London Mayor Sadiq Khan has pledged to bring the Super Bowl to the UK capital if he is re-elected next month.
Khan, 53, has served as London mayor since 2016 and is seeking a third term in the upcoming May 2 election.
Speaking on Thursday, he promised to boost the city’s reputation as the “sports capital of the world” by hosting the NFL’s “Big Game” in England, as well as NBA games and the flagship event of WWE, Wrestlemania.
The Labor candidate added that he would seek to form a new bid to bring the Olympics back to London – having already hosted the Games in 2012.
“London is already the sports capital of the world,” he said in a post on X – formerly Twitter.
“If I am re-elected next Thursday, we will go even further. We will look to bring WrestleMania, the Super Bowl and the NBA to London and prepare another bid for the 2040 Olympics.”
London has hosted regular-season NFL games every year since 2007, but the Super Bowl has never been held outside the United States.
All 54 editions of the game have been played on American soil since its inception in 1967. The Kansas City Chiefs are the reigning world champions after beating the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in February that he hoped to make the league “global” over the next decade.
“I think you’re going to see a very global NFL, not necessarily with franchises, but maybe playing games on a global basis,” he said. “And I see that happening in the next five to 10 years.”
The NFL announced earlier this year that the regular season game between the Green Bay Packers and the 2018 Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles would take place in September in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
London won the vote to host the 2012 Olympics in 2005 under then-London Mayor Ken Livingstone, while the NBA hosted games in London as early as 1993, when the Orlando Magic played the Atlanta Hawks.
2019 was the last time a game was hosted in London, with the New York Knicks taking on the Washington Wizards at the O2 Arena.
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It’s an ambitious proposal, and you can never say never, but…
Analysis from National NFL Writer Mike Jones
The NFL’s quest for a strong global audience continues to expand.
With regular season games having taken place or scheduled in the United Kingdom, Mexico, Germany, Brazil and Spain, professional football is certainly growing in popularity, and officials dream of a day when the NFL has an audience constant international that will rival this one. of the Premier League.
However, the idea of London hosting a Super Bowl seems rather far-fetched. Time shifts that would suit a live international audience would prove undesirable for the U.S. television market, meaning less additional domestic revenue.
And there are many other financial obstacles: the loss of revenue from American cities (the NFL’s priority market) would not be assured if the Super Bowl were not organized in the United States, the prior commitments to the owners who have partnerships with governments and localities that host their teams…which the NFL and host city should consider when evaluating the benefits of a UK Super Bowl.
It’s hard to imagine the NFL willingly making such sacrifices. So, for now, it seems highly unlikely.
A UK Pro Bowl makes a lot more sense for Khan.
(Lauren Leigh Bacho/Getty Images)