Toronto FC is doing very well. That is true, and they may well prove to be the second team in Toronto that develops a strong following, but it’s still early for them. The Blue Jays have been inflating their attendance numbers for a number of years now to try to make them look respectable. The Blue Jays are owned by Rogers which owns Sportsnet, one of our two major sports channels, and they of course carry the Jays games. That vertical integration saves the Jays because their television numbers are very low and they would be in danger of being dropped if they were on an independent channel. Part of the reason the Jays do so poorly is that they are in a division with the Red Sox and the Yankees, who both spend over twice as much on their rosters as the Jays do, and the Jays really have no chance of winning the division. Toronto has, and probably would again, support the Jays if they were winning, but there isn’t a strong base of true baseball fans there so when they lose the crowds disappear and the national television numbers shrink. Back to the NFL, that story does have some twists to it. Rogers and a couple of other Toronto businessmen have desperately wanted an NFL team for a long time, and they have at least two members of the Toronto media fully in their pocket, Steven Brunt being the most high profile one. He has written a number of pro NFL articles in recent years that have been pure fiction. He’s been desperately trying to sell the NFL to Torontonians and it sounds to me like you read one of his articles. All of the Toronto media are trying to be positive about the NFL coming there, but outside of Brunt and one or two others the rest of them are at least telling the truth. Here’s an article on the exhibition game. http://www.thestar.com/article/478982 Here’s an article on the regular season game, first NFL regular season game ever held in Canada, which didn’t sell out. Rogers did a better job of being discrete about papering the house for this one but it eventually came out that they hadn’t sold any more tickets for this game than they had for the exhibition game, which was no surprise given that scalpers were dumping tickets for 10% of face value and they still couldn't dump all their tickets. Why would anyone pay Rogers 10x as much when they could get tickets that cheap on the street? http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/549963
If you can have Muhammad Ali and George Foreman fight "The Rumble in the Jungle" in Kinshasa and have it be a memorable and momentous event 35 years later, the Super Bowl should be able to cope with London. I would be interested to know how many Super Bowl tickets are sold to locals who wouldn't go to the event otherwise, and how many are people flying in from wherever.
I don't doubt that they could come up with a suitable field if necessary(or if worst comes to worst, install field turf on a temporary basis). Also there's a number of other venues besides the "new" Wembley - there is a large rugby stadium at Twickenham (recently renovated), capacity 85k, and an 80,000 seat Olympic stadium planned for 2012.
Smokescreen to get owners to build better stadium. "Hey, we don't HAVE to give it to anyone!" Although all the owners might profit from a SB in London as opposed to 1/32 with it in the USA.
Never say never, but the Jays are certainly greatly disadvantaged in that division, and if occasionally they do happen to put together a group of overachievers who are competitive with the big spending teams, then they inevitably lose those players to the same big spending teams in free agency. Such is life in a league without a cap.
I'll never get to see it live, even if they have it in Houston 10 more times before I die so who cares if it is in London or Paris or Toronto or Vegas or Mars.
I just don't get the outrage. I mean, we are all (I assume) basketball fans here, and that sport already expanded internationally and Stern has openly discussed expansion into Europe in the past. Some of the biggest stars in the NBA have said they wuold be willing to play in Europe as well. While I will grant you that the NBA isn't playing the Finals overseas, there is an obvious difference between the two leagues in how the Championship site is determined -- and knowing Stern I'd bet that if he could put the finals in Beijing or London he would in a heartbeat. The Super Bowl is basically the Olympics nowadays, and I'd much rather watch either in a beautiful exotic locale than in some humdrum run down industrial wasteland just because the NFL feels they have to "reward" the suckers for their billion dollar taxpayer funded cathedrals with a one time 3 hour event.
