NFL says yes to London

London is to get a regular season NFL game this autumn, played at the new Wembley stadium. The NFL are set to make the announcement tomorrow and London has beaten a number of German cities to get the game, which the BBC says will be a home game for the Miami Dolphins against the New York Giants.

The new Wembley looks really good, quite high banked and close to the pitch so the 90,000 fans inside should create a loud atmosphere. London or the UK doesn’t have an NFL Europe team any more, there are five in Germany and one in Holland, but the game does get pretty good coverage on tv. During the regular season SkySports will have two live games from 6pm-midnight on Sunday night and Channel Five will have the late night Sunday game live. Sky have all the playoff games live and ITV show a highlights package. I don’t think they’ll be any problem selling this game out in a very short time.

What will be great for the fans is that they’ll see two top teams and the game will actually mean something as opposed to getting an exhibition or a second tier game. In August and September the weather should be fine and if Miami bring some of the cheerleaders I’ve seen on the web, ding-dong, the tabloids are going to eat this up.