Weirdly I get very excited by March Madness but the superbowl leaves me a little cold....

Never gonna happen. As much as I love the NFL, it needs to stay stateside

I think it's a neat idea.

More exposure for the game...
A GOOD game might win some fans (hey, the US World Cup Team won me over to watch and root for Team USA next time...)
London's an A-level city, it's on par with our biggest and best, and a bigger, more prestigious site than, say, Indianapolis...

Why not?

Because it's an "American Game?"

So what?

It seems a silly objection...if you're willing to play a game there, why not the Big Game?

Again:

I've never been East of Arizona...but I'll take SB-In-London over SB-In-Phoenix, AZ any day...

Hold it in TORONTO!

I say bring a Rugby bowl!
*only because I play rugby*

There wouldn't be any problem filling the stadium. There are quite a few genuine local fans, and plenty of people who would come purely for the novelty factor. Add to that the European fans who would fly over, and visiting Yanks, and you could easily fill a stadium several times over.

But it is a truly awful idea! How dare anyone suggest cheating American football fans out of experiencing the climax of their league in their own country. If someone suggested holding the FA Cup final outside the UK there'd be riots, and rightly so! It's putting profit before fans, and it should be treated with the contempt it deserves.

Not to mention that the time zone situation would be rather weird, unless you wanted to hold the match at 2 in the morning local time?

Maybe in the distant future... assuming the NFL had expanded to include none-American based teams for a number of years... it might just be possible. But no time soon.

No. The objection to an American Super Bowl in London isn't that it's an "American game." It's because it's an American commercial jackpot. A Super Bowl brings an insane amount of revenue to the city hosting it--that's why everyone wants to host it. If the Super Bowl happens in London, then American cities won't get the boost that the Super Bowl is supposed to provide, and the game will generate less revenue overall than if it happened stateside.

@vyrwolf: but revenue is divided among the teams anyway. Octavious is wrong for that reason, it would actually reduce profits, but would expand the fanbase, so its actually doing the opposite.

"How dare anyone suggest cheating American football fans out of experiencing the climax of their league in their own country."

That's the biggest objection I've heard...

And I just don't see the big deal--as 99.9999% (made up statistic, sure, but justified here) of Americans who watch watch it from their couches and in bars and restaurants and NOT in the actual stadium itself...

What are we really being "cheated" of, by not having it on American soil?

*I* think Americans are cheated when it's held somewhere that's not quite up the the level of hype and buss the event generates...

A-list stars, C-list cities?

Nothing personal against Indy, but come on...

If most were asked, would they rather the SB be held in a city like Indy or St. Paul, MN...

Or in The Big Apple, or here in Los Angeles, AKA, The Cinema Capital Of The World...

San Francisco...
New Orleans...
Miami...
Boston...
Chicago...

All cool locales--but Indianapolis? Who writes home, excited they've been THERE?

"If someone suggested holding the FA Cup final outside the UK there'd be riots, and rightly so!"

And if someone suggested we give the Olympics to Jacksonville, FLA, they'd be laughed out of the committee.

What's the great loss?

You gain so much more glamour-wise and media-wise with somewhere like London or Toronto, you grow the game...

?

@fasces: I'm talking about the revenue from tourism. The hotels people have to stay at, the restaurants, the locales, all the other entertainment around the area. Those aren't split up into teams. It's why these things are hosted in different cities that aren't always the best--because those cities need the revenue generated by the general tourism during the event, and sometimes even after.

If I was King of America I would run the Superbowl rather differently (changing that idiotic name for a start :p). Sadly American Football has been devalued over the years by holding the final in unworthy stadia and tweaking it for no purpose other than to inject more marketing opportunities (4 quaters? Endless pauses in play? Parading barely legal half naked women around the stadium to distract people from the boring bits? Deary me...). But just because you've done a lot of things badly before doesn't mean you should do it worse in the future.

Respect the fans!

London would have a revenue boost, but the NFL would loose some of those profits.

@Octavious:
Superbowl fans (not me or you but in general):
Do you like the half naked chicks? (yes they do)
Do you like having the game occisionally in your home town rather then in a major city that would give more revenue to the game? (yes they do)

The fact is octavious, the league has put the fans before revenue in the past and so I question your logic.

King of America, Octavious?

Not again, not since the Madness of King George! (III or Dubya, either one...) ;)

@ Fasces

When you watch sports you go (assuming the sport is any good) because you want to see the sport. You may like watching half naked women, but you can do that any time. They exist in American Football because American Football has lots of boring bits built in for the benefit of tv advertising.

As far as having the final in small stadia, clearly lots of fans (such as Obi) disagree. I will not believe without a lot of evidence that US fans prefer to have their showpiece event in a backwater stadium.

@ Obi

More people in the US by far choose to vote for no one than choose to vote for the Republicans or the Democrats. Clearly there is demand for a king and the legitimate excuse for not voting I can offer :)

Yes, Superbowl is much worse than the "Carling Cup" or "Barclays Premier League" or the "Coca Cola Championship".

Meanwhile the game has had 4 quarters since before the invention of the personal Radio so I don't know how this was done for "marketing opportunities." Likewise with pauses in play which are as old as the Boston game and it always seems Europeans are the only ones distracted by the cheerleaders.

I am always floored by british arrogance when it comes to American football. We know you are clueless about the game, so stop trying to pretend you have some insight. American football and your game evolved separately, both are great games in their own right and both are criminally exploited by corporations (logos on a team uniform???). Get off your high horse.

Octavious you have no idea what you are talking about

SC, if they can figure out cricket over there, I believe they figure out how any game works.

