The National Football League has scheduled four regular-season games to be played next year in London – more than ever before! – and is planning to keep ticket prices for the games the same as this year: £35 to £149 ($44 to $189) for general seating. And that pretty much ends the good news.
The not-so-good news is that the eight teams that have selected to play in the four 2017 games – two at Wembley, two at Twickenham – include the Cleveland Browns, who still stand a chance to lose all 16 games on their schedule, plus seven other teams who would not qualify for the playoffs if this season ended today.
The matchups, with dates to be finalized in the off-season, look like this:
24 September or 1 October: Baltimore v Jacksonville, Wembley
24 September or 1 October: New Orleans v Miami, Wembley
22 or 29 October: Minnesota v Cleveland, Twickenham
22 or 29 October: Arizona v Los Angeles, Twickenham
One problem: the aggregate record for the eight teams picked to play is now a lackluster 38-65-1. Already eliminated from playoff contention this year, but tapped to play in England next year, are the Browns (0-13), Jacksonville Jaguars (2-11) and Los Angeles Rams (4-9). Miami, at 8-5, is the best team, as of right now, to be playing in England.
The Jaguars, who have often been mentioned as a candidate to move permanently to London, perhaps in only a few years, have played in England in each of the last four years. The Rams’ first season back in Los Angeles has been so disappointing that the team fired coach Jeff Fisher on Monday.
NFL players have never hidden the fact that they are less than enthusiastic about playing in England, mostly because of the long flights to and from the United States. When the Philadelphia Eagles beat the New York Giants in a regular-season finale last year, the Eagles were delighted that their division rivals would have to play in England in 2016 and not them.
The slate of four games in 2017, an increase from three in each of the last three seasons, will probably still sell, because American football in England (and continental Europe, which draws in many fans for the International Series), by several metrics, has not lost any of its appeal. An appearance by the rotten Browns, who could become only the second team in NFL history to finish 0-16, might not even test that.
“The NFL is commendably dedicated to developing football at all levels within the United States and throughout the globe, and we share in that commitment to help make our game as great as possible and the opportunities to bring it to more people, both within our community and in other regions,” Browns owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam said in a release.
Fifteen of the 16 regular-season games played at Wembley since October 2007, have drawn at least 81,000 spectators. The Giants-Rams game this year was the first to be played at Twickenham, and it drew a healthy crowd of 74,121.
And this is the crux of the matter – the NFL may be happy to keep sending mediocre teams over the Atlantic because the crowds still roll in. And in a season when the league has come under criticism for poor quality of play and TV ratings have slumped, it is in its interests to keep its big draws on home soil and in prime time.
Keeping the big teams away from Europe hardly seems to affect TV figures in the UK either. The NFL has said it is on pace to reach a record number of unique television viewers in Britain. The league’s internal research reports a fan base of 13 million fans, close to four million of which are considered to be “avid”. Additionally, the NFL said that participation in amateur football in the UK has grown by approximately 15% per year since 2007. Latest figures from Sport England show that 40,000 people age 14 or older play regularly, the NFL said.
Furthermore, a 61,000-seat stadium being built in north London primarily as the new home of Tottenham Hotspur will play host to two NFL games per year for 10 years when it is finished in 2018. It will include an artificial turf surface under a retractable grass soccer pitch for American football games.
But just because the NFL can sell out Wembley (which, given that England’s soccer team can do it, may not be as hard as it sounds), does that justify sending over poorer teams? While, it’s impossible to predict which teams will be great a year out from the schedule, it could be a sign of respect to arrange a game that is likely to contain two contenders – and that’s unlikely to be New Orleans v Miami. Besides the excuse that travel to UK disrupts a season isn’t compelling. Teams that play in England are given the option to have the next weekend off, but the Colts took on Chicago a week after losing to Jacksonville at Wembley this year – and beat the Bears, 29-23. (It also might have been a factor that the Bears, now 3-10, are lousy.) And it’s worth remembering that one of the teams involved in the first ever International Series game at Wembley back in 2007, the New York Giants, went on to win the Super Bowl that season. Maybe it’s time to put your money on the Browns for Super Bowl LII.
