The Industry Column – 12 March
The Americans are coming and Simon Crosse, director of programmes at
USP Content which produces coverage of the Super Bowl and baseball’s World
Series for BBC Radio Five Live, believes that this time they’ll break through
into the UK’s sporting conscience.
The global sports industry is rapidly consolidating and in the land grab to
own the best franchises and strongest broadcasting properties, the US is
beginning to flex its muscles.
Following the aborted attempt to establish an American Football beachhead in
the mid 90’s with both the London Monarchs and Scottish Claymores folding, the
announcement that the Miami Dolphins are to play the New York Giants in London
on 28th October is a sign that US sports are becoming far more aggressive in
what is now a global media sports turf war.
And it’s not only the NFL that wants a slice of the global pie. The National
Hockey League (NHL) will open their regular season with the LA Kings playing
their first two matches in London, with the Vancouver Canucks or Anaheim Ducks
the likely opponent.
With US sports ownership giant Anschutz (AEG) also owning the NBA’s LA Lakers
as well as the NHL’s LA Kings, it won’t be too long before the Lakers take on
their arch-rivals the Boston Celtics on UK soil either. Certainly there are
strong rumours to this effect.
Perhaps for the first time in US sporting history, the US is beginning to
understand that if it doesn’t start competing globally, it stands to be
increasingly marginalised. It’s certainly no coincidence that at a time when
the US is genuinely pulling out every stop to broaden its international
audience, the Premiership has pulled off the world’s biggest international
football deal (£625million over three seasons in 208 countries) and is offering
many games to 390 million African households for free.
The significance of these moves is two-fold. First is the ground-breaking
nature of playing meaningful mid season games in another country – imagine Man
Utd playing Liverpool in Denver during mid-Premiership?
The second is that this is not a one-off. Unnamed sources suggest the major
US sports and leading franchises will continue and perhaps even expand overseas
games in order to push forward the respective popularity of their
sports. Further down the line, it has been suggested that London will even have
its own AEG owned NBA team playing from The O2 and new NFL and NHL teams being
created to generate global audience figures.
The big question is whether it’s all a little too late. Whilst demand for the
Dolphins and Giants game in October has been unprecedented, with applications
three times above Wembley’s capacity, will this push by US sport fall flat as it
did in the mid 90’s? Probably not.
Showing real-life competitive games is a huge difference to merely playing
out of pre-season friendlies or exhibition matches. October in London will be a
bonanza for fans of North American sport and the games will sell tickets to
followers all over Europe. It’s a bold move and deserves to succeed. We’ll see.