(Seriously, I've tried and tried, Wikipedia and YouTube...I'm sorry, I just don't get it...)

I can't either, but if you say that American football changed to 4 quarters for marketing possibilities, you are just wrong. If you think the game starts and stops primarily because of marketing possibilities you are wrong. Corporations have seized on the nature of the game to add more, adding TV timeouts for instance, but these are parts of the game that have existed since the nineteenth century. Meanwhile the players playing the pure European brand of football are branded with logos like NASCAR drivers and all championships are known by the sponsor name. People actually play(ed) for the Coca-Cola cup.

And the Superbowl should not be played in London imo. The time difference dooms it.

England is a 6-8 hour time difference from Los Angeles?

I know NYC is a 3 hour difference...

So if the game started at 8pm, it'd be on at 5pm or so in NYC, and 2pm in LA?

That's not bad...

If it starts at 7pm, which a late football game sometimes starts at, that's 4pm for NYC, 1pm for LA?

It could work...?

dear god Obi it shows you don't watch soccer, its a 5 hour time difference from NY to England, 8 hours to LA, and even more from Alaska and Hawaii. So what you are asking the NFL to do is to forgo billions of dollars because no network will pay nearly the same money for a game that won't see prime time anywhere in the United States (and therefore advertisers wouldn't pay the same amount). People in LA would be watching the game at 12 pm. Only way to get around it is to start it very late at night, which would be the only way it happens.

Obi: NY is 4-6 depending on daylight savings time, LA is 7-9...
for 10 months a year, it is 5 and 8, but for March and November it is different, unless London hosts the game after March ~10th (7ish weeks after it normally is) the game will be in time changes of 5 and 8.

So an 8pm game in london is a 3pm game in New York and 12pm game in LA.

Given that the game is always on a Sunday, you could assume the LA fans could be there for a midday kick-off and not sure about sporting events in Europe (beyond Cricket, which takes 8ish hours a day, so by default begins in the morning) but could Londoners be willing to watch a game from 8-11 pm?

I wouldn't put it past them...

"When you watch sports you go (assuming the sport is any good) because you want to see the sport. You may like watching half naked women, but you can do that any time. They exist in American Football because American Football has lots of boring bits built in for the benefit of tv advertising. "
googled it, average air time the cheerleaders have is 3 seconds a game. And only 11 minutes of action in the 3 hour period. So yeah, lots of boring bits.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281204575002852055561406.html

"As far as having the final in small stadia, clearly lots of fans (such as Obi) disagree. I will not believe without a lot of evidence that US fans prefer to have their showpiece event in a backwater stadium."
Ask people in Indionapolis, would you rather it in Indionaoplis or New York, ask Miami the same question, People would rather the game in their home city and the NFL listens to all its fans.

However imo it should be like NHL, NBA and MLB, where the final game is held in one of the two competing teams home towns.

Or better yet have it like the FA cup, rather then 1 game have 2 games one in each. (tally up the scores in the two games, which ever team scores more between the two games wins the superbowl)

I used to think that football was a slow moving game until I watched the same cricket match for two days in a row.

Fasces, learn how to spell "Indianapolis".

And frankly, I think the idea of playing the Super Bowl in the UK is a bit far fetched. Time difference aside, I think that taking the championship game of an American league and sending it overseas (Canada notwithstanding) is taking the idea of professional sports commercialism a bit too far. I would equate this idea with playing the Champions League final in Cowboys Stadium. It's the biggest sporting event of its kind, and it would be a complete travesty to see it played overseas.

"I used to think that football was a slow moving game until I watched the same cricket match for two days in a row."
theres nothing wrong with slow paces sports, cricket is one of my fav sports...

"Fasces, learn how to spell "Indianapolis"."
Fuck you to.

http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/img-thing?.out=jpg&size=l&tid=46293285

Good Lord, a few light hearted digs about the game and certain people have a total failure of sense of humour :p. Just goes to prove my point that taking it out of the US will be a bad idea.

Yes, I know the strange little quirks of the game make it different to real sports, and not simply inferior, but there is one thing I don't see any point to whatsoever. After the touchdown some other chap walks on to the field and kicks the ball between two sticks a few yards away, scoring an extra point. Why? This is the most pointless things I have ever seen in sport. It's so easy it's only ever missed once in a blue moon. What's it for?

"http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/img-thing?.out=jpg&size=l&tid=46293285"
My point stands.

@Oct: it could be said about any sport:
1. Rugby has the same idea.
2. Cricket: the idea of hitting a ball with a stick to land outside of an oval laid out by a rope before running back and forth between 2 other sticks
3. Baseball: the idea of hitting a ball with a stick directly in front of you before running in a circle
4. Golf: hitting a ball towards a hole (ok that atleast makes some sense)
5. Hockey: Get a disk into the back of a net and kill people in order to do so
6. Soccer: Kick a ball into the back of a net.
etc. etc.

"What's it for?"
Well once you get the touchdown you have to choices, kicking the ball like 15 yards, which your right is incredibly easy and so most accept it as guarenteed.
The alternative is to make a run play which gives you 2 , but a much larger chance of failure, it rarely happens but your team is down 2 with a minute left in the game except that run to force the over time.

"5. Hockey: Get a disk into the back of a net and kill people in order to do so"

+1 for an excellent description of hockey.

The extra point provides an additional opportunity for a team to score. The risk/reward proposition is extremely high, since the two point conversion is difficult to achieve, given the defensive advantages near the end zone. It makes for some extremely dramatic plays, kind of the equivalent of a penalty kick.