Seahawks vs. Buccaneers in Munich, Germany!

[chrispy]

Seems like expanding the schedule to an odd number of games will lead to every team playing one neutral field game/yr...eventually. 8 home, 8 away, 1 neutral. Maybe at the next collective bargaining agreement.

 

[flv2]

Seems like expanding the schedule to an odd number of games will lead to every team playing one neutral field game/yr...eventually. 8 home, 8 away, 1 neutral. Maybe at the next collective bargaining agreement.

More likely a transitional step towards an 18 game season. I don't see 16 neutral venue games on the horizon.

 

[BlueTalon]

More likely a transitional step towards an 18 game season. I don't see 16 neutral venue games on the horizon.

16 neutral venues would be relatively easy to accomplish. It would probably be a helluva lot of travel miles, but that could be mitigated a bit by the neutral venues within the US. For example:

Salt Lake City
Little Rock
Birmingham
Portland (OR)
Mexico City
Melbourne
Wembley
Munich
Warsaw
Belgrade
Tokyo
Seoul
Sao Paulo
Kumasi
Lagos
Manila
Jakarta
Ho Chi Minh City
Istanbul
Mumbai
Karachi

Basically, any big city with a big soccer or cricket presence would be able to host an NFL game. And with the NFL wanting to increase it's market globally, I could see this happening easily.

Personally, I HATE the idea of a 17 game schedule. My thought was that if they just wanted to extend the season, they could simply have given each team an additional bye week. But if the 17th game was played on a neutral field, and it didn't count as a home or away game for either team, that removes the primary reason I hate that schedule. I could get behind that. Correction -- I would get behind that. Especially if efforts were made to make the travel and PITA requirements roughly the same for both teams.

 

[flv2]

16 neutral venues would be relatively easy to accomplish. It would probably be a helluva lot of travel miles, but that could be mitigated a bit by the neutral venues within the US. For example:

Salt Lake City
Little Rock
Birmingham
Portland (OR)
Mexico City
Melbourne
Wembley
Munich
Warsaw
Belgrade
Tokyo
Seoul
Sao Paulo
Kumasi
Lagos
Manila
Jakarta
Ho Chi Minh City
Istanbul
Mumbai
Karachi

Basically, any big city with a big soccer or cricket presence would be able to host an NFL game. And with the NFL wanting to increase it's market globally, I could see this happening easily.

Personally, I HATE the idea of a 17 game schedule. My thought was that if they just wanted to extend the season, they could simply have given each team an additional bye week. But if the 17th game was played on a neutral field, and it didn't count as a home or away game for either team, that removes the primary reason I hate that schedule. I could get behind that. Correction -- I would get behind that. Especially if efforts were made to make the travel and PITA requirements roughly the same for both teams.

The NFL could get have 6 sold-out games in London every year and 8+ sold-out games in Germany. Finding locations has not been the issue. The NFL's willingness to move that many games is the issue. Even with an 18 game season they wouldn't want to move that many games. Germany should be the NFL's target location simply because of the potential money it could earn.

 

[BlueTalon]

The NFL could get have 6 sold-out games in London every year and 8+ sold-out games in Germany. Finding locations has not been the issue. The NFL's willingness to move that many games is the issue. Even with an 18 game season they wouldn't want to move that many games. Germany should be the NFL's target location simply because of the potential money it could earn.

I agree that there could (and should) be multiple games in England and Germany. But if I was in charge of scheduling and arranging the outside-of-US games, I'd probably cap those games at four each. There's just too many other opportunities for exposure, and therefore marketing, to confine the bulk of non-US games to those two locations.

But the whole thing that makes it feasible is the 17 game schedule. If each team has one game that is truly neutral, that doesn't count as a potential lost home game, then the playing field is level (so to speak) and I think the majority of teams (and the NFL bigwigs) would be on board with it.

If they try it with an 18 game schedule, then it messes everything up like it did with the 16 game schedule.

 

[sc85sis]

16 neutral venues would be relatively easy to accomplish. It would probably be a helluva lot of travel miles, but that could be mitigated a bit by the neutral venues within the US. For example:

Salt Lake City
Little Rock
Birmingham
Portland (OR)
Mexico City
Melbourne
Wembley
Munich
Warsaw
Belgrade
Tokyo
Seoul
Sao Paulo
Kumasi
Lagos
Manila
Jakarta
Ho Chi Minh City
Istanbul
Mumbai
Karachi

Basically, any big city with a big soccer or cricket presence would be able to host an NFL game. And with the NFL wanting to increase it's market globally, I could see this happening easily.

Personally, I HATE the idea of a 17 game schedule. My thought was that if they just wanted to extend the season, they could simply have given each team an additional bye week. But if the 17th game was played on a neutral field, and it didn't count as a home or away game for either team, that removes the primary reason I hate that schedule. I could get behind that. Correction -- I would get behind that. Especially if efforts were made to make the travel and PITA requirements roughly the same for both teams.

I can't see the NFL going for any stadium that holds fewer than 70K people. That would eliminate Utah and Portland.

