Other website sections

»Sports Market Reports

»Sports Jobs

»Tenders

»Directory

»Conferences

National Football League (NFL) officials have reiterated their desire to one day have a team based in London, but will start by holding multiple games in the UK as long as there is no player strike next year.

Following the fourth NFL International Series game at Wembley at the weekend, NFL vice-president of international business Chris Parsons joined commissioner Roger Goodell in admitting that a London franchise was a long-term ambition for the league, but made it clear that multiple UK games would be the first step.

Plans would normally be well underway for next year's teams to come to Wembley, but even holding one game next season may not happen should the players and owners not agree on a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA), as talks continue to stall.

"The CBA negotiation adds a level of complexity to that planning process, which we have to then manage around," said Parsons. "That may require us to be a little bit patient going forward in terms of how we move that forward, but whether it's in one year or two years, we will be playing multiple games, I believe, in the UK market."

Goodell added that he would like to have seen “more progress” on the talks that continue to concern fans, who are worried about a strike next season.

"There are discussions going on," he said. "As I keep saying, it's not just about discussions. It's about progress, and I would like to see more progress.

"I think everyone has an interest in getting it done sooner rather than later. We've been very clear about the fact that the longer it goes, the harder it gets. We've also made the point that revenue will start decreasing. As that revenue decreases, it's less money to be able to negotiate over."

If a deal is agreed, and the season goes ahead, at least one game will be played at Wembley and it could soon be many more if the NFL has its way and a franchise is based in London.

"The franchise is a nice goal, and I think it's a tremendous stake in the ground and strategic vision that we can strive for, but I think we've also said there are several steps ahead of that that we'd want to make sure we get right before we made that leap," said Parsons, who thinks a move to games in Germany would then be the next step.

"We've wanted to make sure that we get the blueprint for success right. I'm a strong believer in not proliferating your approach before you've figured out exactly the right steps to make it all work effectively. We're right at that stage now in the UK where we believe we've done that.

"We'll turn our attention to Germany probably once we kind of move to the next step in the UK."

Goodell believes moving to an 18-game regular season would be the catalyst for extra games being played in the UK, and providing that interest is retained then a London franchise would be put on the agenda.

"The next step that we would take would be multiple games in a season before we do that," he continued. "They tell us that we could sell this game out five or six times over.

"We think there's a tremendous interest in either playing two games here in London or playing somewhere else in the UK. So we'll probably take that step sometime in the next year or two."