Tottenham Hotspur are now old hands at hosting NFL games and that was clear on Sunday as the Chicago Bears took over in N17 to tame the Jacksonville Jaguars.
American football has found its home in the UK at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium – the first purpose-built stadium for the sport on this side of the Atlantic – for the past half a decade and Sunday’s latest offering was as slick as they come.
The touchdowns rained down as the weather thankfully didn’t, the Bears’ number one draft pick Caleb Williams hitting his groove as the 22-year-old quarterback showed everybody what all the excitement was about in the 35-16 win.
The Jags have long been the London team, having based themselves at Wembley, but in N17 they found themselves booed the Bears were the home side and ruled the roost both on and off the artificial turf, which sits beneath that Premier League pitch seen most weeks with Ange Postecoglou and his side.
The Australian was at the game, a big NFL fan himself although his affections in the sport lie away from the two competing teams on the day. Postecoglou has been at the NFL London Games in both of his seasons at Tottenham and as he stood with his family at pitch side before kick-off on Sunday, you could see the excitement on his face, far from the stresses of Premier League life.
Postecoglou spent time on the pitch with Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy and Jaguars owner and Fulham chairman Shahid Khan. The Spurs boss then exchanged a Spurs shirt for a Bears one pre-match with his compatriot Tory Taylor, a punter for the victorious team.
The 27-year-old comes from the Tottenham head coach’s city of Melbourne and is another success story from that part of Australia. He spent four years playing college football at the University of Iowa before the Bears drafted him in the fourth round of this year’s NFL draft, the highest selected punter in half a decade.
Postecoglou has a clear pride in any Australian that makes it big across the world and his grin while chatting with Taylor once again showcased that.
The Bears enjoyed themselves on their visit to Tottenham, pulling out an entertaining afternoon tea celebration when Keenan Allen caught Williams’ pass in the end zone. His team-mates all sat in a circle with him, all of them sipping from imaginary tea cups with their little fingers in the air. That’s what us English do, right?
The experienced Allen admitted that the noise inside the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and the support of the Bears faithful caught him off guard despite his many years in the game.
“I didn’t [expect it to be that good]. D.J. [Moore] was saying ‘it’s a home game, watch this’. I was like ‘all right, I’ll see how it looks’. I’m not used to that! That was solid,” said the 32-year-old wide receiver in his post-match press conference.
For some Tottenham fans, it will grate that another team calls the huge stadium In N17 their home – technically two teams a season. Those Spurs supporters won’t care about the Americans and their sports coming to north London. It’s all just a noisy distraction from their one and only love – Tottenham Hotspur. I mean the ball is the wrong shape for a start.
There’s no sense though in building a huge £1billion stadium only to purposely have it lie dormant for 345 or so days a year. Tottenham’s first step of trying to compete with the big clubs that have huge revenue bases is to create their own major income.
That comes with their stadium. On Sunday, 61,182 people packed into it to watch the NFL extravaganza. The game began at 2.30pm, with fans teeming in and around the arena from hours before, and the game did not end until around 5.30pm.
Many of the crowd remained inside the stadium, eating and drinking – something they’re allowed to do in their seats as well during an NFL game – and when this reporter left after the press conferences at just before 7pm there were still fans heading into the club megastore which is transformed and dedicated to NFL stock at this time of year.
Eventually Spurs will build the towering blade-like hotel to come in the south plaza and many of those people will stay on site as well, either the night before or the night after.
So take all of those hours of use and you can start to work out what Tottenham make from their stadium.
So you know, for a Premier League match at White Hart Lane, Spurs used to make just below £1million per game in revenue. At the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, they bring in almost £6million in matchday income each time Postecoglou’s side play.
