The possibility of the Jags relocating to London

[csirl]

Any views on what is one of the worst kept secrets in NFL circles i.e. the Jags relocating to London in c.5 years time?

Tottenham Hotspurs new stadium - still under construction - being the likely home stadium - is being designed with football in mind.

Who's going to be the second team to relocate to Europe? Germany needs a team (biggest football market in Europe - much bigger than UK).

 

[Rogah]

Any team playing in London would be a complete failure from a competitive standpoint.

 

[CF74]

Oh hell nawzzzzzz!!!!!!

 

[Tass]

Ummm...so no more NFL?

IFL sound better?

 

[CyberB0b]

Any team playing in London would be a complete failure from a competitive standpoint.

Yeah, good luck playing a west coast team.

 

[Tabascocat]

Yeah, good luck playing a west coast team.

Can't they just take a short-cut and fly over the Pacific?

 

[Yakuza Rich]

Terrible idea on just about every level.

But, the NFL is a business and just like every business (these days)...it's not enough to make record profit. You are now forced to find new revenue streams. Unfortunately, doing that usually ignores your current customer base and the things that made you successful in the first place. Then you upset your current customers and can't draw in new customers because what you had that was popular no longer exists.

The NFL could do themselves some good by asking themselves the question 'if we can't get this to work in Jacksonville, why do we think it would work in London?'

Figure out why it didn't work in Jacksonville and correct those problems and then give London a shot.




YR

 

[BAZ]

Any team playing in London would be a complete failure from a competitive standpoint.

How would this change things for the Jags?

I've always been against a move, but I can say something from first hand experience, the amount of Jags fans in Jacksonville are probably closer to the amount in London than people think.

 

[JohnnyTheFox]

I could say so many things about this and not one of them are politically correct.

 

[Longboysfan]

Figure out why it didn't work in Jacksonville and correct those problems and then give London a shot.
YR

You can't import 75,000 fans into Jacksonville every football weekend.

NFL should have done a deal with the airlines. Like Vegas did.
Fly in watch game fly home.

 

[65fastback2plus2]

it'll happen, and be a huge failure.

 

[WPBCowboysFan]

Any team playing in London would be a complete failure from a competitive standpoint.

Not if the can develop a culture of successful cheating

 

[Yakuza Rich]

You can't import 75,000 fans into Jacksonville every football weekend.

NFL should have done a deal with the airlines. Like Vegas did.
Fly in watch game fly home.

It shouldn't be overly difficult to get fans to Jacksonville games. For the most part, the weather is excellent and you have a decent sized enough city. I live in Florida and the most popular team is the Dolphins, but their fanbase stretches pretty thin up here. The 'we love college football and not pro football' argument is overblown. In fact, I do believe if done right they could have taken the Jags to Orlando which is a much smaller city than Jacksonville and closer to Tampa and done it right.

They could have had nice rivalries with the Bucs and the Fins...instead they got stuck in the AFC South with rivalries against not-so-storied franchises like the Colts, Titans and Texans. If the NFL wants to go into any other cities, they'll need to think long and hard about how these divisions are structured. I really never thought the Fins vs. Jets, Fins vs. Bills or Fins vs. Pats were heated rivalries...even when the Fins were good. But, they couldn't bother to change that up a bit. To me, it's a disconnect in thinking that you don't want to disturb the storied franchises and that the new franchises can work on their own. I think the new franchises need the rub from the storied franchises.

Moving Jacksonville to London will only amplify problems by tenfold. Then they'll eventually want to get out of there as well.







YR

 

[csirl]

Terrible idea on just about every level.

But, the NFL is a business and just like every business (these days)...it's not enough to make record profit. You are now forced to find new revenue streams. Unfortunately, doing that usually ignores your current customer base and the things that made you successful in the first place. Then you upset your current customers and can't draw in new customers because what you had that was popular no longer exists.

The NFL could do themselves some good by asking themselves the question 'if we can't get this to work in Jacksonville, why do we think it would work in London?'

Figure out why it didn't work in Jacksonville and correct those problems and then give London a shot.




