NFL: Growing the UK Game – Alistair Kirkwood

iSportconnect talks to NFL UK Managing Director Alistair Kirkwood, one of the main men responsible in bring the NFL International Series to UK shores, about the unprecedented two regular season games in London and the possibility of establishing a franchise.

By Ismail Uddin

The NFL International Series games sold out in February. Did you expect the games to sell out soo quickly? 

Honest answer is you don’t know as this is the first time we have had two games. It is also the first time we have offered a ticket package for people who wanted to go to both games. There’s an aspiration that it goes well if not better than we hoped for. I think we had about a third of the stadium sold out for both games initially. That’s a good healthy sign as it means that you have really good fans who are able to go to both games. 

Can you tell us a bit more about the sponsor situation for this year’s game. How many sponsors have you acquired?

About ten or 11. New ones for us would be Brand USA and Discover America which is promoting American tourism. They are going to be sponsoring the Channel 4 highlights show which goes out on a Saturday morning. We also have Chrysler back and they will sponsor Sky’s broadcast. You also got Visa and Pepsi. Pepsi have the naming rights to the second game. We are in a pretty good place now. 

Has the task been made more difficult following Commercial Director Ben Dunn’s sudden departure?

I think everyone knows putting sponsorship deals together takes a bit of time anyway. There’s always an element of trying to work through when you have staff turnover. We staffed up prior to Ben’s departure anyway. We have new people in the team and we also have some senior expertise over form the States as well. We actually have more staff on the commercial side than we ever have had before. 

On the plus side Aon has renewed their partnership with the NFL. Why are the Wembley games so attractive for sponsors and in particular Aon?

I think first of all we are a unique proposition. Secondly we attract a very wide demographic with the average of fans at about 26 years old, 80% are male, pretty high educational levels and fans with good salary. I think we have a positive story in how much we have grown over the years and our brand is on a upward trajectory. I think we offer a lot of different diverse activities and brand association activities. For example the day before the Vikings play the Steelers we are doing an NFL street festival in Regent Street. Regent Street will be closed to traffic and you will see the NFL brand all along that street so for the likes of Chrysler that’s a great opportunity to get associated with the event as were predicting we will have about 700-800 thousand people going down on that day. 

Are there any more sponsorship announcements soon?

There may well be. I can’t tell you just now. We are working on a couple of things. 

NFL UK has secured a number of broadcast deals of late including Channel 4 adding more rights. Why did you decide Channel 4 should expand their NFL broadcasting?

We have had a great relationship with Sky since 1994. They show a substantial number of games we have more than doubled our viewership for the last three years. 

The association with free-to-air is about trying to increase greater awareness with the Sky relationship about satisfying the avid sports fan and in particular the avid NFL fan. For Free-to-air it allows us to reach out to a broader audience who are not as familiar with the NFL. The Channel 4 deal allows us to have live Wembley games that will be shown simultaneously with Sky on primetime on a Sunday afternoon. It also allows us to have a weekly highlights show on the Satuday morning which allows to showcase our sport in a more bitesize consumer friendly way. Our broadcast strategy is to satisfy the avid NFL fan with as much game content as possible and reach out to as many new fans as well. I think with the combination of Sky and Channel 4 and now we have British Eurosport on board for Monday Night Football we have the biggest broadcast package that we have ever had. 

Why did you also decide to move away from the BBC when the partnership started soo promisingly? Whose decision was it?

I think there is a chance with free-to-air channel in terms of allocating enough air time for a lot of sports. I think with Channel 4 they have given us an opportunity with free-to-air that mirrors a lot of things we do with Sky. Ultimately that is a better solution for us this moment in time.