I’m a believer in our capitalistic society. As a businessman, I understand marketing and maximizing profits. However, as an American sports fan, I’m not in favor of our professional leagues’ fascination of playing games on foreign soil. International marketing and the selling of product is fine – but, do we they really need to send our teams to other countries? We open our doors to international athletes, but having actual games played beyond our borders seems to be going too far.
For some reason, I’m having trouble with regular season NFL games in London and MLB games in Japan. Does America really need to force feed the world our culture, including our sports? Exhibitions, as the NBA recently did in Europe, seem reasonable, but let’s keep games that count in league standings in America.
The Oakland Athletics and Boston Red Sox will be playing two regular season games in Japan – that’s two fewer games the fans in Oakland will get to see. Baseball games are a hard enough draw in Oakland these days, so why take away two Red Sox games from them? The New York Giants and Miami Dolphins played a game in London this past NFL season. How memorable was that? And God forbid the NFL does the most sacrilegious of all – and plays the Super Bowl in England! The next thing you know, we’ll be moving the New York City 4th of July fireworks to London, too!
NFL Europe was a failure, Japan has its own professional baseball league, and the world has soccer (excuse me, football). Let’s leave the rest of the world alone and play American games on American soil.
Touche!
Comment by GZguy — March 14, 2008 @ 10:12 am
I’m with you, Mr. Vieira. And while we are at it, let’s ship those silly Third World games back to where they belong. The next time I hear a bunch screaming “Gooooooal” I am going to put in a call to ICE.
Comment by Bostonian — March 14, 2008 @ 12:57 pm
Very good. Finally someone is standing up against the insanity, that is playing “American sports” in foreign countries!! Why?? Does it make it any more appealing to the fans of their favorite sport to watch their team play in Japan, for example? I say no. As for the marketing, do these gazillion-aires really think they’ll make that much headway in the foreign market? I agree with you & GZguy. Stop force feeding these sports. Like the country trying to force feed soccer to the American people. Please, just stop!
Comment by photo5 — March 14, 2008 @ 5:40 pm
MLB should care more about its fan base at home than the almighty international dollar. These 6 AM games (or 3 AM on the west coast) are ridiculous. Plus, real games in March is way too early!
Comment by Manny — March 26, 2008 @ 6:29 am
And now the NFL is talking about playing 4 regular season games in London. What a slap in the face to America’s pro football fans.
Comment by GZguy — March 26, 2008 @ 12:10 pm