[Le Grande Orange]

Seems to me the NFL would want to get a team back in Los Angeles before putting one overseas.

Even then, the league has a nice 32-team setup at the moment, and I can't see it being willing to move from that unless there is good reason to do so.

[yankeesrule]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Seems to me the NFL would want to get a team back in Los Angeles before putting one overseas.

LA already has an NFL team, they're called the Trojans and mascarade as a college team while paying their players

[marc]

Please, please, PLEASE no more expansion in any of the four major US sports leagues.

Half of the cities in these leagues can't support the teams they already have.

These leagues should be contracting, not expanding.

[phightin]

[QUOTE=marc;2847976]Please, please, PLEASE no more expansion in any of the four major US sports leagues.
QUOTE]

Correction Three major US sports leagues. The NHL doesn't count anymore.

[phightin]

Originally Posted by marc

Please, please, PLEASE no more expansion in any of the four major US sports leagues.

Correction Three major US sports leagues. The NHL doesn't count anymore.

[canadiancreed]

Originally Posted by phightin

Correction Three major US sports leagues. The NHL doesn't count anymore.

And the NBA is? Sorry not buying that. If the NBA is in the top three (and thats' a stretch), so is the NHL. And at the rate things are going the MLS and NASCAR will be joining the ranks in the second tier.

[jaxmagicman]

Originally Posted by canadiancreed

And the NBA is? Sorry not buying that. If the NBA is in the top three (and thats' a stretch), so is the NHL. And at the rate things are going the MLS and NASCAR will be joining the ranks in the second tier.

???

The NBA has its rights sold to three major networks. The NHL has VS. Yeah which is better TNT, ESPN and ABC vs VS.

[canadiancreed]

Originally Posted by jaxmagicman

???

The NBA has its rights sold to three major networks. The NHL has VS, CTV, TSN and CBC.

You forgot some.

Even with your examples, they're drawing comparable attendance figures.

NBA: 17,390 per game. (*)
NHL: 17,265 per game. (*)

Such a large chasm indeed.

* - data taken from this site for attendance figures

Anyways to keep form sullying this thread and driving it off topic, I'll be moving this to a new thread for those interested.

[jaxmagicman]

Originally Posted by canadiancreed

You forgot some.

Even with your examples, they're drawing comparable attendance figures.

NBA: 17,390 per game. (*)
NHL: 17,265 per game. (*)

Such a large chasm indeed.

* - data taken from this site for attendance figures

But the NBA is a game that people watch on TV. It is a game that most people do not attend live. Check out the TV ratings.

Sports Media Watch: NBA/NHL numbers game.

[phightin]

Look at the market revenues and profits generated by nba teams in the likes of la, chicago, boston, denver, new york, etc and compare it to the top franchises in the nhl, they arent even close. You can talk about overall attendance numbers but that is merely a small fraction for many mid and lower level team profits and the league as a whole is on 3 major networks and has huge international appeal, especially in china. Of course you're always going to have a couple teams like the grizzlies, but the league doesn't have a handful of teams bordering on bankruptcy like the nhl does. Plus last time I checked sydney crosby and ovechkin didn't have anywhere near the appeal and profitbaility of stars like LeBron, Kobe, Dwade, Dwight Howard, etc.

I have nothing against hockey overall and it certainly does have it niche markets such as in detroit and philadelphia, but a handfull of successful teams does not represent the mess the league is in and its decline over the last decade or so. I'm sorry but the nhl is not close to the nfl, mlb, and nba in terms of popularity, profitability, and overall market reach in the usa and most likely never will be again.

[conception]

Unless the NFL is going to build an entire host of European teams to form a division or conference, I really think it would be a terrible idea to put a team in London. The travel time is just completely unreasonable to expect an entire league to have to adjust to. And I really don't believe in special scheduling for road trips and the like, because then they would be at a competitive advantage or disadvantage with the rest of the league and that is simply not right.

While there may be some significant money involved somehow, I just don't see why the other NFL teams would really want to deal with all the issues involved. If the NFL was really interested in expanding to foreign markets, why don't we just say screw the CFL and start putting teams in Canada or Mexico. At least then the new teams wouldn't be an entire ocean away.

[rudel.dietrich]

I think the idea could work if the team played the first half of it's season at home and then the spent the second half of it's season traveling across the US to play it's road schedule.
Other teams could open their practice facilities to be used by the team while they were on the road.
You could also have both of the bye weeks for the last half of the season so that the team could make a trip back to England for a week and then back to the US.

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally Posted by jaxmagicman

But the NBA is a game that people watch on TV. It is a game that most people do not attend live. Check out the TV ratings.

Sports Media Watch: NBA/NHL numbers game.

The NBA is headed towards serious financial trouble and seems powerless or too dumb to do anything about it.
It is about a season or at the most two seasons away from half the teams in the league having payrolls they cannot support and teams bleeding money to the point where collapse seems possible.
Last season 12 teams had to borrow between 12-20 million dollars to keep operating and more teams had to borrow money during the off season to be able to open this season.

