Chargers considering move to London.

[DesotoCountyDawg]

https://sports.yahoo.com/chargers-nfl-london-los-angeles-move-050456914.html

 

[Nunya.sixpack]

I thought the logical choice was the Jags, but even then, there's some serious scheduling that would have to go on for a team isolated over there. a month worth of road games or something?

 

[57stratdawg]

This seems like someone playing games in the media to put pressure on the locals.

 

[patdog]

They should have stayed in San Diego. Having a team in London permanently would be a logistical nightmare, and players would avoid playing for them like the plague.

 

[PBRME]

That would be a lot of jet lag

 

[L4Dawg]

They should have stayed in San Diego. Having a team in London permanently would be a logistical nightmare, and players would avoid playing for them like the plague.

Its only 5 hours different than the east coast. 8 from the west. It's a 8 1/2 hour flight from Atlanta. From places like Detroit and NYC its only 6 1/2. MLB used to do overnight train trips longer than that. Some minor league teams do longer bus rides now. There would be some interesting dynamics with jet lag, but logistically it's not a whole lot worse than NYC to LA. Jet lag can be overcome.

 

[johnson86-1]

They should have stayed in San Diego. Having a team in London permanently would be a logistical nightmare, and players would avoid playing for them like the plague.

I think the market is big enough that it would justify the logistical nightmare if they were embraced. It's a about a 10 hour flight from London to San Francisco. 6.5 to New York. 8 to Miami. 8 to Atlanta. <8 to Charlotte. You'd probably have to invest in a nicer jet because you're going to have to make all that flight time useful, whether that means nice enough to get real sleep on or set up to do film study

I think the problem of getting players to play there would be an ongoing problem though, and that would make it harder to have a good enough team for London and the UK to embrace.

 

[Go Budaw]

What a disaster. Should have just stayed in San Diego. None of this crap makes any sense.

 

[Go Budaw]

Its only 5 hours different than the east coast. 8 from the west. It's a 8 1/2 hour flight from Atlanta. From places like Detroit and NYC its only 6 1/2. MLB used to do overnight train trips longer than that. Some minor league teams do longer bus rides now. There would be some interesting dynamics with jet lag, but logistically it's not a whole lot worse than NYC to LA. Jet lag can be overcome.

Yeah, 8.5 hours from Atlanta, with another 5 hours tacked on whenever they had to play a team on the West Coast. Everybody plays everybody in the NFL. You can’t give one team special scheduling considerations where they never have to play the Rams / Niners / Raiders / Broncos / Chiefs / Seahawks / Cardinals. That’s like 25% of the league. It would be a flat out disastrous trip at least a couple times per year for games with those teams, and still a really, really bad one even for games with teams on the East Coast. And none of that takes into account the lost viewership for games starting at 5 AM on the West Coast / 8 AM on the East Coast. There’s no way to schedule it where it’s convenient for all of the U.S. TV market to tune in each week for those games in London, and vice versa for the UK viewers for road games.. Those lost viewers would substantially offset the gained market overseas. Consider this, the London team could basically never be on SNF or MNF, because it would start at midnight over there.

Overall, it makes way more sense to expand / relocate to Toronto or Mexico City if the NFL is looking for a bigger international footprint.

 

[Maroon Eagle]

They'll likely offer bye weeks to AFC West opponents before or after games there and the other week may be an away game at an East Division team if that happens.

 

[Willow Grove Dawg]

A permanent team in London is a HUGE opportunity for the NFL along with the television partners. Network television basically produces ZERO advertising revenue in the Sunday morning time slot today & having a London team would result in 8 opportunities per season for a television partner to sell advertising during that time slot for television's highest rated broadcasts.

 

[615 Guy]

London will eventually get a team, not sure if it'll be the Chargers. I don't think a London team will have trouble with free agents either, if it's between London and Buffalo, or Cincinnati or Cleveland or Green Bay, etc. you pick London every time. I'd think the team would get pretty massive support in the whole of the UK, selling the game out won't be difficult and they will watch on TV as well. I was in London for the Yankees/Red Socks game in July, its a great city and they love American sports. With a direct flight to many NFL cities already it makes for a fun away trip as well, I'd rather catch an away Titans game in London than travel to any divisional opponent.

 

[msstate7]

What would tax implications be?