YR

Good point re the customer base. The reality is that the NFL has a lot more customers in Europe than there will ever be in Jacksonville. These customers are paying an increasing proportion of the NFLs income (TV, merchandise etc.). One of the reasons the Cowboys can pay Dez and Romos salaries is because of this new revenue stream. This fan base wants to see live football. NFL has to respond. Unfortunately for Jacksonville, it can't compete with London.

I see the pro football going through a phase
like it did when it broke out of the east coast, ohio valley and mid west - spreading west and south. Jacksonville is akin to teams like the Dayton Triangles etc. There was a time when people couldn't conceive of teams in places like Dallas, SF, Miami etc. Europe is the new frontier for pro football.

 

[Longboysfan]

It shouldn't be overly difficult to get fans to Jacksonville games. For the most part, the weather is excellent and you have a decent sized enough city. I live in Florida and the most popular team is the Dolphins, but their fanbase stretches pretty thin up here. The 'we love college football and not pro football' argument is overblown. In fact, I do believe if done right they could have taken the Jags to Orlando which is a much smaller city than Jacksonville and closer to Tampa and done it right.

They could have had nice rivalries with the Bucs and the Fins...instead they got stuck in the AFC South with rivalries against not-so-storied franchises like the Colts, Titans and Texans. If the NFL wants to go into any other cities, they'll need to think long and hard about how these divisions are structured. I really never thought the Fins vs. Jets, Fins vs. Bills or Fins vs. Pats were heated rivalries...even when the Fins were good. But, they couldn't bother to change that up a bit. To me, it's a disconnect in thinking that you don't want to disturb the storied franchises and that the new franchises can work on their own. I think the new franchises need the rub from the storied franchises.

Moving Jacksonville to London will only amplify problems by tenfold. Then they'll eventually want to get out of there as well.







YR

Agreeded. You Florida perspective is verg good.
I think they end up in LA.

 

[Yakuza Rich]

Good point re the customer base. The reality is that the NFL has a lot more customers in Europe than there will ever be in Jacksonville. These customers are paying an increasing proportion of the NFLs income (TV, merchandise etc.). One of the reasons the Cowboys can pay Dez and Romos salaries is because of this new revenue stream. This fan base wants to see live football. NFL has to respond. Unfortunately for Jacksonville, it can't compete with London.

I see the pro football going through a phase
like it did when it broke out of the east coast, ohio valley and mid west - spreading west and south. Jacksonville is akin to teams like the Dayton Triangles etc. There was a time when people couldn't conceive of teams in places like Dallas, SF, Miami etc. Europe is the new frontier for pro football.

The NFL has been on a steady decline since 2010. One of the biggest issues they need to address is that less stadiums are selling out and much less stadiums are selling out with their own fans.

Jerry was smart enough to build the stadium with the videoboard being so big that it was a spectacle. I remember Jerry citing that the issue teams were going to face is that with the price of tickets and the quality of home entertainment systems, it's going to be hard to persuade fans to pay to go to a game live when they can have a great experience at their own home.

By creating the stadium the way he did and the stadium being located in the Dallas metroplex, it has persuaded fans of the opposing team to pay to go see the game. If you're a fan that pays $2,000 for season tickets to the Cowboys ($250/game) and you can sell those tickets for $800...it's going to be tough to pass up the offer. Do that 3 more times and you have actually made a profit in your season ticket buying venture and you still get to go to the other 4 games. For opposing team fans, they can find it feasible to make a trip to Dallas to go watch their favorite team play in a spectacle of a stadium.

To me, that can't be a healthy business model for the rest of the league. And I start to see that when last year I watched the Bucs vs. Steelers in an exciting game (Bucs won) at Heinz Field and the stadium was only about 75% full. That's a storied franchise which once was so popular that Steelers fan would watch them anywhere...not legitimately selling out the stadium. Or the Carolina vs. Cincinnati tie last year that was played at Cincinnati. The place was almost empty BEFORE the end of regulation.

