The NFL have confirmed a ten-year deal to stage at least two games per year at Tottenham Hotspur’s new stadium following the completion of its rebuilding in 2018. That would appear to earmark the new stadium as a prospective franchise relocation – most likely the Jacksonville Jaguars, currently in the midst of a four-year deal to play a game at Wembley once a season.
The stadium is to be built from the ground up with use for two separate forms of football. In particular, the natural grass pitch that Spurs will use will be able to be retracted, revealing an artificial turf field that can stand up to the pounding of both NFL games and other events such as concerts. This addresses concerns over the durability of the Wembley pitch, which has been known to cut up during and after NFL clashes.
Even the locker rooms have been configured to allow for the 53-man NFL roster and their attendant supporting staff, with blueprints earlier in the year revealing a huge locker room on the north side of the stadium with an area for “taping” players’ knees and ankles – a term that just doesn’t get used in the UK. (Two smaller locker rooms on the south side would be used for association football use, and merged together to form a second NFL-size locker room.) Spurs received planning permission last month for the huge basement that these plans required, which will also free up space for car parking and media facilities.
However, the capacity of around 61,000 will fall short of that of Wembley, which has room for over 85,000 even after accounting for the inability to use the front few rows in NFL games. Every single NFL regular season game at Wembley, including the 2011 clash between the Chicago Bears and Tampa Bay Buccaneers – which had a greatly shortened ticket sales window due to the threat of a players’ strike – had a crowd well in excess of the capacity of the new stadium. On the other hand, it is still directly comparable to many new NFL stadia, and the two games per year here can be supplemented by other games elsewhere in the UK – so perhaps Wembley will still get the odd game after all, or perhaps British regular-season action will head outside London.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell confirmed a commitment “to hosting NFL games in world-class venues” and added the league was “excited to partner with Tottenham Hotspur to play games at their future stadium.” Meanwhile, Spurs chairman Daniel Levy declared “we have an opportunity now to deliver one of the most unique sports, leisure and entertainment venues in the world, bringing together the Premier League and NFL for the first time.”
