More than 60,000 American football fans crammed into the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on October 10 to welcome the return of the NFL International Series. The New York Jets and the Atlanta Falcons were the competing teams, and it was the latter who just about took care of business – winning 27-20 despite a stirring comeback from the Jets.
?? Thank You All ??@NYJets @AtlantaFalcons @SpursStadium pic.twitter.com/v4wz5u7uEF
— NFL UK (@NFLUK) October 10, 2021
They found themselves 3-20 down at half time, but a determined display in the second period saw them draw close – before a late Mike Davis touchdown just about got the Falcons over the finishing line. Even though neither of these teams are expected to reach the Super Bowl, as evidenced by their NFL betting odds, they put on a fantastic show and were given rapturous applause by those present at the game in the capital.
For the Jets, avoiding the wooden spoon in the high-quality AFC East division remains the main goal. Meanwhile, the Falcons themselves are swimming against the tide with the bookmakers’ favourites to win the Super Bowl, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the dangerous outsiders New Orleans Saints.
The second of the double-header games in London will unfold on October 17, with Miami Dolphins taking on the win-less Jacksonville Jaguars, again at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Neither of these teams were exactly being talked up in the Paddy Power NFL betting tips column, but as the Jets and the Falcons showed, that doesn’t have to be an obstacle to an excellent game.
And fans of the Spurs football team need not be worried. These NFL International Series games are taking place on the artificial surface which is stored underneath their grass pitch – just one of the incredible innovations found at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
What is the NFL International Series?
The brainchild of Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the National Football League, the NFL International Series has one simple goal – to expand the reach of the competition, and American football as a whole, to a global audience. The first overseas game took place in October 2005, when a staggering 103,467 supporters filed into the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City to see the Arizona Cardinals defeat the San Francisco 49’ers.
It’s fair to say that signalled the appetite of ‘foreign’ football fans to watch NFL games in person, and so Goodell and his team devised the International Series – an annual sojourn from North America that, for now at least, has taken in games in London and Mexico City. From 2007 until 2015, the action was exclusively played out at Wembley Stadium, with the Buffalo Bills’ tussle with the Jaguars in 2015 enjoyed by more than 84,000 spectators.
Since then, London hosting duties have been shared with Twickenham Stadium, and then in 2019 with the shiny new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
The #NFL has confirmed that Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich are the three German cities in talks to stage regular season games.
— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) October 12, 2021
The plan is to take the International Series even farther afield, with Tokyo previously mentioned as a potential host city and plans for a 2022 game to be played in Germany. The European country has previously hosted American Bowl games, and had a number of NFL Europe franchises of their own.
Anything that expands the sport to a wider audience is to be applauded, and if nothing else, the NFL knows they will always have a rabid supporter base in London waiting for them.
