U.S. Version Of Football Not Catching On In Europe World League Struggles To Find A Way To Make Game More Appealing
There are more NFL players than ever, attendance is up and new TV deals have been cut in Europe and the United States.
Yet questions about the viability of the World League of American Football hang in the air like a wobbly pass.
The six-team league, underwritten by the National Football League and media magnate Rupert Murdoch, is losing as much as $12 million a year and its image remains fuzzy with most Europeans.
Eleven years after the NFL brought the Chicago Bears and Dallas Cowboys to London for a preseason game, the sport still hasn’t caught on.
“It’s a real challenge how to make this sport of American football consumer-friendly with a European audience,” said World League president Oliver Luck, a former Houston Oilers quarterback.
Luck acknowledges there have been failures. Reebok has withdrawn as a major sponsor and sales of WLAF merchandise have been so-so.
And while the league has high hopes as it begins its fifth season over the weekend, a key question remains: Will it ever make money and stand on its own in countries where soccer rules?
“I don’t think we’ll see that until 2000 or 1999 unless we start to tinker with the league a little bit,” Luck said, suggesting the 1998 schedule might be expanded by a few games and two more teams added in 1999.
Germany, which already has two clubs including the league’s most successful franchise in Frankfurt, will probably get another. Scandinavia, northern Italy and Dublin, Ireland, are in the running for the second team.
Perhaps fans will be ready for more teams in two years. Jack Bicknell, coach of the Barcelona Dragons, said Europeans are starting to understand the game.
“The fans are so much more with it now,” said Bicknell, a former Boston College coach. “The first year there was a safety and there was dead silence - nobody had a clue what a safety was, including the announcer.”
The league gives NFL prospects a chance to hone their skills and unknown players the opportunity to be discovered. It produces a level somewhere between top U.S. colleges and the NFL.
Last season, the league’s top receiver and MVP Sean LaChapelle of the champion Scottish Claymores - went on to start with the Kansas City Chiefs. And Amsterdam kicker Adam Vinatieri wound up in the Super Bowl with the New England Patriots.
The World League also has produced two NFL starting quarterbacks, Scott Mitchell of the Detroit Lions and Brad Johnson of the Minnesota Vikings.
About 70 NFL players up about 50 percent from last season - pepper the six clubs this year. In all, 57 World League players made NFL rosters last season, and a total of 116 have made it to the NFL.
This is the third season for the league’s all-European format. The WLAF began in 1991 as a 10-team, American-European league but folded for two years after the ‘92 season when the NFL then financing the project alone - pulled the plug.