The recent NFL Draft got everyone excited about American Football, with Joe Burrow’s switch to the Cincinnati Bengals and Tom Brady’s bromance rekindled with Rob Gronkowski at Tampa Bay. Recent enthusiasm has been tempered, however, by the news that the NFL won’t be coming to London this year, with plans for all four matches in the English capital scrapped.
The NFL coming to London has been a controversial subject since its first inception. The idea of travelling a domestic season abroad is one that has often been mooted for the Premier League but has never happened.
American Football in England has, to an extent, been a big hit. Recently, the Los Angeles Rams made the trip ‘across the pond’ and provided a fascinating glimpse into the logistical and physical challenges that come with crossing the Atlantic to play an NFL game.
The Oakland Raiders took on the Chicago Bears at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in 2019, and this year was supposed to see two fixtures featuring the Jacksonville Jaguars, which were scheduled to take place at the English national stadium of Wembley. There were two more games scheduled for later in the year at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, but these two have been indefinitely postponed.
All four games will now take place in the United States, meaning that it’s the first time since 2006 that an NFL season – presuming that the season goes ahead as planned – hasn’t visited London. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, declared that the call was “absolutely the right decision to ensure the safety of everyone involved in the sport”, with Spurs Chairman Daniel Levy, who has come under criticism for originally furloughing his staff said that his club “fully appreciate the difficult decision that the NFL has had to make”.
The U.K. Managing Director for the NFL, Alistair Kirkwood made the following statement on the move to pull all games back to the U.S.A.
“The NFL’s London Games have become a major part of the NFL season and the U.K. sports calendar,” he said. “But the uncertainty in the current sporting landscape and the tremendous amount of long-term travel and planning required to stage successful London games mean this is the sensible decision to make.”
While few could defend Spurs on the furlough that they originally proposed for their staff, some sympathy might come the North London club’s way after this decision. It could end up costing Tottenham Hotspur anywhere between £2 million and £4 million in lost revenue.
The NFL has always been entertaining fayre in London whenever it has visited, and while this decision has clearly been made with safety in mind above anything else, NFL fans will be frustrated. It’s easy to see why when you look at some of the great drama that has played out in London over the last decade whenever the NFL circus came to London town.
With this hiatus in the travelling circus that is the NFL, could the sport never come back to London? While the move is not being touted as a permanent one, how long the Coronavirus lasts could well dictate whether American Football arrives in London ever again.