I'd say Tuscaloosa makes more sense than Birmingham because of Bryant-Denny stadium, but they could play in the old Legion Field.

Memorial Stadium at Univ. of Nebraska holds 86K.

Memorial Stadium at Clemson holds 81K.

Oklahoma's stadium in Norman holds about 80K.

Notre Dame stadium holds 77K. Don't know if the Irish would go for having a pro game there or not. Would be kind of cool though with all the history there.

 

[flv2]

I don't really see a benefit to holding a regular season game at a neutral venue inside the US. The point of the International Series is to get people interested in the sport, then watch the sport on free-to-air tv, then move the games to pay tv.

 

[BlueTalon]

I can't see the NFL going for any stadium that holds fewer than 70K people. That would eliminate Utah and Portland.

I'd say Tuscaloosa makes more sense than Birmingham because of Bryant-Denny stadium, but they could play in the old Legion Field.

Memorial Stadium at Univ. of Nebraska holds 86K.

Memorial Stadium at Clemson holds 81K.

Oklahoma's stadium in Norman holds about 80K.

Notre Dame stadium holds 77K. Don't know if the Irish would go for having a pro game there or not. Would be kind of cool though with all the history there.

Fair enough. I was just spit-balling.

 

[sc85sis]

Fair enough. I was just spit-balling.

Same. It's an interesting idea.

 

[LudwigsDrummer]

Yeah, I've heard that there is a lot of interest in this game over there. Unfortunately for me, I'm not a season ticket holder, so I have to get up this Tuesday at 1am PST to attempt to buy 6 tickets when they go on sale to the general public.

Best of luck RD.

 

[RiverDog]

Best of luck RD.

Thanks, I'll need it.

I received an email stating that there will be a queue on the Ticketmaster-Germany website that opens at 9:30am German time, so in order to get a spot in the queue, I'll have to be up and ready at 12:30am local. It's literally "you snooze, you lose." Luckily, I'm retired so I won't have to worry about going to work the next morning.

 

[Chukarhawk]

God I hate this stupid crap. Enough of the EU games.

 

[RiverDog]

I got up at 12:15 am PDT this morning to buy tickets for the Munich game and logged into the Ticketmaster-EU website, got in the queue, refreshed my browser at exactly 12:30 am per instruction, and there were 510,000 people ahead of me in the queue. They sold out when that number reached about 460,000.

 

[orca]

Yep, kinda 800,000 people queuing up for about 35,000 tickets. I started at around 296,000. 15 minutes later the first bastards were selling their just acquired tickets for 1,999 USD on the black market. Oh well, it was a sweet dream with a sad ending...

 

[ElvisInBlue]

I got up at 12:15 am PDT this morning to buy tickets for the Munich game and logged into the Ticketmaster-EU website, got in the queue, refreshed my browser at exactly 12:30 am per instruction, and there were 510,000 people ahead of me in the queue. They sold out when that number reached about 460,000.

So no hold back / early offer for season ticket holders? Seems like a missed opportunity.

 

[RiverDog]

This is insane:

Ticket prices for Buccaneers-Seahawks game in Germany skyrocket, resale listed for up to $33,760

Going to see Tom Brady play in the first NFL game in Germany will not be cheap

www.cbssports.com

 

[TwistedHusky]

This is a weird game for a Hawks fan to want to see.

Even without a QB, we are going to be at a huge disadvantage from the jet lag and from the toll that kind of travel puts on the players' systems. Long travel absolutely affected muscles, strength, & endurance in the short term.

The Bucs have a long trip too but nothing like us.

Luckily the Bucs will be running on fewer cylinders too but this feels like a game that will be over by halftime.

 

[BlueTalon]

The Bucs have a long trip too but nothing like us.

You can make a fair argument about the Seahawks losing because of the Bucs being the better team, but the travel won't be one of the reasons for it. There is less than 300 miles of difference between the flights those two teams will take. (9 hours 57 minutes vs. 10 hours 29 minutes.) That's pretty close.

 

[RiverDog]

You can make a fair argument about the Seahawks losing because of the Bucs being the better team, but the travel won't be one of the reasons for it. There is less than 300 miles of difference between the flights those two teams will take. (9 hours 57 minutes vs. 10 hours 29 minutes.) That's pretty close.

Yeah, people tend to think of geography in just two dimensions.

The Bucs are giving up a home game. They will have to travel just like us, and if what I am hearing is true, that the Hawks are a more popular team than Tampa Bay, we should have a home field type of crowd. Plus Bucs fans typically don't travel as well as we do.

 

[UK_Seahawk]

You can make a fair argument about the Seahawks losing because of the Bucs being the better team, but the travel won't be one of the reasons for it. There is less than 300 miles of difference between the flights those two teams will take. (9 hours 57 minutes vs. 10 hours 29 minutes.) That's pretty close.

Actually its about the preparation. The Seahawks absolutely nailed the travel timings and prep and thus they absolutely crushed the Raiders who hadn't prepared as well.