Quote :

"More than 500,000 tickets were requested by about 160,000 fans in the three days following Friday's official announcement, the NFL said Wednesday"

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/football/nfl/02/07/bc.fbn.nfl.londongame.ap/index.html



i didnt think american football was that popular over there

2/7/2007 10:55:22 AM

I took a german coworker that was over for a week to the panthers/eagles game in philadelphia in december.

he was a huge football fan who was so excited to see an nfl game.

we talked about how he'd tape games and watch them at normal hours, and how all his computer icons were different teams helmets.

it was pretty surprising.... but the most surprising was on the way out

"the fans here are so well behaved" (a night game in philly.... it was pretty rough i thought)

2/7/2007 10:59:12 AM

i think most of the nfl europe teams are in germany now

so germans i can understand

2/7/2007 11:04:37 AM

I guess if only 1% of the population like American football, that's 500,000 people who know that this is their only chance to see it live.

2/7/2007 11:05:45 AM

Quote :

""the fans here are so well behaved" (a night game in philly.... it was pretty rough i thought) "

Compared to a European Soccer game....Philly fans probably look like pansies.

Those fuckers are crazy.

2/7/2007 11:09:49 AM

Italian league play is suspended until further notice because of rioting fans .. thats crazy

2/7/2007 11:13:38 AM

i love how europeans and some americans still think europeans are the civilized ones and we're a bunch of retarded barbarians

we should have kept fighting after germany surrendered.

this post belongs in sports talk.

2/7/2007 11:19:56 AM

When a fight broke out next to us, he mentioned the hooligan rule for stadiums now in germany.

you are fined a pretty penny and suspended for life from all the stadiums. it apparently has curtailed a good bit of the issues, but they still exist.

the fight was over a rather large dude who for some reason was wearing a cowboys jersey and hat.

after 20 minutes of the entire 3 surrounding sections chanting "ass-hole ass-hole" he snapped on the dude behind him yellin' shit and pointin his finger in the guys face.

the cowboys guy got destroyed by a few rows of people.


but back to topic, that really is pretty awesome that there were that many requests.

fuck the soccer elitists

2/7/2007 11:22:48 AM

Over there, with soccer being the big sport, "American football elitists" are probably seen as being just as annoying as "soccer elitists" are here.

2/7/2007 11:40:09 AM

a few weeks ago, i spent some time browsing websites to research american football's popularity in england. i was amazed to learn that there's a HUGE grassroots thing going on in england. there are a bunch of amateur leagues, and alot of the universities have american football clubs. an interesting thing is that they usually call our version of football either "american football" or "gridiron". i'm willing to bet atleast 50% of the requested tickets are from these football teams/clubs.

http://www.bafa.org.uk/
http://www.bcafl.org/
http://www.gridironuk.co.uk/
http://www.britballnow.co.uk/evo/

if you read various nfl teams' message boards, you'll notice that there a good number of foreign fans on them.

Quote :

"Italian league play is suspended until further notice because of rioting fans .. thats crazy"

it's not just because of rioting fans. it's because the rioting fans killed a referee.

[Edited on February 7, 2007 at 11:59 AM. Reason : ]

2/7/2007 11:57:03 AM

^cop

2/7/2007 12:45:07 PM

I was in australia a few years ago, and they called it gridiron.

there were gridiron leagues and the people i met were pretty interested in the nfl.

2/7/2007 1:02:00 PM

^ dito.... We had a friend from Australia come up during the fall semester and visit a college "gridiron" game. Was pretty awesome for them...

2/7/2007 5:19:16 PM

Considering how many people watch professional soccer in London alone on any given Saturday, 160,000 people requesting 500,000 tickets really isn't a lot.

2/7/2007 5:56:26 PM

500,000 requests in only 3 days immediately following the announcement .. thats impressive

2/7/2007 6:17:23 PM

Meh. If there was only one Spurs/Arsenal game all year, there'd be twice that many requests for the 60,000 tickets in no time flat.

2/7/2007 6:23:05 PM

still impressive. i wasn't even convinced it'd sell out. i guess football is better represented over there than i gave it credit for (which was hardly any at all).

2/7/2007 6:40:53 PM