London: After one of the most turbulent periods in the history of the NFL, Sunday’s sold-out clash between the Oakland Raiders and Miami Dolphins at Wembley will prove that even the current rash of off-field scandals can’t halt the sport’s remarkable growth in the United Kingdom.
Over the last few weeks, the NFL’s reputation as the most popular sport in the United States has been damaged by a series of controversial incidents involving star players.
Baltimore’s Ray Rice was sacked by the Ravens and suspended indefinitely by the league — a punishment he is appealing — after video footage showed the running back knocking his future wife unconscious in the lift of a hotel casino.
The incident sparked a firestorm of claim and counter-claim that threatened to engulf the NFL as sponsors expressed displeasure at the negative publicity, while embattled NFL commissioner Roger Goodell ignored calls to resign over his handing of the case.
To make matters worse, the Rice scandal was just the tip of the iceberg, with Carolina defensive end Greg Hardy convicted of assaulting a former girlfriend and threatening to kill her, and Minnesota running back Adrian Peterson charged with child abuse after allegedly whipping his four-year-old son.
Goodell has vowed to clean up the NFL’s tarnished image but, while he faces a fight to restore public faith in the States, over in the UK the sport’s approval ratings have never been higher.
For many years the American brand of football was largely ignored in the UK, where soccer has long held a vice-like grip on the sporting public’s affections.
But the league’s commitment to growing its brand overseas has paid dividends and this will be the eighth successive year that the NFL has staged regular season fixtures at Wembley.
The NFL’s popularity has increased to such an extent that for the first time three matches will be played at Wembley, with Oakland and Miami first up before the Atlanta Falcons face the Detroit Lions on October 26 and the Dallas Cowboys meet the Jacksonville Jaguars on November 9.
More than 225,000 tickets have been sold for the three games and, just weeks after the England football team attracted only 40,181 for a friendly against Norway, a capacity crowd of 84,000 will flock to north London on Sunday to watch a match-up between two mediocre teams who have managed a combined one victory from their six matches this season.
The NFL’s rapid growth has convinced the league’s opinion-makers that Goodell wants to have a team in the UK on a permanent basis and according to Dallas’s influential owner Jerry Jones it a case of when and not if that happens.
“I think it is going to get done,” Jones said. “I sense an increasing interest in the sport and the ability to attract fans.
“In Canada we already have a high percentage of the television market that are NFL fans and the first thing we had to do in the UK was build a fanbase, which is what these games have done and are doing. I like the lay of the land.”
Whether the NFL would create a new team or move one of their existing franchises remains to be seen, although Jacksonville — whose owner Shahid Khan is also the chairman of English Championship club Fulham — are regarded as strong candidates to make the switch after agreeing to play one game a year at Wembley from 2013 to 2016.
As Alistair Kirkwood, managing director of NFL UK, admits, “work has been done internally” on planning for such a side.
“If someone told me 10 years ago that figures of the calibre of Jerry Jones would be talking seriously about a UK side, I would’ve been blown away,” Kirkwood said.
“There is real excitement about the possibility of a franchise, especially in light of the crowds we are getting for the international games.”
