It just amazes me sometimes.
The NBA began its international regular season game competition in Tokyo in 1990 when the Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz played a pair of games to tip-off '90-91 NBA season. That trend continued with regular season games in Japan staged in '92, '94, '96, '99 and 2003. (In 2001, the league had exhibition games with the LA Lakers on the schedule but all were cancelled after the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks).
In 1997, the NBA staged a regular season game in Mexico City when the Dallas Mavericks and Houston Rockets played a 108-106 thriller won by the Rockets.
Baseball and hockey entered the fray in later years, with baseball gaining considerable attention by sending the NY Mets and NY Yankees to Tokyo in the years 2000 and 2004, respectively. Baseball has gone on record to say they will open the 2008 season in Japan with either the Red Sox and Mariners among the favorites to play.
USA Today listed these teams as MLB possibilities for the 2008 season openers in Japan:
The Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Oakland Athletics and Seattle Mariners are American League teams interested in playing in Japan next year, several officials have said in recent weeks. The Los Angeles Dodgers, Pittsburgh Pirates and San Diego Padres have expressed interest among National League teams.
"I expect that we will have games in Tokyo next spring," Bob DuPuy, baseball's chief operating officer, said Tuesday before the All-Star game. "We're looking at the schedule, looking at what's available, looking at permutations, looking at teams training in Arizona vs. teams training in Florida."
Now, a full seventeen years after the NBA had its regular season openers abroad, the NFL is staging its London Game. The WSJ had this to say today:
To Tackle Fans in Europe,
NFL Tries a New Playbook
By ADAM THOMPSON and AARON O. PATRICK
October 19, 2007-
The National Football League may be all-powerful in the U.S., but most Europeans still put it in the same category as Velveeta cheese -- a distinctly American product they cannot fathom.
It's an attitude the NFL has long tried to change, so far without success. But it's not giving up. Next week the Miami Dolphins will face the New York Giants in London before more than 90,000 fans at a sold-out Wembley Stadium, the first regular-season NFL game played outside North America. The event is the first of what are planned to be one or two regular-season games a year played on foreign soil through 2011. Along with England, the league has named Germany, Canada and Mexico as future sites for similar contests ...
... Since 1986 the league has played preseason exhibition games in Europe -- but those games lost their cachet the more fans realized how little was at stake. The NFL tried an offshoot league with a separate set of players, the World League of American Football, which over time morphed into NFL Europe and then NFL Europa. But that managed a cult following only in Germany, as franchises in London, Edinburgh and Barcelona folded. The NFL scrapped that league altogether this summer.
"People are pretty sophisticated. Eventually they figure out this is your best product or something less than that," says John Mara, the New York Giants' president and chief executive.
The NFL has now decided that to sell American football abroad, it must be undiluted, with the best players playing full games that count, instead of exhibition games, which the English call "friendlies." The upcoming London game is set to be a contest in intense, midseason, smash-mouth mode. "This is not friendly," emphasizes NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.
Mr. Goodell has talked big about his league's European plans. He made waves Monday when he said strong outside interest in holding a Super Bowl in London would prompt the league to examine that possibility. He later said in a phone interview that the NFL has "no plans at this time" to move the championship game offshore.
The National Basketball Association -- which boasts a long roster of non-American superstars such as Germany's Dirk Nowitzki -- has had an easier time going global than the NFL because basketball requires much less equipment and fewer players to start a game. Turning a European soccer or rugby fanatic into an NFL fan requires a shift in ingrained cultural habits that doesn't promise to be easy.
While the upcoming Wembley game sold out quickly -- and tickets are selling for 30% above face value on eBay -- some fans say it's been eclipsed by England's unexpected success in the World Cup rugby tournament in France, where it will play in the final against South Africa tomorrow. (October 20).
