Miami Dolphins Play Oakland Raiders At Wembley Stadium: London Seven Years Away From Own NFL Franchise?

The Miami Dolphins will play the Oakland Raiders at Wembley Stadium, which will be London's first NFL game of the season, coming as early as week 4. With that in mind, talk is at an all-time high over the possibility of London getting their own NFL franchise. It seems that with each passing year the NFL will give England more football games, but within seven years they could have their own franchise, and quite possibly the Jacksonville Jaguars might be the team to relocate and change the NFL forever.

Mark Waller is doing his best to make it happen. The head of international expansion is British, and he's as desperate as anybody to see London have their very own NFL team, and he believes it WILL happen, and soon, too.

He explained, "To permanently relocate an NFL team to the U.K. is massive. It's not like putting a team in a U.S. city. There are a whole set of logistical implications for the players, coaches, back-office staff and so on. We play at Wembley, England, so it's important for both of us that the surface holds up. So we need to test playing games over consecutive weekends, followed by an England game. And, at the moment, we give any team that comes over here the following weekend off. That is not going to be practical in the future, so we will have to look at a team playing here one week, and then back in the U.S. a week later. So there is a lot still to be done, because any team we put here has to be competitive. It's not just about putting a team in the marketplace, that team has to be able to win the Super Bowl."

Will the American NFL fans be accepting of this change, and could the Jaguars, as rumoured, be the team to permanently head to London?

It is often all too easy to get swept along by an expert salesman's patter (Waller is also the NFL's chief marketing officer) but it is important to remember just how remarkable a statement that is.