And I want the Super Bowl to be called the Thriller Bowl
Michael Jackson, in 1993
That ended in 2007.
We are referring to the NFL Europe project, that megalomaniacal plan that had tried to implant American football in the Old Continent, back in the nineties, opening franchises in a range of Central European cities –mostly German–, and also in Barcelona.
The reader will have heard of the Barcelona Dragons.
For a range of years, that hadn't gone badly for the European franchise or the Dragons. On some occasion, 50,000 onlookers had appeared at the Estadi Olímpic de Montjuïc, back in 1993 or 1994.
Cheerful, dressed in green, with caps and scarves, the curious tried to see what that American football was about.
What was that world that was making its way into the American popular imagination about?
That culture that occupied a space similar to the one our football occupies in ours?
Why were millions of fans celebrating those runaway races by breaking lines?
Or were they following the police pursuit of fugitive OJ Simpson, caught, initially acquitted, and eventually convicted of murdering his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman, on live television?
Or the show that Michael Jackson had put on at halftime of the '93 Super Bowl?
(Among his demands, the king of pop had asked the NFL to rename that halftime as Thriller Bowl; the entity had replied something like this: "Maybe you are the king of pop, but we are the kings of the world") .
Some of it had tried to bring the NFL to Europe. An attempt as willful as naive that would not fully materialize. And for this reason, fifteen years later, the project had fallen: as the league lost 30 million dollars annually and the talent pool did not generate talent, in 2007 the blind was lowered.
(...)
We go to the present.
We are in Barcelona in May and Jason Robinson, managing partner of Elite Sports Equity, talks with a range of journalists in a room at the Hard Rock Café, in the heart of Barcelona.
Elite Sports Equity has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the Barcelona Dragons, the Barcelona franchise of the new European Football League (EFL), the tournament reset in 2020 and reintroduced in Europe, now without the NFL umbrella.
(There are 17 teams in the course that began this Saturday. At the Terrassa Olympic, the Dragons received the Zurich Helvetic Guards; around 2,000 spectators attended the duel).
Why isn't American football growing more in Europe? we asked Robinson.
–That attempt by NFL Europe did not work out. Perhaps the goals were too ambitious. There were too many American players on each team. Now there will be a cap of four per club (the rest must be local players). So, there was no streaming or social networks either.
According to Robinson, the NFL couldn't find a way to anchor the project.
-Everything wanted to be done very quickly. Now, we want to slow down. We have created a plan that we believe in. We are going to be a long time with the Dragons.
Sitting next to him, Bart Iaccarino smiles.
Iaccarino is the general manager of the Dragons. Iaccarino says that the budget of the Dragons (another logo, another image, bears few similarities with those Dragons) has grown by 30% compared to last year, when they reached the EFL semifinals.
–For this year we have a budget of 750,000 euros. With these figures, we will be able to increase the promotion of our parties,” says Iaccarino.
We are going to have more impact in the media. We want to grow sustainably,” concludes Carlos Alonso, the owner of the Dragons.
Behind the scenes, experts review the technical features of American football. The Dragons have notably big players, such as quarterback Conor Miller, and smaller ones, such as wide receiver Jordi Torrededia.
Luis Jones, former player and analyst, sees more variety in the physique of current players.
–Now there is more space for tiny players, weighing 70 kilos, but very fast and technical, capable of moving between the lines, receiving and starting. Today, this sport is more inclusive.
