubs in the Premier League (Tottenham, Chelsea, Arsenal and West Ham) plus several ones in the lower divisions (Charlton, Millwall, Orient and Brentford are four that spring to mind). However in the Premier League it's still only about five or six clubs nationwide that have attendances of 45000+, the rest struggle to fill 30000 arenas. Yes a lot of the time people are in the pub rather than at a game. We've touched on this before with one of the reasons being the high ticket prices. My son and I were among a paltry crowd of around 4,700 watching Brighton play Walsall last night. This is third tier football. (There's the Premier League, the Championship and then us in League One). For the 'pleasure' of sitting in an open stand watching third-rate football (yes, not only is the pitch uncovered but at Brighton 80% of the stands don't have roofs!) I paid approximately $100 for one adult and one junior ticket. I did it because I am clinically insane and go to see my team whenever I can. However loads of other people chose to give it a miss and stayed at home to watch Liverpool's 8-0 Champions' League thrashing of Besiktas instead.

This morning I had my weekly Cleveland Browns email newsletter. It offered tickets for the last three home games, plus $40 worth of vouchers for stuff like hotdogs, chips and soda - all for $100!

 

Wow! $100 for a third tier game?!? I believe I can get a package including 4 tickets, 4 hot dogs, 4 drinks, and parking for my local NHL team (they're not my team per se but they are the reigning professional champions) for $89. I went to a baseball game and sat 6 rows up from the left field line for $28. And I looked into getting one of the 100,000 UCLA vs. Utah in college football and they started at $14. I guess we have a good thing going with the TV contracts and commercials plus the commercials fill in the lulls and can be entertaining. I'll remember your Brighton ticket prices any time I hear "and now a word from our sponsors".

 

Or is your population 5 times the size...lol

 

Well we support about 180 teams in North America in the top professional leagues: NFL, CFL, NHL, MBL, NBA, MLS. Most teams fill a majority or all of thier there indoor (17,000 to 22,000) or outdoor (45,000 to 100,000) venues seats. So England should sell out 30 teams worth of seating.

 

Well there are around 120 professional English football clubs, then you have all the professional Scottish teams and your probably at 180 for football and yes no doubt 30 teams fill their stadiums..

 

Yeah there are plenty of lower leagues here too. I was refereing to leagues where players make $1,000,000 is not a big deal (except for maybe the CFL or MLS).

 

I'm just sorry that the British who paid their money to see a good NFL game ended up seeing a sloppy and terribly executed massacre. That was an abomination of NFL football, they should have sent two college teams over to show at least some well run plays and scoring opportunities.

 

They were there for a day out, something new to take the kids to etc. Good play would have been wasted since they were not fans and didnt know the rules anyway they didnt know what was good or bad as shown in the booing.
Anyway that sport will never be as global as football, the premiership has an average viewing figure of 600million, Arsenal vs Manutd had 1billion people watching, just a normal Saturday match game..

 

We do know the rules! I reckon 95% of the crowd there had a good understanding of the basics of the game. Also for a few days I was able to talk about nickel and dime defences, blitzes, shotguns, the merits of a 4-3 defense, screen passes and draw plays without people wondering what the hell I'm on about.

But yes, that estimated global audience of 1 billion for the Arsenal v Man U game was pretty impressive.

 

I think the fans in London had a much better grasp than those in Mexico City. In a game there the biggest cheers were when an offensive drive failed and the ball was punted away. I enjoy seeing a 4.7 second hang time punt but it's not worth a standing ovation.

You might want to check those numbers on viewership. It might be counting every member of every household that has access to the program. I kinda doubt that even 1 billion have access to premier league broadcasts. I have the same problem with the number on NASCAR racing, they claim audiences greater than the total adult male population of the country but I wouldn't be surprised if their numbers were off by a factor of 10.

 

It was a bit of a 'finger-lick' They reckon it went to 740 million homes, pubs and clubs world-wide. Assuming not everybody was sad enough to watch it on their own they said it was watched by 'about a billion'. Hard to prove one way or the other.