The Jacksonville Jaguars are hesitant to play in a planned new Tottenham Hotspur FC stadium, sources said, and that’s part of the reason the NFL last week announced a deal with the English Premier League club for only two games annually at the venue starting in 2018.
Mark Waller, NFL executive vice president of international, said the league’s goal is to ultimately play eight games annually in London by 2021. The league for the first time last year had three regular-season games in London and will have three there again this fall.
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Jacksonville played Dallas in November at Wembley, site of all the NFL’s London games since 2007.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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The Jaguars, who position themselves as London’s NFL team, are halfway through a four-year run of playing an annual regular-season home game in the city. Those games are contested at Wembley Stadium, which has been the site of all the NFL’s games in London since the league began playing regular-season games in the city in 2007.
However, Jaguars owner Shad Khan also owns Fulham FC, a recent EPL club (the team was relegated after the 2013-14 season) and so also a potential future Tottenham competitor.
Said one league owner, explaining why Khan might not be happy with the NFL’s Tottenham move, “Shad owns Fulham.”
A spokesman for Khan declined to make him available but did forward a statement from Khan, who is the NFL’s only foreign-born owner: “The NFL’s commitment to the UK is absolute and the Jaguars are extremely proud to be part of it. … We’ve been thrilled with our experience and association with everyone at Wembley Stadium and continue to work closely with the team there as we prepare for our game this October and again next fall.”
There is no mention of Tottenham in the statement.
Mark Lamping, president of the Jaguars and a member of the Fulham FC board, said, “From our team’s perspective, the Jaguars are extremely happy with everyone and everything at Wembley Stadium, and we look forward to returning.”
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| WALLER |
Waller described as normal the give and take that was involved in getting the NFL’s new deal done. He disputed that opposition from the Jaguars limited the Tottenham deal.
“All the Tottenham discussions were around a minimum of two games per year,” he said, adding that there could be more than two played annually.
Some London sports experts wondered why the NFL would not just go all in with Tottenham, given the concerns at Wembley over field quality and scheduling, and the plans for the future Tottenham stadium to have a field dedicated to football that would be in place under a sliding soccer field.
“If you are going to the trouble of putting in an innovative [field] solution, why limit it to two games? Why not all the games?” said Carsten Thode, director of consulting at London-based sports marketing firm Synergy. “It would be easy to schedule eight games around [Tottenham] away fixtures.”
Instead, the NFL is likely to have games across multiple venues starting in 2018. The league’s deal with Wembley expires after next season, and Waller expressed confidence of a new arrangement. He added that there are chances of other venues coming into play as well.
The league’s goal of having eight games in London by 2021 would come from either having a London-based NFL team or from having multiple teams playing annual “home” games in the British city.
Waller said the league needs roughly 6 million avid U.K. followers to successfully stage eight contests in London, and that number currently is at 3.8 million. But last summer, the figure was at 3 million, according to NFL polling data, and that represented a 200 percent increase from 2009, when the league first started collecting the data.
As England’s national stadium, Wembley, which is owned by The Football Association, stages many major events, ranging from soccer to this year’s Rugby World Cup. That use has created field issues for the NFL and the soccer group.
“You can’t get away from the fact that the playing surface is not ideal for both sports,” Waller said.
The NFL’s international and finance committees gave Waller’s group the go ahead to close the Tottenham deal, and Waller said the final pact does not need full owner approval. He declined to offer details about the economic relationship between the NFL and Tottenham.
