Everyone knows the UK loves their football. But what about our football? The NFL returns to London this weekend for it’s annual showcase game, and we want to find out if there’s any real desire for the American version of the game in England. While NFL Europe has existed for years, it’s more of a minor league system for the NFL.
Is this just a freak show for our friends across the pond, or is there real interest in seeing the pigskin across the globe? We talk to Alistair Kirkwood, General Manager of the NFL UK.
“The Patriots are actually the most popular team in the UK,” Kirkwood says – an ironic preference, given that the Patriots are named for the Americans who challenged the Brits during the Revolutionary War. “Their fan base is slightly younger than the average NFL fan in the UK,” he says, “They probably don’t know their history too well.”
They may not know their history, but Kirkwood says, they do know their football. “You’ll find avid fans in many cases being more knowledgeable over here than casual fans in the states,” he says.
Kirkwood doesn’t think it’s so strange that Brits would love American football. After all, he says, the game isn’t so different from cricket. “They’re both based on two tenants,” he says of the two games. “One is that, it’s a game of bluff, because you’re actually trying to do things to make the opposition more comfortable so that you can then do something else. And secondly, there’s a 35-40 second break between each play.”