Putting a Super Bowl in London might incur the wrath of Congress.
The Commissioner of the National Football League, Roger Goodell, has once again promised that one day London, England will host the Super Bowl. But people in London and England should not be counting on it in the next decade. Goodell knows that awarding the Super Bowl to a foreign country is going to cause political and cultural problems. After all, the United States Senate, the United States House of Representatives and President Lyndon Johnson on November 8th, 1966 signed the law that created the Super Bowl. The American Football League-National Football League merger was approved by an act of Congress. The Super Bowl is an authentic American holiday and an American creation. Football really developed in the coal mining region of western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Those two items are impediments in bringing the Super Bowl to London.
For what it is worth, Goodell tells the truth in the first part of a statement he gave in London about the possibility of planting a Super Bowl in England. “We’ve always traditionally tried to play a Super Bowl in an NFL city—that was always sort of a reward for the cities that have NFL franchises. But things change. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if that happens one day.” Goodell needed to throw another sentence in his statement. The NFL rewards cities and local municipalities by granting the Super Bowl to those markets who spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help pay for a new stadium or a renovated facility. The 2025 Super Bowl will be played in New Orleans after Louisiana spent hundreds of millions of dollars to renovate the local stadium. The last two Super Bowls in Las Vegas and Inglewood, California were played in recently opened stadiums. Things would have to change in Washington with politicians for the NFL to place a Super Bowl in London.
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