The Earth Bowl
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Yep… The NBA for example is massive internationally. If the nfl can break into that… It’s a shit ton more money than they already make. 32 teams is enough though. I really don’t want more teams. Unless it’s a feeder league. 32 pro teams is more than enough. Shit there is 70 players on every team already. Keep adding teams and the talent pool dries up…which makes for worse football.
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But people here pay to watch Real Madrid play without Mbappe, Vini, and Rodrygo.
Many great soccer players also don’t play in the preseason. It’s a lot more similar to NFL preseason than you might think.
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I agree. I’m not either.
I think this is an overall negative for most fans.
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I think it is just to grow the game to be world wide like soccer. But unlike soccer the NFL would control it all.
In soccer there are several leagues that sell broadcast rights and merchandise. The NFL became a juggernaut by growing it’s US TV audience and broadcast rights fees. It wants to do the same thing internationally.
Broadcasters throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, and Latin America combined could one day pay more in rights fees than the US broadcasters if those markets are developed.
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I follow both sports very closely. The only reason for a healthy soccer player to not play preseason is if he went deep in a summer tournament with his national team, which is why Mbappe didn’t play this preseason, he was literally on the only 3 or 4 week break he gets in a year. Rodrygo and Vini both played the preseason this year.
Preseason soccer is a tune up for the season, it’s not the same quality as the regular season but the product is still quite good, preseason NFL is churning the bottom two thirds of a 90 man roster, the product is dreadful and a lot of the players on show will never be heard of again. There aren’t enough fans in Europe or anywhere else in the world to sell even an average of 10,000 tickets per game for 48 preseason games outside the US.
Whats the point in even having pre season nfl games? As you say in soccer its useful in getting the team match fit but in tje nfl they don’t want to risk injury. They should just scrap tjem.
The NFL gets revenue from preseason games for broadcast rights and ticket sales.
Season ticket holders are forced to buy those games as part of the package. In places like Detroit where season tickets are sold out it is a tremendous amount of revenue.
The only way preseason games will go away is if they are turned into regular season games.
The NFL can charge more for broadcast rights of regular season games.
Each team currently has at least 20 games (17 regular season, 3 preseason).
It will never be less.
Eventually it will go to 18 and 2.
Greed may have them agree with you and have all 20 games be regular season and just have a bunch of scrimmages during camp.
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When I was in my mid-20’s I worked for a huge company with operations in AU and also did it backwards. I made a call to a plant manager who listened to my mundane question and said, Hey bloke, do you know its 3am here?
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It may also finally lead to my dream of weird eastern European strongmen becoming offensive linemen
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That’s what I’m about. Let’s get some of those monsters in the trenches.
Problem with those big guys. They have to have lateral movement too.
Hence why a lot of rugby guys typically dont make it.
Sure they are strong but they cant move left and right fast enough
30 years ago for sure…
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They tried NFL Europe back in the day
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Football is too refined for the rest of the world
Much like Fahrenheit or the Imperial system, they just don’t quite get it, and I’m not here to save them from themselves
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I like the pre-season idea
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International games should only feature an AFC team versus and NFC team, with the “home team” being from the conference that has home field advantage for the year.
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And they’re worse for it IMO… Pandering to the Chinese specifically irritates me. Obviously money is the motivating factor behind almost every decision in these leagues… I just hate how it leads to a lower quality product.
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