I think when you combine that and the controversy around the league which has hurt the image of the brand (mostly due to Goodell's incompetence) and you star team is a boring franchise with a boring coach and has been caught in two cheating scandals it has prompted this decline. And I'm not sure why anybody thinks that moving to London is a good, long term idea. Supposedly, they don't sell out the London games until right before gametime (walk in tickets). And you still have a very foreign sport to that country with a franchise that has virtually no tradition or history. Then there's the mess of having teams travel to London and what it does to the television audience in the US. And they will have to figure out a way to compensate the players because I can't imagine many of them wanting to live in England and how they will be taxed since taxes there are enormous compared to the US.




YR

 

[Rogah]

Not if the can develop a culture of successful cheating

We all understand you are butthurt over the Patriots, but could you please respect the OP and not hijack their thread? We are talking about a potential London team here, thank you.

 

[WPBCowboysFan]

It shouldn't be overly difficult to get fans to Jacksonville games. For the most part, the weather is excellent and you have a decent sized enough city. I live in Florida and the most popular team is the Dolphins, but their fanbase stretches pretty thin up here. The 'we love college football and not pro football' argument is overblown. In fact, I do believe if done right they could have taken the Jags to Orlando which is a much smaller city than Jacksonville and closer to Tampa and done it right.

They could have had nice rivalries with the Bucs and the Fins...instead they got stuck in the AFC South with rivalries against not-so-storied franchises like the Colts, Titans and Texans. If the NFL wants to go into any other cities, they'll need to think long and hard about how these divisions are structured. I really never thought the Fins vs. Jets, Fins vs. Bills or Fins vs. Pats were heated rivalries...even when the Fins were good. But, they couldn't bother to change that up a bit. To me, it's a disconnect in thinking that you don't want to disturb the storied franchises and that the new franchises can work on their own. I think the new franchises need the rub from the storied franchises.

Moving Jacksonville to London will only amplify problems by tenfold. Then they'll eventually want to get out of there as well.







YR

I live in South Florida and have been a Dolphins fan since the early 70's. The Cowboys are a passion. The Dolphins are a team I like and root for because of my ties to South Florida going back to my childhood. I had Dolphins season tix for 6 years beginning with the Dave Wannstedt era. Dolphins fans HATE their division rivals much like Cowboys fans hate theirs. Im not as passionate about the Fins as I am about the Cowboys so its hard for me to say its equivalent for both fan bases, but its just as meaningful for Fins fans to hate their rivals as it is for Cowboys fans to hate theirs in my experience.

I agree some rivals in state would be great. But the teams would have to be good for it to ever get to a passionate level.

 

[WPBCowboysFan]

We all understand you are butthurt over the Patriots, but could you please respect the OP and not hijack their thread? We are talking about a potential London team here, thank you.

How is responding to a post already in a thread hijacking?

It was mentioned that fielding a competitive club in London would be difficult, which seems to go along with the thread topic. It was replied that gaining an advantage would help the club be competitive, which also seems to go along with the thread as it has progressed. If it can work on this side of the pond as we've all witnessed, and with the NFL's blessing, why couldnt it work on the other side of the pond?

BTW, no butthurt when I look at 5 credible untainted Lombardis at Valley Ranch. I cant speak from personal experience but I would imagine butthurt comes from living with the reality of knowing a team I root for has nothing butt tainted Lombardis.

 

[csirl]

And I'm not sure why anybody thinks that moving to London is a good, long term idea. Supposedly, they don't sell out the London games until right before gametime (walk in tickets). And you still have a very foreign sport to that country with a franchise that has virtually no tradition or history. Then there's the mess of having teams travel to London and what it does to the television audience in the US.


YR

All the London games sell out months in advance. They're way over subscribed - usually 2-3 times the stadium capacity. You have to enter a lottery for the chance to purchase tickets - usually held in January or February.

Football has been played in Europe for more than 30 years. The core fan base for the London games is people who currently play or belong to grassroots clubs or people who have done so over the past 30 years.

There are approximately 120,000 active players/coaches in Europe. Many multiples of this in ex-players - most people only play football for a few years. Then add in friends and family of these people.

Most countries in Europe now get 5 live NFL games per week plus 5 to 6 college games. This is bringing along a new much bigger fan base on top of the grassroots people. TV figures in UK alone are 13.5m viewers a week.

This is potentially the biggest market in the NFL.