London Buccaneers?
March 29th, 2010
Monday mornings are not generally the time to test Joe’s brainpower. But Mike Florio, the creator, curator and overall guru of ProFootballTalk.com is trying.
In a bizarre post this morning about the NFL expecting to play more regular season games overseas — a practice which Joe believes is asinine — Florio suggested that that one or more teams will be in a regular rotation, meaning a handful of teams may play a home game — or multiple games – on foreign soil regularly.
Additionally, one of those teams playing a home game annually in England will pull up its roots and plant itself in London permanently.
That team, Florio suggests, will be the Bucs.
But here’s the unspoken yet inevitable reality. The teams chosen to build a fan base in England become the most likely to eventually move there.
Right now, we’d bet on the Bucs becoming one of the teams to regularly play in Britain — and on the Bucs becoming one of the eventual candidates to pack up the literal Mayflower and sail back to the land from which the earliest American immigrants came.
Quite frankly, Joe thinks this is outrageous. Joe can understand why the Bucs will want to play one game each year in London: 1) They can’t sell tickets here; a game in London is a guaranteed sellout. 2) Expand its marketing to a largely populated country overseas. 3) Team Glazer owns a kickball team of some sort over there.
On face value, the notion of the Bucs moving there is crazy beyond words. Joe has e-mailed Florio to decipher how he came to this conclusion. Previously, he claimed the Jags would move and that makes a helluva lot more sense than the Bucs.
Look, the Bucs have a fairly new stadium. It’s still in the Super Bowl rotation (unlike whatever the hell the stadium is called these days down in south Florida, only a mere 11 years older than the CITS), which is a windfall for Team Glazer.
Now Joe has hinted that sooner or later the CITS will need to be upgraded in order to stay in the Super Bowl rotation. Maybe Team Glazer is reading the tealeaves, that the Super Bowl rotation is about to include teams in the north, which would greatly decrease the number of times the Super Bowl will be played at the CITS.
Also, notice how the Tampa Bay area has thus far been hostile to the Rays in their need of a new stadium to replace that grotesque tomb in St. Petersburg they currently play in. Perhaps Team Glazer sees that getting the CITS renovated will be a lost cause?
Interesting fodder to start the week.
March 29th, 2010 at 9:30 am
i dont think they could ever move the bucs out of tampa at least not in our lifetime the lease with ray jay is till 2025 i believe so they cant move till then and even after that the nfl has listed the first 7 teams that would move and the bucs were not on that list the jags were on the list
March 29th, 2010 at 9:35 am
Joe, the Glazers own the largest “kickball” team in the world and it is based in England. Makes perfect sense that they would be the ones to spearhead the NFL expansion into Europe. Not sure that means the Bucs moving though.
March 29th, 2010 at 9:36 am
In the words of Tupac…”we’ll burn this bitch down get us pissed”
March 29th, 2010 at 9:39 am
justin f:
To quote Vladimir Lenin, a man held in high regard by those in high-powered positions in Bristol, Conn., “Peace treaties are like pie crusts, made to be broken.”
The same can be said for a lease. What is a lease? It is a piece of paper.
March 29th, 2010 at 9:43 am
There’s another reason why the Bucs could move to the UK, and that is the big Bucs fanbase there. There’s an English Bucs fan club that is the biggest non-US fanclub of any NFL team.
However, the Bucs are doing great financially. Why would they ever move? Florio is just trying to stir up some controversy with no source, as he does so often when he has no real news to post.
March 29th, 2010 at 9:44 am
why would the glazers move to a country that already hates them and since taxpayers helped pay for rayjay and one buc place if they broke the lease wouldent the county and other people file lawsuit against them
March 29th, 2010 at 9:48 am
Teams Glazer is not dumb justin f. If they believe they could make more cash than what it would cost them to break the lease, bye-bye Bucs.
March 29th, 2010 at 9:49 am
Is there a big difference between moving the team and destroying the team?
March 29th, 2010 at 9:58 am
justin F — the entire UK does not hate the Glazers. The people of Manchester hate the Glazers because the Glazers have raised ticket prices. Imagine a Japanese business person buying the Steelers or Packers and then raising ticket rates beyond the means of the local fans.
