The fight for American football in Europe

A major investor in a new American football league in Europe believes the time is right for a sustainable pan-European competition, despite a host of previous failures.

David Gandler, who co-founded the sports streaming service Fubo, says he has personally invested “seven figures” in the European Football Alliance (EFA). The new league is planning to launch in May with seven teams, while a further two — in London, also backed by Gandler, and in Milan — are scheduled to join in 2027.

“There’s pent-up demand,” Gandler told DW in an interview. “The only thing really missing around American football is structure. So to capture that kind of growth, what you really need is a professionally-governed, transparent and responsive league.”

The EFA, though, is not alone in its endeavors, with the recent emergence of the American Football League Europe (AFLE), which has so far announced five teams for the forthcoming season.

Moritz Heisler, the AFLE’s managing director, told DW that the two organizations were in negotiations to “bring things together,” adding: “If done right, a merged or evolved AFLE doesn’t need to be the biggest league, just the smartest one.”

However, an EFA source characterized the discussions as being about the AFLE’s teams joining their league.

Focus on homegrown players

Whether they end up merging or continue on their separate paths, both the EFA and AFLE face the same question: How do you establish a successful and commercially viable American football league in Europe?

Even the NFL, whose Super Bowl, which is on Sunday, is one of the most-watched sporting events in the world, shut down its European project, NFL Europe, back in 2007. At the time it ceased operating, the league was said to be losing $30 million (€25 million) per year.

Although NFL Europe enjoyed some popularity in England and Germany, it failed to break through in the United States, where it was seen as being a developmental league for American players. The NFL has since pivoted to bringing its regular season games to Europe.

“Compared to football and basketball, American football is a niche sport in Europe,” Heisler acknowledged. “But the NFL didn’t ‘fail’ in Europe because people don’t like American football. It struggled because it tried to import a US product instead of localizing deeply enough.”

Heisler said the new league’s focus should be on engaging local fans and helping them connect with “players who live in their city.”

Gandler, with his background in streaming, agrees.

“There’s a massive opportunity on the media side,” he said. “I think there’s a way for us to create significant value on an international level, but at the same time helping the local franchises maximize their rights on the domestic market. It’s all about homegrown players.”

NFL model the ‘gold standard’

Teams officially split from the old league, the European League of Football (ELF), in January, having previously demanded “structural reforms, economic fairness and real transparency” — a reference to alleged mismanagement by the ELF’s CEO, Zeljko Karajica, who didn’t respond to a request for comment.

On Monday, the ELF, which could boast some healthy attendances and a television deal, announced that it had gone into self-administration, a form of insolvency, with the aim of “continuing to operate” and “sticking to its schedule for the season.” But as the EFA source commented: “They have no teams!”

Promising “financial sustainability,” the EFA says it wants to follow the NFL’s “gold standard” model of being run collectively by its franchises and sharing revenue.

“Having that governance control over the product is critical to success,” said Mason Parker, owner of the Prague Lions, one of the teams signed up to the EFA.

“The league will be successful when the team owners start treating the league’s P&L (profit and loss) like their own P&L. The other league was simply not structured that way. The incentives weren’t correctly aligned.”

Heisler said the ELF, which ran for five seasons, had prioritized “speed and scale,” trying to expand too quickly. As a consequence, one-sided games became the norm, and the league’s poorer teams lacked the facilities to match its desired professionalism.

Images of players queuing up to use portable toilets during a game in Berlin last July underlined the disparity between franchises and invited ridicule on social media.

“There was no vetting,” Parker said. “The [other] teams had no say. That’s a perfect example of the systemic problem that the ELF had.”

Another problem is the NFL’s strategy on the continent. The NFL is playing more games in Europe with extensive activities around those games and granting international marketing rights to the 32 teams in order to build long-term brand presence. 

‘Global growth phase’

With flag football, a non-contact version of American football, set to debut at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Gandler said the sport had reached an “inflection point.”

“Viewership in Europe is accelerating, and the sport, in my view, is entering a global growth phase,” he said. “When basketball entered the Olympic stage, the Olympics actually became a catalyst for international adoption.”

Gandler hopes a new European league could even complement the NFL by “bridging storylines,” for example about former NFL players who come to Europe, or European players who go on to make it in the NFL. Previous efforts to help players from outside the US crack the NFL have seen limited results.

“The NFL is doing a superb job at marketing American football across the globe. And I think the EFA, or American football in Europe, has an opportunity to fill that void when these teams leave those markets.”

Edited by: Matt Pearson