With all the talk about the inevitable relocation of one or two NFL teams to Los Angeles, it’s easy to forget that the NFL still intends (or so it periodically says) to uproot another franchise and re-plant it in London.
Some think it’s idle chatter aimed at getting fans in England feeling more warm and fuzzy about the growing slate of games played at Wembley Stadium every year. Others believe it’s a very real possibility — including a soccer club that doesn’t play at Wembley Stadium.
Per the London Times (via SportsBusiness Daily), Tottenham hopes to share a new venue with the NFL. The structure would have an artificial field on which the NFL team would play, with a grass field that slides in and out for use by the soccer club.
The stadium also would have larger locker rooms and other features making it more conducive to hosting football games.
Even if a team doesn’t move to London, the NFL seems intent on expanding the annual slate of neutral-site contests, which at some point could match the eight games that one team would play at home in London, without the scheduling quirks that putting one team there would entail, such as two- and three-game home stands, two- and three-week road trips, and playoff games staged in England. Those games could be moved from Wembley to the Tottenham stadium that would be built in north London.