NFL visits to Britain remain an annual event but there’s a real possibility that the UK could soon get its own franchise

WHEN the Tampa Bay Buccaneers meet the Chicago Bears in a regular season encounter at Wembley Stadium starting at 6pm this evening, there will be more than the two teams’ win-loss percentages at stake.

Since a vote earlier this month by the NFL team owners to expand the number of games in London until 2016, the relationship between the NFL and the UK has moved beyond a flirtation and has entered the dating stage. All that remains now is to see when – rather than if – the two cooing lovebirds tie the knot.

The possibility that an NFL team will soon call London home seems to be increasing with every announcement from the organisation’s Park Avenue headquarters. Following the recent meeting in Houston at which the League voted in favour of extending the run of International Series games until 2016 – today’s game is the fifth consecutive year in which two NFL teams have locked horns in the British capital – NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has been outlining the League’s vision of an ever closer relationship with Blighty.

“We’ve been asking if we should have some consistency among some of the teams going over there,” said Goodell. “There is a strong feeling that [to have the same team playing in London each year] would help build a fan base of particular teams and might help us to see if we can we build the kind of fan base that could potentially warrant a franchise.”

Much of the impetus driving the NFL towards a more outward-looking stance has come from the phenomenal worldwide success of the Premier League. The American ownership of teams such as Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Aston Villa has ensured a greater understanding of the rewards on offer for successfully exporting top-level sport, and has whetted the appetites of NFL owners for an expansion of the NFL, with its executives becoming increasingly explicit about its desire to use English-speaking Britain as a bridgehead to the rest of the world.

Although London is the front-runner, the NFL have also been looking at Birmingham in order to make any franchise more accessible to the northern cities, while the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Croke Park in Dublin (Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney is the US Ambassador to Ireland) and Murrayfield have all been mentioned in dispatches. “We do believe that a lot of the fans that come to the game in London are actually coming from markets outside of London,” says Goodell. “That’s attractive to us so we’ve talked about the idea should we play in Birmingham or some other markets that are outside the London core market?” In either case there would be no shortage of possible venues: as well as under-used Wembley, London has Twickenham and the new Olympic Stadium; while in Birmingham, Villa Park is one of England’s ten biggest stadiums.

London remains the clear front-runner though, with Goodell confirming that multiple games are already planned for the city “as soon as 2012”, with the idea to get one team to play back-to-back games to build up some attachment between London gridiron fans and the potential new franchise. “We’ve been very pleased at the reception to the game and the way that our business has grown in London,” he said. “Now we want to see if can it be sustained for multiple games, so we’re looking at multiple games over there – if that can occur, then that gives you a better sense of whether it could really be a host community for an NFL franchise. That’s what we’re trying to evaluate.”

There’s clearly a baseline of interest in the game here from the days when the Scottish Claymores (1995-2004) and the London Monarchs (1991-1998), who both won the World Bowl, competed in the NFL Europe, plus Channel 4’s innovative coverage in the 1980s, but there has been alarm about sluggish ticket sales for today’s Wembley match. Unlike the 2007 game, which sold out in seven minutes, as late as Friday there were still tickets available. Yet commentators have pointed to the dire economic situation and the 20 per cent hike in ticket prices, which means that the cheapest tickets are £60, the average £80 and the best seats £150.

Yet the NFL remains determined to expand, and with Goodell admitting that he has been approached by “a number of teams” about playing regularly in the UK, the question is not just “when?”, but “who?”. Although the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the fiefdom of Manchester United owners the Glazers, have explicitly ruled out a move across the pond, there is still a whole raft of likely candidates. These struggling franchises include the San Diego Chargers, St Louis Rams, Minnesota Vikings, Buffalo Bills, Oakland Raiders and Jacksonville Jaguars.

For a whole host of reasons – the Rams or Raiders will probably move back to Los Angeles, and the Bills are already building up a relationship with Toronto – by far the most likely franchise to move to the UK is the Jaguars, whose owner Wayne Weaver has made little secret of his desire to leave Jacksonville after 16 years in Florida. This is mainly because of their embarrassingly small attendances: despite a three-year freeze in prices and a desperate televised plea from mayor John Peyton to support the Jaguars, ticket sales are declining each year and the average for last year was 45,500 against a capacity of 80,000. Under NFL rules this meant that none of their home games were shown on TV last season.

It’s a spiral of decline that has been accelerated by the end of the NFL’s revenue-sharing programme, where the richest teams subsidised the bottom eight. Shorn of $20m from that source and with declining ticket and television income, the Jaguars are becoming increasingly uncompetitive as player costs increase as a proportion of turnover each year. The NFL is said to understand that a Jacksonville franchise will soon be unviable and will give its blessing to a move, but would prefer the Jaguars to relocate to London rather than the other main option, Los Angeles, to remove the need for a divisional realignment.

For the moment, though, the focus is on the two teams at Wembley this afternoon, where for the first time the match features two teams who won the previous week, with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beating the New Orleans Saints 26-20 at home and the Chicago Bears humbling the Minnesota Vikings 39-10 at Soldier Field. An initial squint at their records would suggest that the Bucs have the edge, but that would be misleading. They may lead the NFC South Division with a record of 4-2 compared to the Bears’ 3-3 in the NFC North, but the Bears have by far the tougher division, which includes the League’s only unbeaten team in the reigning Superbowl champions the Green Bay Packers, plus the season’s surprise in the 5-1 Detroit Lions.

The Bears and Bucs are two very decent teams, with the Bears coming within a point of last year’s Superbowl while the resurgent Bucs just missed a play-off place despite having a 10-6 record. A win over the Bears would put the Bucs close to a play-off place while a defeat for the Bears would end their hopes for post-season involvement, so there is much at stake.

On their first competitive visit to London, the Bears may be a team in transition, and an unhappy one at that. However, they still have plenty of weapons at their disposal, not least star wide receiver Devin Hester, whose spectacular 98-yard kick return resulted in a touchdown against the Vikings last week. But if the Bucs are to triumph, defensive lineman Gerald McCoy and their young defence will need to put a lid on quarterback Jay Cutler, who is the second most sacked QB in the league but whose team are 24-0 when he completes all his passes and avoids being sacked.

As for the Bucs, whose previous visit to London in 2009 ended in a 35-7 thumping by the New England Patriots, they have a match-winner in running back LeGarrette Blount if he can shake off his niggling knee injury, while unheralded wide receiver Preston Parker has developed a handy habit of scoring crucial touchdowns.

Yet no matter what happens on the pitch, today’s match is undoubtedly part of a far longer game for the NFL.

Bear to watch: Matt Forte

The unsettled running back may be in the midst of a contract row with the Bears, but is in spectacular form and leads the league with 908 yards, which is 46 per cent of his team’s offensive yardage.

Buc to watch: Josh Freeman

The young quarterback threw his first NFL pass at Wembley against the Patriots and has gone on to become the lynchpin of this fast-emerging Bucs side.