NOVEMBER | THE COMMENTATOR
Football vs football
Martin
Fullard draws
comparisons
A
s the National Football
League (NFL) London
Games took place in
early October, the corporate
hospitality company Hospitality
Finder said that they had seen
a huge rise in demand for
corporate tickets over the last
seven years.
Ever since the NFL London
Games first debuted in 2007 at
Wembley it’s proven to be quite a
hit, sparking increased interest
across the UK. That’s despite
concerns it was just a fad.
Since Hospitality Finder
began selling tickets to NFL
games in 2012, bosses say sales
have gone up by 2,100% to date,
with a big boost in 2016 when
the NFL added new games at
Twickenham.
This year the first NFL
game took place at Tottenham
Hotspur’s new stadium, instead
of Twickenham, on a new multi-
purpose pitch with the Chicago
Bears playing Oakland Raiders
in front of a crowd of 61,500 fans.
A week later the Carolina
Panthers took on Tampa Bay
Buccaneers at the stadium with
a further two games following at
Wembley.
According to viewing figures,
Sky’s coverage has also been
growing by 30% each year, with
20m people watching some NFL
content in 2018.
This underlines the impact
American sport is having on the
UK, and its big business.
American sport, particularly
the NFL, is very far detached
from English football, sorry,
‘soccer’, in the context of this
column. The US has the Seattle
Seahawks versus the Pittsburgh
Steelers. We have Morecambe
versus Grimsby Town.
The idea of a man standing
on a damp, windswept terrace
in Accrington, wearing a flat
cap and gnawing on a steak
and kidney pie is quite far
removed from a Super Bowl
half time show in which a single
cheerleader’s daily pay equates
“Bosses say
sales have
gone up by
2,100% to
date”
to that of the Rochdale FC
annual player budget.
In the UK we love to suffer
with our sport. We’ve always
loved standing in the rain and
moaning about it. But it seems
crumbling terraces and cold pies
have had their time. Beyond the
bubble of the top of the Premier
League, our national sport often
struggles to whip up large-scale
interest
The NFL has shown the UK
what sport can be like: it’s an
occasion. Each game is marketed
as a one-time-only event that
you simply cannot miss.
The UK gave the world many
sports, and in recent times the
international bodies that now
run them have made them
‘better’. It’s probably time to
hand the baton over to the US.
We’ve given them the stadiums,
now let them show us how to
use them.
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