Quite simply the NBA is heads towards where the NHL was a few years ago. It is a league that can no longer pretend that is has the income needed to pay it's players what they are making.
Hopefully the players union is smart enough to realize this and agrees to a new settlement deal and a strike does hot happen.
The NHL players association thought it could take on the owners and greatly over valued themselves. A lost season later they realized their actual worth and accepted much lower pay. They took a beating in the process.
The NBA is headed towards the same situation and I fear a strike is imminent unless some immediate action is taken.

Here is a good Bill Simmons article from last all-star break talking about the financial mess the league and its teams are in.
The Sports Guy: Bill Simmons Welcome to the No Benjamins Association - ESPN Page 2

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by conception

Unless the NFL is going to build an entire host of European teams to form a division or conference, I really think it would be a terrible idea to put a team in London. The travel time is just completely unreasonable to expect an entire league to have to adjust to.

Travel time isn't an issue, because there is a week between games, more than enough time to adjust to the change in time zones.

Originally Posted by conception

And I really don't believe in special scheduling for road trips and the like, because then they would be at a competitive advantage or disadvantage with the rest of the league and that is simply not right.

If the London-based team played its road games in a 3-3-2 pattern, it'd only require two trips across the Atlantic. And 3-game home stands or road trips are not uncommon in NFL schedules even now (you can find several instances in the 2009 schedule).

In terms of travel difficulties, it's surely no more problematic than it was for the PCL when it had a team based in Hawaii, and probably less troublesome since there's a week between NFL games.

[darkcloud4579]

The travel is the least of their worries. What happens when the team in London stinks perpetually and no one goes to games? I mean, at least here, the sport is revered and people love it. If the team in London isn't always #1, it's simply not gonna work and fans are going to hate the novelty. The only way it would work, is if the team was somehow modeled like the Packers organization, which of course, is banned by NFL rules now. If the team could be entrenched somehow, it would perhaps then work.

But in a country where fan loyalties are pretty well divided unless it's World Cup time (and even then...) you're just going to have a difficult go of trying to get people to support a squad for a sport that's just plain foreign.

Hell an NBA team would work better abroad than an American football one. I think putting a team in Canada and Mexico seems a lot more realistic than trying to go to England first and I think the hype is just a way to try to make the NFL seem more global than it is.

[canadiancreed]

Originally Posted by conception

While there may be some significant money involved somehow, I just don't see why the other NFL teams would really want to deal with all the issues involved.

So a flight from say LA to NY in length and needing a passport. And the trip has to be made within six days.

Am I missing some issues here? Becuase if that's it, that's nothing.

Originally Posted by conception

If the NFL was really interested in expanding to foreign markets, why don't we just say screw the CFL and start putting teams in Canada or Mexico. At least then the new teams wouldn't be an entire ocean away.

Is there really any interest in American football in Mexico (and do they have the cash to pay for it?) Not being familiar with the marketplace I have no idea.

Basically saying "F the CFL" might work for Toronto (although they do love losers there, and the Argos are fitting the football void at the present moment), but that's the only marketplace you might build a foothold. Also the CFL isn't like rolling over the New York-Penn League, The league has the seventh highest average attendance per game in the world, on par with major league baseball. Not bad for a league where the average stadium size is 30kish. Do you really think if the NFL puts one team there everyone is going to instantly switch alligence to that league?

[Goody]

C'mon guys, the NBA must know what they are doing.

They moved a storied team, that was loved by their fans, from the 15th largest market in the U.S.

15 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA MSA 3,344,813 3,043,878 0260 +9.89%

to the 44th largest market

44 Oklahoma City, OK MSA 1,206,142 1,095,421 0249+10.11%

You don't have to worry about the NBA. The owners and commissioner know what the fans want.

{/sarcasm}

[conception]

Originally Posted by canadiancreed

So a flight from say LA to NY in length and needing a passport. And the trip has to be made within six days.

Am I missing some issues here? Becuase if that's it, that's nothing.



Is there really any interest in American football in Mexico (and do they have the cash to pay for it?) Not being familiar with the marketplace I have no idea.

Basically saying "F the CFL" might work for Toronto (although they do love losers there, and the Argos are fitting the football void at the present moment), but that's the only marketplace you might build a foothold. Also the CFL isn't like rolling over the New York-Penn League, The league has the seventh highest average attendance per game in the world, on par with major league baseball. Not bad for a league where the average stadium size is 30kish. Do you really think if the NFL puts one team there everyone is going to instantly switch alligence to that league?

To be honest, I didn't know the CFL was that popular.

[canadiancreed]

Originally Posted by conception

To be honest, I didn't know the CFL was that popular.

If it counts for anything, neither did I till last year.