March 29th, 2010 at 10:09 am
i undertsnad all the uk does not hate the glazers but most of them hate american football but joe says if team glazer can make more cash by moving the bucs they would what does that say to the city of tampa and all its fans hey we like tampa but if we find another city or country that we could make more money sorry tampa but cya if thats the case i dont want these owners
March 29th, 2010 at 10:21 am
justin f:
Joe is not suggesting Team Glazer will move. That written, Joe can also see why Team Glazer might think about such a move late into the night.
Thinking and doing are two different things.
Again, Joe laid out in the post above where such a move may be contemplated.
There are other teams that Joe believes would move to London before the Bucs.
March 29th, 2010 at 10:35 am
Conspiracy theorists might theorize that this really is “the plan”.
March 29th, 2010 at 10:52 am
Thankfully, the Dynasty currently under construstion should materialize well before such a move would take place.
However, Football Hooligans would likely appreciate the Dream’s “violence” and chest bumping techniques.
Might be a match made in Heaven.
March 29th, 2010 at 10:52 am
Justin f — it’s a little confusing because you have Joe speculating, for the sake of speculating (and for the sake of hits), on the speculation of Mike Florio, the grand wizard of speculation. In all, much ado about nothing.
March 29th, 2010 at 11:20 am
I think the nfl would put an expansion team there in london and that would mean the NFL would have to put a team back in Tampa that bein said I doubt they would want the bucs to move!
March 29th, 2010 at 11:25 am
I say this is a very reasonable story.
It makes the most sense thus far for how the Glazers are behaving. This could also potentially make the Kickbal fans happy too if the Glazers bring them an NFL franchise.
But, I also think that Tampa would get a another team too… I mean this team is practically an expansion team… so be it.
I wonder how aweful Tampa’s revenues actually are, minus the sharing revs? That coupled with Tampa’s record high unemployment rates… Tampa is done.
March 29th, 2010 at 11:38 am
@justin F:
Most of the UK hates American Football, but there is definitely a market for the NFL there, as shown by the 80,000 people at the Bucs – Pats game last year. The market is more a European market than just a UK market, too. I was at the game, and there were a lot of different nationalities following the game there as for many people it’s the only real shot at going to an NFL game.
Maybe there’s not a big enough market to host an entire team there, but a few games per season would certainly work.
March 29th, 2010 at 11:43 am
Sander:
Great Britian has, what, 61 million people?
Having an NFL team over there fulltime, even if you get a fraction of that market, that’s a substancial fan base.
Also throw in the fact having a team over there fulltime gives the NFL a reason to pipe in more games, the owner of a potential London franchise could be sitting on a gold mine.
March 29th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Joe:
You have to remember that the NFL is not stepping into an empty market there. “Kickball” is huge over there(/here) and eats up a lot of that market. Over those 61 million people there’s not only a year-round Premier League with 20 teams, 380 games that each draw at least 30,000 and up to 80,000 people – there are also lower leagues that all draw substantial crowds. And then there’s Rugby, which again draws a lot of spectators and has people going ‘Pah those NFL players and their padding are weaksauce'(which is nonsense, but a lot of people do think like that). The sports market is very full there – moreso than in the US, where an NFL team often has a local market many times larger than the local market of an English Premier League team.
The reason that the NFL London games draw so many people is that there are people from all over the UK and even all over Europe travelling there to see the game – I know, because I’m one of them. But when you position a team there, the novelty and uniqueness of going to games may wear off and people will pick and choose when to go to their one game per year.
If the NFL could position a franchise there and draw regular crowds, then that would be great. But it’s not a wide open market ripe for the picking.
March 29th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
joe do you think if the bucs move to london somehow tampa will get another football team or will we just be left in the dark with nothing
March 29th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
justin F:
Probably, but that’s not just putting the cart before the horse, that’s putting the manure before the cart.
March 29th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
One potential benefit. I think we would be wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy outside the blackout radius.
March 29th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
Florio is an idiot…
March 29th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
If the Glazers dare to try to relocate the Bucs, then they have a death wish.
March 29th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Have to change their name to the Hooligans or the Wankers or something like that. Pirates carry swords & guns which are banned in that pussifist nation.
March 29th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
They could call themselves the “big dogs”, for obvious reasons……….
March 29th, 2010 at 7:32 pm
England hates the Glazers . They will get assasinated before they get the chance to move the team if they don’t sell Man U by then…