Could Overseas Game For St. Louis Lead To The London Rams?

Yesterday the NFL announced that for the next three years the St Louis Rams would have one of their home games in London beginning with an October 28th encounter against the New England Patriots at vaunted Wembley Stadium.

This news has begun a firestorm of speculation that the Rams, who had been highly touted as a candidate to move back to Los Angeles, may be moved to jolly old England.

At this point there is nothing being said either by Rams management or the NFL on a possible move, but St Louis fans have been preparing for the possibility of losing their team ever since rumours surrounding the Los Angeles bid began circulating a couple of years ago.

There are grounds for speculation of a move across the pond however. For one, Rams owner Stan Kroenke is majority owner of the highly successful London soccer team Arsenal FC and has been one of the strongest proponents of having games in London.

Then there is the money such a move could bring to the franchise and the NFL as a whole. One of the biggest reasons that the NFL has continued to have a game in London each year is because the British public has been attending the games in droves and the public interest in such games in Britain is very high making a move highly lucrative.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has gone on record in the past saying he’d be interested in having a British NFL team “one day” and is understood to be open to the idea provided that such a move would not be too severe a hinderance to the league.

There are some severe downsides to the idea of an NFL team based outside of the US. The most obvious is travel. NFL teams who have travelled to the english capital in the past have complained of the fatigue caused by the trip affecting their play. Added to this is the substantial cost of travel to the UK as well as the cost of setting up games although this is offset by the tremendous patronage of the british fans.

Also, at this point Kroenke has been very vocal in his support of the St Louis community. “Contrary to a lot of reports,” Kroenke said, “I haven’t taken a lot of jack out of the market. I have put a lot of jack into the market. We’ll see how that process works out.”

This statement is backed up by the powerbrokers of the city of St Louis who are due to bring proposals forward for a substantial upgrade to the team stadium backed by a large amount of public money.

With all this being said, one thing is clear – there is alot of interest from outside the city of St Louis in the Rams franchise and until there is definite word that the team will be staying put long term, speculation of this nature will continue to have legs amongst media outlets and NFL fans.

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