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Let me express my thoughts, first as a Scotsman (British born) and secondly as an NFL fan.
1- We had a second tier NFL league in Europe with franchises between 1995-2006 in Scotland, England, Spain, Holland and Germany. When the leagues life support machine was pulled, there were 5 teams in Germany and one in Holland. Hardly NFL Europe!
2- Attendences! Apart from a few 40k plus games in Germany the fans didnt support it, my team the Scottish Claymores got 15,000 at one game because the half time entertainment was Deacon Blue! People left after half time! Our average was betweeen 8-10k in Glasgow and Edinburgh and one of the reasons we lost our franchise to Hamburg.
England has a team for 3 seasons, (I say England as they couldn't make it work in London so the last season they "toured the country") in 1998 they lost their franchise to Berlin.
3- One off games vs buying season books - The reason I mention NFLE in the first 2 points is a lot of the "bums on seats" on these games are travelling from all over Europe, I know fans from Glasgow, Dublin, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Barcelona, Cologne and Hamburg who travel once a year to see whatever team is on offer. (Cheaper than flying to San Fran or wherever) but the question remains, would they support 8 games?
4- Currency - I mention this as this was a reason for choosing the dutch franchise over the UK one in 2004, that the NFL didn't wish to deal with currency exchanges for both UKP, Euro and USD, now this may have changed but they were very "profits driven" in 2004.
5- Apathy of the GB public, like it or not, over there it will always be a "minority sport", would the GB public support it?
6- NFL Owners, they are big babies, they will not like the idea of increased operating costs travelling to London, and if you are in the division Once a year!
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