 

[T-TownDawgg]

Ironic since none of my chargers fit those damn euro outlets

 

[patdog]

Generally speaking, they'll still have to file a US tax return, but will get a credit for foreign taxes paid.

 

[johnson86-1]

Yeah, 8.5 hours from Atlanta, with another 5 hours tacked on whenever they had to play a team on the West Coast. Everybody plays everybody in the NFL. You can’t give one team special scheduling considerations where they never have to play the Rams / Niners / Raiders / Broncos / Chiefs / Seahawks / Cardinals. That’s like 25% of the league. It would be a flat out disastrous trip at least a couple times per year for games with those teams, and still a really, really bad one even for games with teams on the East Coast. And none of that takes into account the lost viewership for games starting at 5 AM on the West Coast / 8 AM on the East Coast. There’s no way to schedule it where it’s convenient for all of the U.S. TV market to tune in each week for those games in London, and vice versa for the UK viewers for road games.. Those lost viewers would substantially offset the gained market overseas. Consider this, the London team could basically never be on SNF or MNF, because it would start at midnight over there.

Overall, it makes way more sense to expand / relocate to Toronto or Mexico City if the NFL is looking for a bigger international footprint.

It's not that much extra time to get to the west coast. It's easy to forget how far north london is, but it's way the hell north.

Toronto probably makes sense, but you're still talking about half the population (~6M) of london's (~14M). And London's team might be England's team (~56M) or even the UK's team (~66M).

Not sure Mexico City makes sense. It's huge, so the money is there even if they are pretty poor on average. But not sure you want a billion dollar sports franchise in a failing country.

 

[Go Budaw]

A permanent team in London is a HUGE opportunity for the NFL along with the television partners. Network television basically produces ZERO advertising revenue in the Sunday morning time slot today & having a London team would result in 8 opportunities per season for a television partner to sell advertising during that time slot for television's highest rated broadcasts.

There is zero advertising revenue in that time slot because there are zero people watching TV at 8 o’clock in the damn morning, especially the church crowd. You aren’t going to come out ahead by putting a game on in that slot when the alternative is playing at 12 PM, 3 PM, or 7 PM between two US teams. There will be more viewers for all 3 of those times. 15,000,000 more viewers in the UK isn’t going to outweigh the 30,000,000 would-be viewers not watching in the US because of the early start.

If there was a TV market for Sunday morning games in the US, they would be happening already. There is a reason why no major sports league in any country in the world has tried to put one of its teams on the other side of the ocean. If you are talking about adding eyeballs to TV sets, there are twice as many people in Mexico as there are in the entire U.K., and there are about 2/3 as many in Canada. Plenty of opportunity in North America that needs to be tapped before going overseas.

 

[Go Budaw]

It's not that much extra time to get to the west coast. It's easy to forget how far north london is, but it's way the hell north.

Toronto probably makes sense, but you're still talking about half the population (~6M) of london's (~14M). And London's team might be England's team (~56M) or even the UK's team (~66M).

Not sure Mexico City makes sense. It's huge, so the money is there even if they are pretty poor on average. But not sure you want a billion dollar sports franchise in a failing country.

Canada brings 40,000,000 people. That’s 66% of what you get from the UK, on this side of the ocean. Much more efficient. And the Toronto metro area is huge...bigger than every one in the US except NYC-LA-Chicago-Dallas-Houston. Massive media market. Plenty of opportunity in Montreal, Vancouver, etc. as well.

Mexico City does make less sense, but it’s on the table and the money is there. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be playing down there every year.

 

[SheltonChoked]

Yeah, 8.5 hours from Atlanta, with another 5 hours tacked on whenever they had to play a team on the West Coast. Everybody plays everybody in the NFL. You can’t give one team special scheduling considerations where they never have to play the Rams / Niners / Raiders / Broncos / Chiefs / Seahawks / Cardinals. That’s like 25% of the league. It would be a flat out disastrous trip at least a couple times per year for games with those teams, and still a really, really bad one even for games with teams on the East Coast. And none of that takes into account the lost viewership for games starting at 5 AM on the West Coast / 8 AM on the East Coast. There’s no way to schedule it where it’s convenient for all of the U.S. TV market to tune in each week for those games in London, and vice versa for the UK viewers for road games.. Those lost viewers would substantially offset the gained market overseas. Consider this, the London team could basically never be on SNF or MNF, because it would start at midnight over there.

