How Britain fell in love with American football

It’s match day in October. The sun is shining, and fans are cheerfully spilling out of Seven Sisters tube station. Uncharacteristically chipper stewards direct the crowds towards Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, a 30-minute walk away, whilst asking passing fans who they’d be supporting in today’s game.

For a football-mad nation, the light-hearted mood is perhaps the first clue that fans are not here to see the borough’s beloved Spurs or, for that matter, football at all. The sea of colourful American jerseys brandishing names of sports stars from across the pond is another dead giveaway.

The draw for these fans is a sport for which popularity has rocketed so much in the UK that we are now regularly referred to as its “second home”. A sport that this February garnered 3.4 million views for one game alone, breaking UK viewing records for both Sky Sports and ITV. It is, of course, the NFL, America’s professional football league.

Some fans arriving at Seven Sisters last October were there for a fourth year on the trot (not counting 2020, when the games were cancelled due to Covid) to watch the first of two NFL games to be played at the Spurs ground that month. In addition to being built as the Premier League team’s new base, it was the first and only stadium designed specifically for NFL games outside of North America.

“It was absolutely packed,” says Pete Brennan, an English fan who attended to see the Jacksonville Jaguars take on the Buffalo Bills. “But it was a really great environment; there was a good mix of people in the crowds, and everyone was wearing different types of jerseys, which is something you wouldn’t get in English football.”

And while the game’s near-capacity crowd of 61,273 stands as proof of the game’s popularity today, Britain’s love affair with American football dates back to the 1980s when Channel 4 aired the NFL for the first time on a Sunday evening.

“At that time, the NFL was up against shows like Songs of Praise and the Antiques Roadshow,” says NFL UK general manager Henry Hodgson, who describes this time as a “huge boom moment” for the NFL.

“It was also when soccer wasn’t having the greatest time, and this new sport came on TV that looked futuristic and modern; it was being played by these incredible athletes, and there was a lot of appreciation for Americana in general.”

Over the years that followed, the sport dipped in and out of favour among UK fans, which Hodgson says was in part due to a lack of strategy to really sustain interest in the sport. But the launch of an NFL Europe League in the 90s and a subsequent deal struck between Sky Sports and the NFL eventually made it easier for domestic and international fans to watch, giving the sport the roots it in needed to grow in the UK.

Live regular season games began to be played at Wembley Stadium in 2007 (with games still held there today), and in 2019, the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium welcomed the NFL with open arms.

Synonymous with the image of the US for many Britons, the NFL’s growth over the decades speaks to a much wider appreciation for Americana across the UK. From the food and music to the clothes we wear and the bars we drink at, there are increasing ways for residents and tourists to experience a little slice of American life.

American-style smokehouses, barbeque pits and burger bars are now commonplace, with festivals like Fume BBQ and WingJam returning to the capital again this year. The latter will be spotlighting all-American flavours in the dishes on offer, like tangy buffalo and smoky honey marinades. US sports and dive bars like Philly-themed Passyunk Avenue, meanwhile, are great spots to watch all those NFL games, with the NFL UK also selecting 13 venues across England as part of its NFL Sports Bar Partnership.

More recently, cowboy culture (buoyed by stars like Beyoncé following her first country album release early this year) has begun to seep into our fashion choices and prompt trends like ‘Cowgirlcore’ to flourish. Western-inspired wardrobes like cowboy boots, fringed jackets and studded Stetson hats are no longer reserved for costume parties (or Glastonbury). And, of course, there's the Taylor Swift effect. The world's biggest pop star cut her teeth as a country singer, and her huge popularity boosted country music's popularity here (Official Charts UK data showing the genre has already experienced a 67 per cent surge in popularity so far in 2024) along with rising stars such as Morgan Wallen, Shaboozey and Post Malone.

Swift’s attendance in support of tight end boyfriend Travis Kelce at this year’s Super Bowl LVIII was considered a factor in the record-busting 3.4 million UK viewers who tuned in to watch the game, with his team, the Kansas City Chiefs, beating the San Francisco 49ers 25-22. Still, audience figures have been steadily climbing over the years, says Will Gavin, TalkSport presenter and editor, who covers the NFL.

“We’ve covered the last six Super Bowls in person other than the Covid year, which we did remotely, and had full live rights across those six seasons,” he says. “We have steadily seen the audience climb over those six years by an average of just over 20 per cent a season.”

Chris Davis, a life-long Philadelphia Eagles fan who grew up near the US city, has experienced that growth firsthand. “When I travelled to the UK for work in the mid-2000s, I remember having difficulty finding somewhere to watch the game at the pub,” he says. “You had to really look for it.”

“But when I lived in the UK between 2016 and 2019, you were able to watch a number of games each weekend on Sky Sports, and it was just amazing to see the development in that short space of time, both in terms of the broadcasting as well as the UK fan’s level of interest and knowledge of the sport.”

Beyond the big-league shows that fans can enjoy in London, the love of the game is being strengthened through grassroots flag football programmes (the non-contact version of the sport) across the country, which are doing a particularly good job of engaging younger audiences.

This includes the launch of programmes like the NFL Academy at Loughborough College in Leicestershire for athletes aged between 16-18, and it is helping young people to get scholarships to US colleges (the next stage of development for pro-American football players).

The college draws in talent from across the UK as well as searching further afield, from Europe to Africa. Nigerian-born Emmanuel Okoye was fast-tracked to the academy after impressing in an NFL Africa camp in Ghana and was last year recruited by the University of Tennessee in what looks set to be the next step towards a potential NFL career. More than this, the academy is developing a strong UK-based team to compete aboard, says Hodgson, with games scheduled this year against some of the leading US high school teams in Florida, New York, California and Oregon.

Of course, the NFL's expansion outside the US isn’t limited to the UK. NFL games are now hosted in Germany. The league launched for the first time in São Paulo, Brazil, this September and plans to expand into Madrid in 2025.

Flag football will also make its debut in the 2028 Summer Olympics, which will have a huge impact on the sport in the UK, says Phoebe Schecter, NFL analyst and former player of both flag and tackle football for Great Britain.

“That means there are so many young people here now who could potentially be representing their country in a sport that they didn’t even potentially play until now. Those opportunities are very real, and that’s one of the biggest driving factors for girls in the sport,” she says.

“It’s the glitz and the glamour, the celebrities who go to games, you never know who you’re going to see there. It kind of makes everything a bit human. Plus, because the NFL is quite a long game, you can hang out with friends and have those fun conversations where you’re not going to miss anything right away or look forward to [which stars] are going to be playing at halftime. There are just so many different elements about why you would fall in love with the sport.”

Back at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, as kick-off nears, the crowd falls silent for a rallying performance of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ – only here it’s followed with a uniquely British twist – a heartfelt rendition of ‘God Save the King’. Rather fitting for the king of American sports, don’t you think?