Exclusive: Wembley Having Two Regular-Season Game Shows NFL’s Commitment to London says Kirkwood

October 25, 2012

By Ismail Uddin

NFL UK Managing Director, Alistair Kirkwood, believes Wembley two regular-season games makes a huge statement about NFL’s commitment to London.

NFL UK recently announced that Minnesota Vikings will host the Pittsburgh Steelers along with Jacksonville Jaguars hosting San Francisco 49ers in 2013 and Kirkwood believes fan support has been a big reason why a second game has been scheduled. 

“I think it’s a big statement, in terms of support from our ownership in what we’ve been doing. It’s a great reception on how the fans have supported the game. For people that aren’t familiar with the NFL, maybe they don’t realise that an NFL team has eight home game in a regular season, so we are now moving to a 2013 to a quarter of an NFL season, which is quite an achievement,” Kirkwood told iSportconnect exclusively

“Also, we’ve got a lot to learn from how 2013 will go because on the one hand, we have one game in September between two teams that haven’t been over before, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Minnesota Vikings.”

“And, in the second game, Jacksonville Jaguars and San Francisco 49ers. We’ve got to connect with the Jacksonville Jaguars over the next four years, playing a game each year. That’s exciting because we hope they will be adopted by new fans as a returning team and we also hope that people that have their own allegiances will adopt them as their second favourite team. That will give us a good sense to help us build our team going forward.”

Wembley is currently gearing up for it’s sixth NFL International Series game to be played on Sunday between St Louis Rams and New England Patriots.

Kirkwood also revealed the event had sold out it’s 85,000 allocation two weeks ago. 

“It’s great to see the level of fan demand that we had for the game and we’re really happy that this game has sold so well,” he said.