Super Bowl in London…revisited

You know, I do have to give Roger Goodell credit. Ever since his tenure began a little more than a year ago, he’s done a lot. No knock on former commish, Paul Taglibue, but Goodell has seemingly been more “involved” in one year than Tags was his whole career. One of his crazy new initiatives? The Super Bowl in London. Yes, that London. In England. In February. At Wembeley Stadium. No, you’re right, there is no roof. But, I digress. I previously wrote about why the Super Bowl should not be played in London, but apparently, Yahoo! Sports writer Michael Silver and Goodell, and others, seem to think differently. A portion of their reasoning makes sense, as shown in this quote by NFL senior vice president of marketing Mark Waller,

“If you want to grow something, you’ve got to share it,” Mark Waller, the NFL’s senior vice president of sales and marketing, said Thursday during a break in the conference. “Once this takes root here, and it will, people are going to expect to see the best, in the same way that you know the World Cup is the ultimate for soccer and the Olympics is the ultimate for track and other sports. If (the Super Bowl) travels, it makes you part of what the world is today, which is truly a global community.”

I understand that…the globalization of American football is a great idea and one I personally think the world is ready for.  Apparently the people of Europe want football, and like most they aren’t willing to settle for half-hearted attempts (NFL Europe), but I still don’t believe that any of the “Expansionists” are thinking this all the way through. Yes, as a business person, you are always trying to find new ways to make money, which a super bowl in London would do, but is it worth to do it at the expense of some of your existing clientele? You can read about my thoughts on that in my previous post. Instead, lets look at Michael Silver’s reasons for moving the super bowl to London.

Here are some reasons why I think playing a Super Bowl in London would be (again with help from Rogers) the dog’s bollocks:

London ain’t Jacksonville. Not to pick on the Super Bowl XXXIX host – well, OK, I do mean to pick on it, like I always do – but London has everything a Super Bowl city needs: a lovely, modern stadium; the infrastructure and scope to handle the nightlife, the parties and the day-time crush of tourists in bad T-shirts and ball caps; centralized entertainment and shopping districts with plenty of hotel space; and a quick, efficient public transportation system. It’s a bigger, better New Orleans that way.

I don’t buy the arguments against it. People will tell you that playing the game abroad deprives some poor U.S. city of loads of revenue, and my rebuttal is, “So what?” Is it the NFL’s job to prop up the Detroits of the world, or can the league make a decision in its best overall marketing interests? Besides, don’t believe the hype: The NFL half-promises future Super Bowls to citizens of cities facing ballot initiatives which guarantee sweetened deals for new stadiums, using this as the carrot after implicitly wielding the stick (don’t vote for this and you’ll lose the team, likely to Los Angeles). Another argument against going overseas is that the Super Bowl draws working-class fans of the competing teams, and they won’t be able to afford a trip to London. That may be true for some fans, but not most of the people I see during Super Bowl week, who are paying $500 or more per ticket and seem to have plenty of disposable income. This isn’t George Mason reaching the Final Four and a bunch of starving students hopping on Greyhounds; the typical Super Bowl fan, in my anecdotal experience, tends to be Joe from Sales on a company-approved junket, and he’ll probably fly to London as readily as he will to Phoenix.

How provincial can we be? Yes, we’re the country that brought you “Freedom Fries” a few short years ago, and now we’re unwilling to throw a bone to the Brits ? These were the hardy, brave souls who, every night during World War II (and long before the U.S. joined the fray), turned off their lights and took a pounding from the Nazis and refused to blink. I can’t think of a better country with whom to share our greatest sporting spectacle.

Silver’s first reason, that London is better equipped to handle a large influx of people is probably true. Why is it probably irrelevant? Well, for one, he’s making the comparison to one city in the U.S. and unless you compare London to all of the U.S. cities that can/will/might host a super bowl (instead of the city that hosted it 3 years ago) you aren’t really making a valid point for moving the game across the pond. A better point can be summed up in three words: February in London. Go check the weather and get back to me.

Silver’s second reason deals first with depriving a U.S. city of the revenue generated by the Super Bowl. Silver’s argument that the NFL has no responsibility to “prop up” the Detroit’s of the world is actually just the opposite of my thinking. It seems to me that if the NFL puts a team in a city, and the NFL is making money off of a team being in that city, then why shouldn’t they prop that city up occasionally with a Super Bowl? As Silver himself says, the NFL isn’t being completely altruistic when they give a Super Bowl to Detroit anyway, they are getting something out of the deal (i.e. new stadiums which make the NFL more money). Furthermore, to Silver’s second point, lets get one thing straight. the Super Bowl in London will leave some U.S. fans out in the cold. Every person at the Super Bowl isn’t an executive…and when has it become good business to expand your business at the risk of hurting your primary fan base?

Reason number 3? Do I even have to bother with the history lesson? Honestly, if Silver is going to use this as a reason then I should be able to use the revolutionary war as a reason that we shouldn’t go to England (honestly…did you really just use this as a reason for the Super Bowl? England helping us in World War II?)

As I’ve said previously, regular season games in London? fine. I still haven’t seen any good reasons (besides more money) to bring the Super Bowl to London. I think I’m going to need more than some smooth talking by our current commissioner to convince me of that.

ESPN: London Super Bowl? Commish to consider idea

Yahoo! Sports: Lovely Jubbly

Related:

Sports Business Digest: 6 Reasons the Super Bowl should not be played in London

Category: Football