Is the National Football League slowly becoming the International Football League?
The Chicago Bears and Oakland (soon to be Las Vegas) Raiders are set to play their week-4 contest in London's state-of-the-art 1-billion dollar stadium this weekend. Unlike some of the places the NFL has been showcased internationally, this new stadium was designed specifically to accommodate American football. According to THIS article from Sports Illustrated, the NFL is eyeballing two more international spots to play regular season games, Canada and Germany.
NFL EVP and Chief Strategy and Growth Officer Chris Halpin told SI, "To us, four-per-season feels like a really good number.That continues to be the plan, and then as we go farther out, we’ll continue to evaluate and look at our inventory of games to play internationally, and also new markets.
with AMERICAN style football is important...you might recall the total failure of the Packers-Raiders pre-season game this summer that had to be played on a shorted field because Canadian football fields feature the goal posts on the goal line, rather than the back of the end-zone like American football rules.
Check out the video below about the logistics involved in playing an NFL game overseas, it's fairly daunting.
Photo: Getty