Quote:But, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, part of the "rabid" popularity of NFL football in London is the fact that it's a novelty.  If a team landed there permanently, that new car smell would go away very quickly, and if the team struggled, Londoners would most likely go back to the football they actually prefer.  The die hard population of NFL or even Jaguar fans isn't as embedded as some want to believe.

 

That's not my experience at all. The rabid fanbase is there in the UK. Most of the people turning up to the games in Wembley aren't doing it for the novelty value. They're doing it because they're hardcore fans of the sport. In some ways, the UK fanbase is more hardcore than the US fanbase. Because there are very few people who are fans of the sport by default - these are people who love a sport that at times they could only follow by tuning in to armed forces radio. It's not a new thing for these fans - just look at the number of throwback jerseys you see out there at Wembley. These are people who love their sport, and love their team, and in many cases have been supporting that team for decades.

 

Which is the real problem here - the hardcore fanbase in the UK is a hardcore fanbase that supports teams already, and is used to supporting them at a distance. They're not going to turn around and support a different team just because the league sticks one in London. Especially not if it's a struggling, low profile team that moves. I know the same's true to some extent of teams moving to new locations in the US, but I suspect it would be more extreme over here.

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