London wants the Super Bowl

Bit of a mixup here. Actually, the league has committed to hold the Super Bowl in London, Ontario.

Sorry for the confusion.

 

Pay 'em enough money to shut up, and they'll go along with it.

 

I thought England was five hours ahead of the East Coast, so a 9 p.m. British kickoff would be 4 p.m. in New York.

 

I don't think it would be all that bad. It's a corporate event that's a TV event for real NFL fans. I don't think it would be any great loss if the Super Bowl were held overseas once a decade.

 

Yes. And as such, the habitual 6-game pregame the networks also generate ad revenue from would have to start at 10 a.m. eastern, 7 p.m. pacific.

I'm sure Chargers fans would love that. They could hold a Super Bowl brunch.

 

I wonder if it wouldn't enhance the live crowd, too. Lots of "normal" fans make it to the Super Bowl as it is (paying outrageous prices for tickets, but still). But a truly neutral crowd cheering the whole way through might make things interesting.

 

Are they really making that much off the ads in the early part of the pregame show? They have to know only diehards are watching all six hours. Certainly the networks are making some amount of money off the pregame ads, but it surely can't be that much.

And I'll say this as well: Put it somewhere like London and you might have some more interesting angles to cover in those six hours of pregame.

I understand the point you're making, but if that's the most serious obstacle, then you might as well book hotels.

I would imagine, though, that the league would prefer it if that year's matchup were, say, Patriots and Giants rather than, say, Seahawks-Raiders. (Not that they wouldn't prefer East Coast teams ANY year.)

 

That's crazy. Two teams from the same division can't play each other in the Super Bowl!! [/what a guy who was frozen in 1999 would say right now]

 

There's a brand new, 80,000+ seat stadium being built in the largest American market and the NFL already has told the owners of one of its premier franchises they can not get a Super Bowl without a domed stadium because of the problematic weather in the NYC area in February.
But they're going to go play in London in February, where the weather probably will be worse.

Never, ever going to happen.

 

Speaking of which....For me to fly in one Monday in October, fly out the one week later, and have a hotel that time in London for the week: $1,700 per person.

It's bad enough for the average fan to travel within the U.S. to go the the Super Bowl, let alone sending them overseas.

 

The rule is that the Super Bowl must be held in a city with an NFL franchise. That's why they haven't been back to the Rose Bowl (which is 30,000 extra tickets worth of revenue, not a small sum, for them) since 1993. Rules can always be broken, of course, but for the NFL to break its own rule to move the country's biggest sports event out of the country is the sort of thing that could attract serious and unwelcome political flak-more than listening to idiot Congresspeople rant about the BCS.
Then again, maybe this where they're planning to put the Jaguars. Good move if they are.

 

This isn't about the average fan. NFL doesn't care if its stateside fans go or not. If they do, great. But they're not the target audience for a move like this. And I really don't think it would cost that much more to go from New York to London than New York to, say, Phoenix. Tickets to London are dirt-cheap in the winter. The hotels are more during that week in October than they would be during the same week in Phoenix. But those hotels in Phoenix will charge through the nose during Super Bowl week.

Same with the weather (which is the reason the tickets are dirt-cheap). Sure, it would suck for the American fans. But the Brits don't care. They're used to it. And they're the target here. And if it's snowing or raining? Great. The league loves that. Makes for better visuals.

And like the pregame revenue, that rule's not going to be the deal-breaker. They'll break it if they need to.