Are You Ready for Some Football!…in the UK?

by Emmett Jones

ESPN is taking the long-standing success, Monday Night Football, and is moving it across the pond; programming wise, at least.  Monday Night Football will debut on ESPN UK on September 14th, at 1am GMT.  The games will be televised live, with a re-show occurring the following day.  Not surprisingly, ESPN and NFL big-wigs are pretty excited.

Jeroen Oerlemans, Vice President, ESPN, TV Channels Europe, Middle East and Africa said, “Monday Night Football is an enormous global sports franchise with an incredibly strong heritage, and it regularly features the very best NFL matchup of the week.  With the NFL’s continued growth in the UK, this is another example of how we are building quality global programming around our core UK sports schedule.”

Wembley Stadium has been host to the NFL in London

Added Hans Schroeder, NFL vice president, media strategy and development, “We are pleased to expand our partnership with ESPN in serving our fans in the U.K. who are passionate about the NFL. ESPN will continue to do an outstanding job of bringing our fans closer to our sport in new ways.”(via Sports Media News)

On top of the MNF game, UK viewers will also be “treated” to the pre-game show known as Monday Night Countdown (which I guess will begin around 11:30 pm, UK time).

So, what does all of this mean?  Well, seeing as how Goodell has already strongly hinted at an NFL team in Europe, it seems like its a litmus test to further test the prospect of having an NFL team over in Europe.  The NFL has seen great success with their now annual regular season game played in London…If they can find weekly success with MNF then they will use that as further evidence to contemplate putting an NFL team across the pond…right?

I just hope that somebody remembers that MNF shows a premium match-up and that for all intents and purposes, a European expansion team will probably not be very good.  Sure, Europeans seem to like an annual regular season marquee game (except when the Bucs played) but can they handle 8 games of mediocrity?

If the NFL brass has their way, it seems as if we’ll be finding out sooner rather than later.