NFL may expand (back) into Europe, and even internationally

[mrstickball]

SamuelRSmith said:

Machina said:

Proper NFL, like stickball suggested, where for example the UK/London had a team actually competing in the NFL. That would definitely take off over here, regardless of competition it faces from football and rugby. All 'home' matches for the UK team would be sold out, and  the BBC or ITV would almost certainly pick up the tv rights for the UK team's games both home and away, which would bring it right into the mainstream of UK sport. Nothing less than proper NFL will work though.

How frequent are NFL games? I couldn't see team realistically being based in London and having to go all the way to the USA, and have American teams come all the way to the UK every couple of weeks. Surely that would be too taxing on the players, and will have huge consequences for quality of play?

NFL games are once a week, and there is one bye week per year. For the game tomorrow at Wembley, both teams took totally different approaches - one team arrived on Friday (which is typical for any away game in America), the other arrived on Monday.

For a UK team to work, you'd need either a European division with 4 teams total, which play eachother twice (6 games of a 16 or 18 game season), or allow the UK team to take a tour of America twice a year - playing 2 away games in a row, then going back to Europe, and having 2 teams come and play them. This could be accomplished pretty easily, as weeks 4 to 10 are byes for every team, which would potentially allow the teams traveling to the UK to get a week off after playing.