For a league that often trumpets its desire to grow its audience in Europe, the NFL has a strange way of showing it.
The confrontations that the NFL has inflicted on crowds in the United Kingdom and now Germany have almost always been putrid.
There have been 42 NFL games in Europe since the NFL first took its product overseas in October 2007. Of those, only two They have faced a pair of teams with winning records, a matchup between the Giants and Packers in 2022 and one between the Chiefs and Dolphins last season.
Nine times, the NFL has subjected crowds in Europe to a game in which at least one team did not win. The 2017 Cleveland Browns made an appearance in London en route to becoming the second 0-16 team in NFL history, along with the legendarily bad Urban Meyer-coached Jaguars and a 15-loss Dolphins team. directed by the immortal Cleo Lemon.
It’s like introducing Italian-American cuisine by opening a can of SpaghettiOs. Or show off the best of American barbecue by serving a McRib.
The final NFL game on European soil this season is the ultimate battle against ineptitude. Prepare your stomachs for Bryce Young and the Carolina Panthers (2-7) against Daniel Jones and the New York Giants (2-7). That’s a more important matchup for next year’s draft order than the current playoff race.
The Panthers and Giants are two of seven teams tied for the worst record in the NFL just over halfway through the season. The loser of Sunday’s game will be one step closer to selecting their quarterback of the future or another impact player. Sunday’s winner would still need a miracle to get closer to a playoff spot.
As if watching the Giants and Panthers wasn’t scary enough, the Munich crowd has no respite at halftime. The NFL to perform. That is practically an act of war against the Germans.
There is no reason to subject one of the United States’ closest allies to such punishment, but the NFL has been doing it to the United Kingdom for years. By anointing the Jaguars as London’s team and now having them play two home games a year across the pond, the NFL has foisted one of its least successful franchises on a British audience.
Only twice in the last 16 NFL seasons has Jacksonville made the playoffs. Only once have the Jaguars won at least one game, the 2017 season, when quarterback Blake Bortles unexpectedly produced brief flashes of competition.
Why hasn’t the NFL prioritized sending better teams to Europe? Maybe because the league hasn’t needed it.
Between Europeans curious to watch live American football and expats longing for a bit of life at home, NFL games have consistently sold out in London and Munich, no matter how atrocious the matchup. Crowds of more than 80,000 typically include fans wearing t-shirts supporting the two teams playing and many of the league’s 30 other teams.
Television viewership for NFL games has also slowly increased in the UK, with a small but dedicated fan base watching more and more games, and last year’s Super Bowl.
For years, top European soccer teams have courted American fans by hosting preseason exhibition matches against each other. Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Manchester City spent weeks on a pre-season tour of the United States last summer, as did Chelsea, Real Madrid and Barcelona.
The NFL has taken the opposite approach, holding games that count in European qualifying but exporting mostly mediocre matchups. The league appears unwilling to put its most anticipated games in an early Sunday morning time slot that would be inconvenient for many American viewers, particularly those on the West Coast.
In a recent interview earlier this season, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that American football is “destined to be global.” Goodell expressed interest in holding games not only in Europe and America, but also in Africa, Asia and Australia someday soon.
An early warning for foreign fans on those continents: They probably won’t have the best teams or the brightest stars either.
