Talking Sport with Gavin Browne: The NFL has areas to address or it risks alienating its UK supporter base

The arrival of autumn usually brings a buzz of excitement for British-based American Football fans with a handful of teams making their way to London as part of the NFL’s International Series programme.

Three more regular season matches are being played in the capital this year.

The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium hosts the Indianapolis Colts and Washington Commanders this Sunday, October 4, as well as the Jacksonville Jaguars and Philadelphia Eagles a week later.

Jacksonville are then at Wembley Stadium on October 18 as they meet the Houston Texans, completing London’s schedule for the year.

However, there seems to be a greater sense of ‘meh’ - as Lisa Simpson might put it - surrounding this year’s fixtures.

Tickets have been snapped up at brisk speed in previous years, as is the case for the Eagles-Jaguars match, but the fact that tickets remain for the other games indicate all isn’t perhaps well.

I’ve been to a number of International Series games, starting with the first between the Miami Dolphins and New York Giants at Wembley in October 2007.

It was a ‘milestone’ birthday that year, so I treated myself to a seat on the front row of the bottom tier with a price in the high double-figure bracket.

The Bank of England’s inflation calculator worked out that a similar category ticket, in 2026, should now cost in the region of £130.

That’s the theory. In practice, at least for when Jacksonville play Houston, it is entirely different

At the time of writing, it would actually cost £232 for the ticket plus a frankly ludicrous £31.49 in booking fees: a grand total of £263.49.

That sort of price hike over a 19-year period would be unacceptable at the best of times, never mind an ongoing cost-of-living crisis which means people are careful how they spend what disposable income they might have.

It is Jacksonville who manage the ticketing and operations for the Houston match, while the NFL itself looks after the two Tottenham games.

In the latter case, supporters who had signed up for ticketing information received an email last week saying lower tier tickets for the Colts-Commanders game at Tottenham were now available ‘from just £79.13.’

That caused no end of uproar on social media, not least from fans who had bought tickets the moment they went on sale before seeing prices dropped as gameday looms.

A drop in interest could also be attributed to the NFL’s increased number of regular season matches in other countries.

In the early days, it was common to hear a number of overseas accents as fans from across the world descended on Wembley.

At the time, it was their only chance to see a competitive NFL match unless they saved up for a trip Stateside.

However, with games having been played in - or scheduled for - Mexico City, Dublin, Munich, Frankfurt, Berlin, Madrid, Paris, Sao Paulo, Rio and Melbourne, then what’s their motivation for travelling to London?

Might there also be a case that familiarity has bred apathy?

In 2012, Jacksonville committed to multiple London games and - barring the Covid-affected 2020 season - have played in London every year since 2013.

It’s a laudable commitment to growing the game and developing an overseas fanbase, but this year’s two matches mean the Jaguars will have played nine games since 2021 - and 16 in total.

That will be twice as many overseas games as any other club, for a team whose willingness to spread the gospel in the UK hasn’t been matched yet by a suitably-sized fanbase.

One of the notable aspects of International Series games is that they are more of a celebration of the UK’s relationship with American Football rather than resembling something more tribal.

Rather than having 60,000-80,000 supporters wearing jerseys of the two teams involved on matchday, you’re more likely to see all 32 NFL teams represented instead.

On that note, in case you thought the ticket prices were bad enough then you might need to sit down when checking out the price of merchandise.

We all remember the kerfuffle around the price of football shirts as well as the huge discrepancy in what is charged for replica and authentic shirts.

Purely for research purposes, I visited the Jaguars’ website and looked at how much their shirts were going for.

To start with, you have seven different options: ‘football’, ‘Nike Elite’, ‘Nike Game’, ‘Nike Legend’, ‘Nike Limited’, ‘replica’ and ‘throwback’.

In the men’s section, the prices start at $69.99 for a replica jersey presently marked down for sale but most are in the $129.99-$149.99 bracket: around £98 to £113.

There are some priced at $189.99 - or £143 - but fear not, if you want to spend more than that then they have you covered with the ‘Nike Elite’ custom jersey.

The marketing spiel is impressive enough with the shirt apparently aimed at ‘fans who want to get closest to what the players wear on the field’.

That’s in addition to boasting ‘laser-perforated, four-way stretch woven fabric (195gsm) for lightweight zoned breathability and range of motion.’

It’s all yours for $449.99, which works out at around £340. For one shirt.

As with anything, you can always make the argument that people don’t have to buy tickets or merchandise.

That’s true but, unless there’s a change in thinking regarding ticket pricing et al, the NFL and its clubs run the risk of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs when it comes to its UK fans.