THE Jacksonville Jaguars are getting ready to move into Wembley.
And, for the first time in 26 years, British Gridiron fans can contemplate watching regular ‘home’ American Football matches.
American billionaire Shahid Khan’s £1billion bid for Wembley will end years of stop/start speculation over the long debate as to whether the NFL will ever have a longterm base in London.
But if the Jaguars and Fulham owner Khan takes a franchise out of the US for the first time it would also open up the sport to the entire European market given the easy transport links to London.
That was also the idea back in 1990 when The World League of American Football (WLAF) was founded with support from the NFL to play professional American football in North America and Europe.
WLAF side the London Monarchs played their home games at the old Wembley during the 1991 and 1992 seasons, regularly attracting crowds of 50,000 or more.
And they even won the first World Bowl at Wembley in 1991.
Sadly, across Europe as a whole the league was not financially sustainable and the Monarchs left Wembley eventually disbanded.
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But the NFL has always has its eye on London and proved as much by staging at least one regular season game at Wembley from 2007, making it two in 2013 and three since then.
Wembley actually hosted its first gridiron game in 1952 with the United States Air Forces in Europe Football title game.
The Fuerstenfeldbruck Eagles beat the Burtonwood Bullets 27-6.
In 1982 Channel 4 started showing weekly NFL highlights and the following summer English entrepreneur John Marshall brought the Minnesota Vikings and St. Louis Cardinals over to Wembley for a pre-season exhibition game called The Global Cup.
Just over 30,000 fans turned out for that one.
A year later the United States Football League (USFL) dispatched Tampa Bay Bandits and the Philadelphia Stars for a post-season challenge match.
The NFL, looking to promote American football in other countries, took note and in 1986 launched a series of pre-season exhibition games at Wembley called the ‘American Bowl’.
It began with defending Super Bowl champions Chicago Bears defeating the Dallas Cowboys 17-6 in front of a capacity crowd.
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Following two more successful games at Wembley, the American Bowl was expanded to Tokyo in 1989 and since 1990, exhibition games have been played in Montreal, Berlin, Barcelona, Dublin, Mexico City, Toronto, Monterrey, Vancouver, Sydney and Osaka.
NFL American Bowl games continued at Wembley until 1993 when the Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions drew 13-13 in front of 45,000.
The drop in attendance was a clear sign that although the appetite remained, UK fans wanted something more than exhibition matches.
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It wouldn’t be long before the NFL took note and by 2007 the American Bowl had been replaced with the ‘International Series’ with matches being regular season games instead of exhibition ones.
Since 2007 every International Series game has taken place at Wembley, the first one seeing the New York Giants beat the Miami Dolphins 13-10.
In 2013 NFL increased their Wembley quota to two games and then three.
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