# Brits: a question about football in the UK
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-a-question-about-football-in-the-uk/468043
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [October 15, 2008, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-a-question-about-football-in-the-uk/468043 "2008-10-15T16:05:09Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@KlondikeGeoff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KlondikeGeoff)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2008, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-a-question-about-football-in-the-uk/468043/1 "2008-10-15T16:05:09Z")
I have read that when American football teams play exhibition games over there, they are popular and there is a growing interest in that game.
True or not, how do you differentiate between your football (our “soccer”) and the US game. Call them both “football” or what?
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### Author:  [@FrWindyShephardHenderson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FrWindyShephardHenderson)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2008, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-a-question-about-football-in-the-uk/468043/2 "2008-10-15T16:14:51Z")
Football on this side of the atlantic is soccer. Your (in my opinion better) form of Football is usually called American Football. Course I’m Irish, so over here Football could mean soccer or our own form of Gaelic Football. And just to confuse matters some really old Rugby Clubs still call themselves Football Clubs
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### Author:  [@Kal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kal)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2008, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-a-question-about-football-in-the-uk/468043/3 "2008-10-15T16:35:28Z")
The US version of football is called ‘American football’.
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### Author:  [@NAF1138](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NAF1138)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2008, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-a-question-about-football-in-the-uk/468043/4 "2008-10-15T16:40:14Z")
> [@FrWindyShephardHenderson](#):
>
> Football on this side of the atlantic is soccer. Your (in my opinion better) form of Football is usually called American Football. Course I’m Irish, so over here Football could mean soccer or our own form of Gaelic Football. And just to confuse matters some really old Rugby Clubs still call themselves Football Clubs
God, that is stupidly confusing. Is american football really gaining popularity over on your side of the pond? I think that’s really cool. It’s a great game, but it seems that few outside of North American really know it at all. (Know of it maybe, but not actually know the game.) I blame all the name confusion myself.
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### Author:  [@WormTheRed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WormTheRed)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2008, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-a-question-about-football-in-the-uk/468043/5 "2008-10-15T16:44:10Z")
> [@NAF1138](#):
>
> God, that is stupidly confusing. Is american football really gaining popularity over on your side of the pond? I think that’s really cool. It’s a great game, but it seems that few outside of North American really know it at all. (Know of it maybe, but not actually know the game.) I blame all the name confusion myself.
It’s growing over here. Me and a few friends always try to catch the Super-Bowl every year and I’ve even practiced it for a while.
I’d still rank national interest (in Iceland and Sweden) well below even curling though. But it has it’s small group of followers.
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### Author:  [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2008, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-a-question-about-football-in-the-uk/468043/6 "2008-10-15T16:57:55Z")
I don’t think there’s much interest in it at all really. It isn’t shown on terrestial telly, the result of the Super Bowl is reported but only as a footnote. A once a year exhibition game attracts interest amongst a minority - it might get reported in a London paper and it isn’t hard to have a sell-out stadium when you only need to sell 80,000 tickets in a city of 10 million people (and c. 200,000 resident US citizens).
But aside from that, I’d say interest is minimal. And we call it ‘American football’. Football is a sport which primarily involves kicking a ball with your foot.
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### Author:  [@Crusoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crusoe)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2008, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-a-question-about-football-in-the-uk/468043/7 "2008-10-15T17:31:20Z")
> [@NAF1138](#):
>
> God, that is stupidly confusing. Is american football really gaining popularity over on your side of the pond? I think that’s really cool. It’s a great game, but it seems that few outside of North American really know it at all. (Know of it maybe, but not actually know the game.) I blame all the name confusion myself.
I don’t know about _gaining_. There was an attempt at a European league ([NFL Europa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_Europe)) but the British teams didn’t last long (the London Monarchs gave up in 1998 and the Scottish Claymores in 2004). There are still various small-scale leagues and teams, but a quick initial search suggests that even the top teams don’t get crowds of more than 1,000 (and no TV coverage that I know of).
