My post #8 answers this. "
I couldn't imagine a more ****ed up thing to do to American football fans than hold the Super Bowl abroad.
It's the kind of tone deaf idea that can only come from the detached mind of the super wealthy."
If the sport wants to grow overseas it needs to also give them at least the possibility to host the largest game in the sport.
No it does not. If the sport wants to grow overseas, it needs to induce Pee-Wee football in grammar school. Witnessing the Super Bowl in Europe gives no context, explains no rules, cultivates no fan appreciation, other than bowing to the interests of wealthy US ex-patriots, or rich jet setters who would look forward to an overseas shopping trip anchored by a Super Bowl pretext.
If you don't already know American football, you wont learn it by watching the Super Bowl. Europe has 740,000,000+ people who won't be able to attend the game in person, so those folks have no more advantage hosting it than simply watching the broadcast
from America on TV
from an American stadium. The reason that isn't done already is purely commercial. It's all about the ₽$₪€¥₿. Played here in the states, the SB is always a "prime time" affair on commercial television. A game played in Europe can still be watched here quite comfortably with a 6+/- hour time delay, so advertisers will still come across with the big bucks. Everyone knows that the most expensive advertising minutes on American TV are during the Super Bowl. But the time lag makes it problematic for Europe to watch it when we watch it. If you want to promote the game abroad using the SB, then you have to play the game in the states 11AM or before, so Europe can watch it in the evening. You're unlikely to get millions of viewers in Europe between 2 and 5 AM.
The reason the football world cup is in the US is to try and raise the profile of the sport and I'm sure it will.
It doesn't need to raise it's profile here. We're already the most cosmopolitan country in the world with people from everywhere who follow the sport enthusiastically, and the upcoming World Cup is not even just the US, but all of North America. Soccer has been growing in interest in the US
for more than two generations now because grammar schools started cultivating it as a sport - especially as a women's sport, because American families didn't want their little girls banging their heads together. Our Title IX has long ago resulted in US women winning the World Cup and Olympic Gold Medals. We already have professional level teams in a rapidly growing league, so much so that our best players are quite often seduced away to play for high paying, high profile teams in the UK and elsewhere.
If a stadium in Germany or the UK can win a bidding contest against US stadiums where's the harm?
The harm is to the average avid football fans who've been attending every home game assiduously, in some cases for years, but doesn't have the resources to fly themselves to Europe, and put themselves up in a hotel to watch their team finally win a championship. It's unfair to them.
I don't ask for any preferential treatment for the overseas stadiums just that they be given a chance.
The Super Bowl in Europe is about as likely to cultivate American football abroad as holding the Winter Olympics in Kampala will make curling the national sport of Uganda. Europe already has a sport called football. There will never be another one called football in my lifetime. If you think watching the Super Bowl on TV (
we already know the preponderance of viewers will be doing that) will actually cultivate fans abroad, then tell the NFL to start broadcasting
our event live at 11AM PST. Compared to the 74 million potential European TV viewers, the 60,000+/- rich folks at your stadium is not even a rounding error.
