So I'll preface this with a disclaimer; I know absolutely nothing about American Football. I know the names of some of the positions (though I don't have a clue what they do) and that Baltimore beat San Francisco in the Superbowl this year. That's it. However, I was thinking... What does the success of MLS show about the growth of a sport into an area where it isn't really present at a high level that would apply the other way around? Obviously they tried with NFL Europe, then canned it several years ago. But assuming that someone was to go "right, we've put the occasional games in Europe. The only way to take things further is to create a league there"*, what lessons would be learnt from MLS and how applicable would they be to a different continent? Opening it up further, how would you then apply that? I know its all a ridiculous hypothetical, but thought it'd be an interesting thing to ask. * I know there's a bunch of amateur leagues in various countries already (is Germany's semi-pro? I know the sport took off a bit there), but you get what I mean.
Right now MLS probably cannot provide lessons on how to expand football overseas. MLS grew because there was a dedicated group of investors domestically who wanted to grow the game, and the world soccer community was focused in helping grow the game in the US. Right now these conditions don't really exist in regards to growing football overseas. There are quite a few storm clouds football is dealing with right now, especially in the area of concussions. The NFL is facing multiple lawsuits from former players about quality of life issues related to playing football, and the main college governing body the NCAA is facing their own set of lawsuits. While the NFL does want to grow the game overseas I think they simply are unable to give it the focus it needs to succeed. And I'm sure if the NFL loses some of these lawsuits it will scare off potential investors overseas. For this exercise I think you chose the wrong North American sport. I think the better fit would be baseball. Since this is in the football forum I won't go into detail, but I think there are a lot of similarities between soccer in the US pre MLS and baseball in many parts of the world now.
Yeah, the difference is there's no billionaires sitting around thinking of it as an important long-term opportunity in the way that they did with WC '94 and MLS, rather than simply a new place to sell their existing product. When it comes to said billionaires being domestically-based, I'm not sure that's a big deal - cash is cash after all? I can kinda see the "local means more dedication" aspect, but I'm not really sold on it. One of the things that got me thinking about this in the first place is the guy that owns the Jacksonville Jaguars (I have no idea where that is) bought Fulham recently and one of the things that I remember being key to MLS not dying off in the early '00s was getting control over venues. I guess there's a lot of little things like that which would be important, but not so much the big overall plans.
it's not a good comparison because in the U.S soccer has always been a popular youth sport. American football will never be popular in Europe. For one, you don't have youths playing it. But also, you already have rugby. And, American football is seen (rightly so) more about entertainment and selling commercials than actual sport. The NFL has been a failure globally. And that's not going to change.
In Europe rugby is only really played in the UK, Ireland, France, Italy, Romania, Georgia and parts of Spain near the French border. Elsewhere its very small. I know a German guy who plays and he was saying that people there are either surprised they have a team or are impressed that he plays in the third tier (as they don't realise its the bottom one). American football is much bigger there. As to the limited amount of youth players, sure - it would make any professional league at risk of being a flash-in-the-pan. It's been quite successful at university level over the past few years, though. I don't quite get the point of "its about entertainment and selling commericals", being an issue though. Any sport at the professional level has these things as much as the competition element, surely?