This afternoon, just shy of 75,000 fans of American football will flood in to watch the Atlanta Falcons take on the Indianapolis Colts, in what is set to be the Colts’ largest attendance for a home game this season. A few weeks ago, more than 86,000 turned out to watch the Jacksonville Jaguars face the LA Rams in what was the Jaguars’ best-attended home game this year. The most surprising thing about this? Both games were taking place more than 4,000 miles from the NFL’s heartland – one in Berlin, one in London.

Recently, Sean Thomas claimed on Spectator Life that America has failed to export its ‘laughable’ sports. As a British writer who has covered five Super Bowls and written thousands of words on the NFL, I come not to defend American football as a sport – it can do that itself (have you seen the size of those guys?) – but to question Sean’s claim that when it comes to America ‘No one likes to watch or play your sports’.

The numbers speak for themselves. On this side of the Atlantic, more than four million people watched Super Bowl LV live on Sky Sports and BBC in 2020; four years later a global TV audience of 62.5 million watched the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII. There are three million supporters who have attended the 42 regular-season NFL games played in London since 2007, when Wembley and Tottenham are turned into riots of colour by fans from all over Europe and beyond.

In the past three years Germany has staged games – with Berlin today becoming the third German host city – as well as Mexico, Brazil........

© The Spectator