Most Brits say watching NFL is painful
London to host three games this fall, but survey shows little interest there
The National Football League will send six teams to London in the fall as a new survey indicates that British people find the sport second only to golf as the dullest to watch.
The Seattle Seahawks will play the Oakland Raiders on Oct. 14 in Tottenham Hotspur’s new stadium in North London; the Philadelphia Eagles will play the Jacksonville Jaguars on Oct. 21 or Oct. 28 in Wembley Stadium; and the Tennessee Titans will play the Los Angeles Chargers on Oct. 21 or Oct. 28 in Wembley.
Dates for those two games will be firmed up when the NFL’s full schedule is released in April.
In October, Alistair Kirkwood, the NFL’s UK managing director, had told ESPN that he was aiming to get the final six teams (Eagles, Titans, Seahawks, Texans, Panthers and Packers) that have not yet played overseas.
The Titans, Eagles and Seahawks can now be crossed off that list and the Jaguars have agreed to play a home game in England every year through at least 2020. As for the Texans, Panthers and Packers, don’t be surprised if they’re on the travel list for ’19. Houston and Carolina play one another at NRG Stadium, which would seem like an ideal game for England because it takes care of two teams with one contest.
As for the Packers, they won’t give up a home game in the league’s smallest city and host teams don’t like to give up the sellout when Green Bay comes to town. But they play the Chargers in their temporary, 27,000-seat StubHub Center digs in 2019, making London a likely landing spot for that game with the team announcing Thursday that it will host one international game in 2018 and ’19.
The announcement comes as 70 per cent of 1,616 British adults who took part in a YouGov survey said the sport was painful to watch.
The majority of those surveyed ranked “American football” as the second-dullest sport to watch, with 59 per cent of respondents rating it “very or quite boring.” Only 18 per cent described it as exciting and only golf did more poorly. (Cricket and darts tied for third, one point behind American football.)
That survey is at odds with the results of a Gallup poll in America. Of the 1,049 respondents to the telephone survey conducted Dec. 4-11, 37 per cent said football is their favourite sport to watch.
Although the number is down from the all-time high of 43 per cent in 2006 and ’07, it remains far ahead of basketball (11 per cent) and baseball (nine per cent).