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### Author:  [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2008, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-a-question-about-football-in-the-uk/468043/8 "2008-10-15T18:12:57Z")
The NFL game here last year attracted some interest, but (American) football’s heyday was really the 1980s, when the new and innovative TV network Channel 4 started regular Sunday coverage. For a while it was quite a cult thing, and one or two of the players such as The Fridge were fairly well known here. The novelty seemed to wear off, interest declined a little, and Channel 4 dropped it.
It seems to have made a modest comeback in recent years, now that they show it regularly on Five. Although IIRC the NFL game was actually on the BBC, the first time they had ever covered American football.
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### Author:  [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2008, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-a-question-about-football-in-the-uk/468043/9 "2008-10-15T18:26:42Z")
**Usram** : Modest being the operative word.
There’s about as much interest in American Football as there is in Baseball.
Mind you I have to confess that watching the girls play rounders is kinda fun 😃
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### Author:  [@davekhps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davekhps)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2008, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-a-question-about-football-in-the-uk/468043/10 "2008-10-15T19:06:35Z")
> [@Usram](#):
>
> The NFL game here last year attracted some interest, but (American) football’s heyday was really the 1980s, when the new and innovative TV network Channel 4 started regular Sunday coverage. For a while it was quite a cult thing, and one or two of the players such as The Fridge were fairly well known here. The novelty seemed to wear off, interest declined a little, and Channel 4 dropped it.
>
> It seems to have made a modest comeback in recent years, now that they show it regularly on Five. Although IIRC the NFL game was actually on the BBC, the first time they had ever covered American football.
As a Chicago Bears fan, I vividly recall the Bears-Cowboys exhibition in Wembley Stadium the year after they won Superbowl XX.
> **[American Bowl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bowl)**
>
> The American Bowl was a series of National Football League preseason exhibition games that were held at sites outside the United States between 1986 and 2005.
> The league started the American Bowl series in 1986 primarily to promote American football in other countries. After successful games in London's Wembley Stadium, the series was expanded to Japan. After 1990, games were also played in Montreal and Berlin to promote the new World League of American Football (later NFL Europe) which started ...
IIRC, it was a huge sellout, and a lot of folks at the time thought it was indicative of greater popularity for the sport in Europe. Alas, that never really quite came to pass.
I guess the rule stands: we only care about each others “football” when there are celebrities playing it. In 1986, the Chicago Bears were arguably the first “celebrity” team to appear in pro football, they were absolutely huge for that moment in history. For soccer, Americans only seem to care when it’s Pele or David Beckham playing it-- even today, it’s a game thought of as something kids play before they move on to other sports, or something popular with immigrants from soccer-friendly countries.
Personally, since I loathe the game of soccer, I’m fine with that :-).
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### Author:  [@FrWindyShephardHenderson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FrWindyShephardHenderson)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2008, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-a-question-about-football-in-the-uk/468043/11 "2008-10-15T19:46:21Z")
> [@NAF1138](#):
>
> God, that is stupidly confusing. Is american football really gaining popularity over on your side of the pond? I think that’s really cool. It’s a great game, but it seems that few outside of North American really know it at all. (Know of it maybe, but not actually know the game.) I blame all the name confusion myself.
Yeah it is confusing. Its basically a load of different codes competing for the “purest” form of Football. In Ireland at least American Football doesn’t have a huge following. For anyone with satellite/cable you can get most matches although it requires staying up pretty late. We also get NFL Network programming, so if you’re into it then its pretty easy to follow. Personally as a rugby fan I think its a great game, so feel the urge to punch those people who go on about the players wearing too much padding.
Considering we’re a country of 4 million with four major sports already, I don’t think my drunken attempts at teaching people play action passes with an empty beer can will have any effect.
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### Author:  [@Szlater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Szlater)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2008, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brits-a-question-about-football-in-the-uk/468043/12 "2008-10-15T21:04:42Z")
For what it’s worth, I played American Football at University in the UK. We played in the [British Universities American Football League](http://www.buafl.net/). In our division, at the time, were Oxford University, Bath, UEA and Hertfordshire. This was in the mid '90s. There was also a quite active amateur league (think Sunday league) in the UK at the time too, we used to co-train with a local team.
The team and league are still going strong.