For a league that often trumpets its desire to grow its audience in Europe, the NFL has a weird way of showing it.
The matchups that the NFL has inflicted on crowds in the United Kingdom and now Germany have almost always been putrid.
There have been 42 NFL games in Europe since the NFL first brought its product overseas in October 2007. Of those, only two have pitted a pair of teams with winning records, a matchup between the Giants and Packers in 2022 and one between the Chiefs and Dolphins last season.
Nine times, the NFL has subjected crowds in Europe to a game featuring at least one winless team. The 2017 Cleveland Browns made a London appearance on their way to becoming the second 0-16 team in NFL history, as did the legendarily bad Urban Meyer-coached Jaguars and a 15-loss Dolphins team quarterbacked by the immortal Cleo Lemon.
It’s like introducing Italian-American cuisine by opening up a can of SpaghettiOs. Or showcasing the best of American barbecue by serving a McRib.
The final NFL game on European soil this season is the ultimate battle of ineptitude. Steel your stomachs for Bryce Young and the Carolina Panthers (2-7) against Daniel Jones and the New York Giants (2-7). That’s a bigger matchup for next year’s draft order than it is for the current playoff race.
The Panthers and Giants are two of seven teams tied for the worst record in the NFL just over halfway through the season. The loser of Sunday’s game will move a step closer to drafting its quarterback of the future or another impact player. Sunday’s winner still would need a miracle to get within striking distance of a playoff bid.
As if watching the Giants and Panthers weren’t dreadful enough, the crowd in Munich gets no respite at halftime. The NFL says that Machine Gun Kelly is taking the stage to perform. That’s practically an act of war against the Germans.
There’s no reason to subject one of America’s closest allies to such punishment, but the NFL has been doing it to the UK for years. By anointing the Jaguars as London’s team and having them now play two home games a year across the pond, the NFL has foisted one of its least successful franchises on the British audience.
Only twice in the past 16 NFL seasons has Jacksonville made the playoffs. Only once have the Jaguars won at least one game, the 2017 season when quarterback Blake Bortles unexpectedly produced brief flashes of competence.
Why hasn’t the NFL prioritized sending better teams to Europe? Maybe because the league hasn’t needed to.
Between Europeans curious to see American football live and expats craving a slice of life back home, NFL games have consistently sold out in London and Munich no matter how atrocious the matchup. Crowds of 80,000-plus often typically include fans wearing jerseys supporting the two teams playing and many of the league’s other 30 teams.
TV viewership for NFL games has also slowly increased in the UK, with a small but dedicated fanbase watching more and more games, and last year’s Super Bowl smashing the single-game viewing record.
For years, top European soccer teams have pursued American fans by staging preseason exhibition matches against one another. Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Manchester City spent weeks on a preseason tour of the U.S. this past summer, as did Chelsea, Real Madrid and Barcelona.
The NFL has taken the opposite approach, holding games that count in the standings in Europe but exporting mostly mediocre matchups. The league seems unwilling to put its most anticipated games in an early Sunday morning time slot that is inconvenient for many American TV viewers, particularly those on the West Coast.
In a recent interview earlier this season, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said that American football is “destined to be global.” Goodell expressed interest in holding games not just in Europe and the Americas but in Africa, Asia and Australia someday soon.
An early warning to overseas fans on those continents: You probably won’t get the best teams or brightest stars either.