Overall, it makes way more sense to expand / relocate to Toronto or Mexico City if the NFL is looking for a bigger international footprint.

Except the TV market for London (and europe as a whole) is a massive add vs the Canada and Mexico.

[FONT=&quot]According to NFL research, there are 15 million NFL fans in the UK, including 4 million avid fans. Overnight TV viewership went up 32 percent last year. More than 24 million unique individuals watched NFL programming on UK television last year.[/FONT]

The travel is not as bad as you think. Maybe they have to leave on Thursday vs Friday (The NFL normal travel day is Friday; the Texans traveled to London on the normal travel day last week). They will not be Flying Coach. Lay flat seats on a Red eye is not bad. Longest flight would be from LA and that's 12 hours. Seattle to London is the same as Houston/ Dallas ~9-10 hours.

[FONT=&quot]The Texans' trip starts on a large modern jet that includes oversized seats that turn into beds, nutritious food, video technology to watch film and plenty of water and medical treatment options.[/FONT]

Why would they want to be on SNF or MNF? The benefit of those games is that there is not another game on. They would always have the Sunday Morning game. Before any other game.

 

[QuaoarsKing]

It would be one thing if England were regularly producing NFL or even college quality players, but since they don't, it seems like having a team there would be a novelty that would wear off quickly.

I would suggest putting the Chargers back in San Diego. I don't have the numbers to prove this, but I would think the NFL would be better off adding teams in St. Louis, San San Antonio, or Toronto than London. And if they want to test out long distances, Hawaii would have a lot more football fans and US tourists.

Just a thought. Could be wrong. If London gets a team, they have to name it the Redcoats to stir up rivalries on day one.

 

[QuaoarsKing]

There are millions of fans of the Premier League in the US, but that doesn't mean if they put a team in New York that all American soccer fans would make that team their favorite. Fans already have their own favorites, and New York and London each have lots of people in their own country who don't like the city or its teams.

 

[HumpDawgy]

It would be a secondary sport over there. Just a fad before they would fold up and move back across the pond. Playing a few games over there is fine, but would not draw full time.

 

[Go Budaw]

Why would they want to be on SNF or MNF? The benefit of those games is that there is not another game on. They would always have the Sunday Morning game. Before any other game.

And before anybody even wakes up or starts their day. A Sunday morning timeslot would be absolutely awful for US viewers. Nobody is tuning into that. Its a losing trade-off vs. a normal timeslot.

 

[Go Budaw]

There are millions of fans of the Premier League in the US, but that doesn't mean if they put a team in New York that all American soccer fans would make that team their favorite. Fans already have their own favorites, and New York and London each have lots of people in their own country who don't like the city or its teams.

Exactly. You will have maybe half the population percentage (best case scenario) watching over there as you would in the US, and its a much smaller country to begin with. There is no way to add back (and then some) what you are taking away from US viewers. The math doesn’t make sense.

 

[Go Budaw]

Delete

 

[Willow Grove Dawg]

I disagree. They are getting viewers currently for the 3-4 8:30 central times games per year. This time slot would not replace noon or 3:00 PM, instead you are just moving 1 of the 7-8 games currently in the noon slot to 8:30. A 8:30 NFL game every other week would draw exponentially more viewer than anything on TV in that time slot today.

 

[57stratdawg]

BTW - the chargers owner weighted in. Semi-NSFW

Spoiler

[TWEET]1191794368723554305[/TWEET]

 

[Go Budaw]

I disagree. They are getting viewers currently for the 3-4 8:30 central times games per year. This time slot would not replace noon or 3:00 PM, instead you are just moving 1 of the 7-8 games currently in the noon slot to 8:30. A 8:30 NFL game every other week would draw exponentially more viewer than anything on TV in that time slot today.

The Eagles-Jags game brought in about 3.5 million viewers, and was the lowest rated and least watched NFL game all year. You’re taking one of those 12 PM or 3 PM games, all of which get 12-15 million viewers, and replacing it with a game that gets 20-25% of the people tuning in. For it to pay off, you need a minimum of probably 12 million people in the U.K. tuning in. That would represent about 20% of the entire country’s population....an astronomical number. By comparison, you only have about 5% of the U.S. population that watches a prime time game on SNF or MNF over here, where the sport is exponentially more popular. It doesn’t make any sense.