At 8:30AM CDT on Sunday morning September 25, you will be able to turn on your television and see NFL football being played! The Baltimore Ravens at the Jacksonville Jaguars…in London?
Wait a minute – did Jacksonville just lose a home game to London? Why, yes they did!
The next Sunday (October 1), the Miami Dolphins’ home game against my beloved New Orleans Saints will be played in London, too. That comes despite pleas from the city of Miami and thousands of Dolphins fans to leave their home game in Florida after Hurricane Irma forced the cancellation of their Week 1 opener.
NOPE! Those evil heartless rulers of the NoFunLeague have made their decision. Miami’s home game will still be moved so that all of the loyal football starved fans in jolly old England can get their fill of NFL contests again this season. Pip Pip – cheerio, Miami! The NoFunLeague simply doesn’t care what you Dolphins fans think.
A few weeks later on October 22, the home game for the St. Louis Rams of Los Angeles will be moved to London for a game against Arizona. In this case, I doubt that anyone will care in Los Angeles, St. Louis, or London. Zzzzz.
The following Sunday, Sunday October 29, Cleveland Browns fans get to donate a home game to London as the Browns play the Minnesota Vikings in England. That makes four NFL regular season games being played in London for this season.
But wait, there’s more! There is ONE MORE GAME being played outside of the US this season. On Sunday, November 19, the Oakland Raiders will donate their home game to Mexico City as they “host” the New England Patriots (Is it just me or isn’t it a bit odd to have a team nicknamed the “Patriots” playing a game in Mexico?). Ole!
How can moving five NFL games to foreign soil be good for the league? I can think of a few reasons.
- By playing on early Sunday morning in London, the NFL has usurped a 4th football time slot on Sunday to help sell even more national television advertising. Historically, an average Sunday afternoon game will pull 15 million viewers, so these early Sunday morning games are still likely to draw 5 to 10 million early risers with nothing better to do. That’s a lot of extra revenue for the various networks who pay far too much for rights to cover the league. And, as we know about the NFL, it is ALL about more money for those starving owners of this professional football monopoly.
- I have long theorized that the NFL is looking to start an “International” division and will donate franchises from Jacksonville, Buffalo, Cleveland, and perhaps the orphaned San Diego Chargers of Los Angeles. They could move the teams to London, Mexico City, Toronto, and either Tokyo or Germany with a minimum of backlash from the other NFL cities. Think of all the merchandise sales those needy (or is that greedy) NFL owners would add by going international with their monopoly?
- The remaining NFL franchise cities would receive a wake-up call that your team could be the next one to be relocated to another country. Are you listening Miami, Indianapolis, and New Orleans?
If you were actually trying to kill the proverbial goose laying the golden eggs, I cannot fathom any corporate entity that is doing a much better job than the current leadership of the NFL. This is a classic study in monopoly power, short-sighted decision making, and ignoring your most valuable commodity – the customer base. Every bumbling step of the NFL in recent years has been sounding the clarion call for a rival professional football league to emerge soon and diminish the value of the NFL franchises.
With every NFL London or Mexico City game that is played, fans in the home towns of those franchises are given yet another reason to find something else to do on Sundays in the fall. In the past year, NFL fans in the cites of St. Louis, San Diego, and (coming soon) Oakland no longer have a local team to root for. However, somehow, some way, they are finding something else they can do with their Sundays.
As the NFL continues to slowly self-destruct, maybe (just maybe) some billionaire NFL franchise owners will need to find something else to do on their Sundays, too!