Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is in Britain this week to support the cause. He thinks it's great that the New York Giants and Miami Dolphins have come overseas for a regular-season game that will boost the NFL's global image.
So, when can we expect to see America's Team -- as the Cowboys are known -- in London?
"Well, that probably wouldn't work for us," Jones said on Thursday, raising questions as to just how many owners really are on board with the NFL's newest international marketing project.
PHOTO: AFP
Jones' take was one of the few sobering opinions to come out of interviews during a conference of international sports leaders being held in conjunction with the NFL's first regular-season game outside North America.
The majority said the Giants-Dolphins game, scheduled for tomorrow at a sold-out Wembley Stadium, is a logical and positive next step in a project more than 30 years in the making. The first overseas NFL game was an exhibition contest in Tokyo in 1976.
"I wouldn't want to put any kind of number on it," said the NFL's international vice president, Mark Waller, when asked how big this international push could get. "I don't think if anyone sat 20 years ago in any office, they'd have predicted that in 2007 we'd have 32 teams and the revenue we have and the passionate 170 million fan base. Our job is to give the fans the best we can and evolve and meet their needs."
Over the past several weeks, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has floated the idea of an overseas Super Bowl. Waller has gone public with a number of ideas, including adding a 17th regular-season game to ensure every team one international game a year, and expanding the league to include teams on different continents.
"Not even in the picture," Jones said of international expansion. "We don't have a team in Los Angeles yet."
A bit more certain is that the NFL will be coming back to Europe.
Though Waller promises a full analysis will be made of the logistics of this week, owners have agreed to play two games a year overseas starting next year. The participants will likely be announced during Super Bowl week. Just as certain is that Dallas -- which the NFL says is the most popular team in England, just ahead of Miami and the Giants -- won't be one of those teams.
Jones said his main concern these days is getting his new stadium built to open by 2009 and host a Super Bowl in 2011.
But he has other reasons not to come.
"Our game is much like it is in soccer," Jones said. "It's my team versus your team. You take Dallas versus Washington and there's a lot there when you play that game in Dallas. You play that same game somewhere else and it's going to feel more like an exhibition. Not that that's what it would be. But there are challenges."
Giants co-owner Steve Tisch doesn't think Jones speaks for everyone, either.
"Jerry's entitled to his opinion -- his is one of many opinions he's had," Tisch said.
The 90,000 tickets for the game were sold out almost immediately after they went on sale. There's almost universal agreement that though Londoners aren't considered huge football aficionados, they certainly know the difference between the watered-down preseason and NFL Europa product the league sold here for years and what they'll get tomorrow -- the real thing.
Nick Szczepanik of the Times said the interest began in the 1980s, before soccer was as huge in England, and around the time Londoners started receiving regular doses of coverage on TV.
"People saw those sunkissed fields in Dallas and Miami and Los Angeles. It was new and stunning and fresh and we bought into it," Szczepanik said
Germany, Mexico and Canada are also in the mix to host future games. Any effort to expand into the burgeoning market in China has been pushed back to 2009, after the Olympics are over. In fact, the NFL doesn't even know who will operate the Olympic Stadium after the Beijing Games.
Waller insists the entire project is about finding more fans.
"We don't have a business projection," he said. "This is really about growing our sport and our fan base. If it was about money, we'd be playing this game in Miami on Sunday at 1pm."
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