With two of the league’s most storied franchises, the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers, set to clash in the Super Bowl, the buzz around the National Football League has arguably never been higher. But even though football reigns supremacy as America’s favorite sport and the NFL is earning its best-ever TV ratings, the league is still struggling to move its product across the pond.
American ex-patriots packed into London sports bars to watch the NFL playoffs, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find British fans among the crowds. The sport known to the rest of the world as “gridiron” still finds itself excluded from the sports-minded Brits.
The failure of the NFL to expand overseas differs starkly from the growth of the English Premier League, which, unlike the NFL, has built a dedicated foreign following that continues to expand each season. The EPL’s popularity is far from limited to British emigrants or citizens of countries where soccer is already popular. Many Americans whose fandom was restricted to teams in the “big four” sports leagues have branched out to support EPL clubs like Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Chelsea.
Though it may surprise some Americans that the British are so disinterested in our brand of “football” when they are so passionate about rugby, a very similar sport, there are clear reasons why the NFL’s campaign to generate foreign interest has seen so few results. The flow of the American game clashes with the British sporting mindset, which is accustomed to soccer and rugby—sports that are characterized by end-to-end play with limited stoppages and commercial breaks. An NFL game, meanwhile, will sometime cut to a commercial break after only one play.
This discontinuity infuriates British viewers who could not care less about what cop show is on after the game or what department store is having a New Year’s sale. Americans, meanwhile, are relieved when they first see the lack of commercial interruption in a soccer match. The game’s uninterrupted flow—a typical match finishes in less than two hours—has helped the EPL grow in popularity.
Another basic issue for the NFL is the time-zone difference. Many games are televised at ridiculous hours for the British audience. An 8:30 p.m. EST start for a Monday Night Football game is televised live in London at 1:30 a.m., which prevents anyone with a typical school or work schedule from watching the game. But the EPL’s matches are shown live in the U.S. in the morning and early afternoon, allowing fans to not only watch their soccer club, but to also see their American teams later in the day.
But perhaps the toughest obstacle for the NFL overseas is the complexity of the rulebook. While it may not seem like rocket science to an American fan who grew up with the game, football is a truly complicated sport that requires a certain level of understanding to enjoy it. Soccer’s complexities are essentially limited to the offside rule, which unlike all the intricacies of football, can be explained in a matter of minutes.
Given these factors working against the NFL, don’t expect it to rise to prominence in the U.K. anytime soon. As the Super Bowl hype takes over American sports in the coming days, British sports coverage will mention it only as a side note. Football may have become America’s game, but in England, they simply aren’t interested.
