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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2005 
In Mexico, NFL Has Untapped Market
 Daniel Brown - Mercury News
| | Azteca Stadium could hold 85,000 spectators for Sunday's 49ers-Cardinals game, the first regular-season NFL game outside the United States in the NFL's 86-year history. |
Tony Parrish, the 49ers defensive back, spent three days in Mexico during the summer promoting his team's game Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals in Mexico City. He found he didn't have to do much promoting.
The NFL estimates there are 20 million football fans in Mexico, making it the largest fan base outside the United States. Reporters from more than 150 news outlets attended Parrish's news conferences. At youth camps, he met some of the 250,000 players involved with organized football.
At some point, it dawned on him that he wasn't there as a novelty.
"They don't just want a game," Parrish said of the fans. "They want a team."
That seems improbable, but Commissioner Paul Tagliabue has indicated that the NFL's next round of expansion could include an international franchise, and, as Sunday's game at Azteca Stadium underscores, there is an enormous fan base in Mexico.
The 49ers-Cardinals matchup marks the first regular-season NFL game to be played outside the United States. The league has staged 55 exhibition contests abroad, including seven in Mexico. Three of the games in Mexico had crowds of more than 100,000.
Sunday's game won't approach that total. Peter Abitante, the NFL's senior director of international public affairs, said capacity has been reduced to 85,000 at Azteca Stadium because of modifications, including a new scoreboard, handicap seating and improved sight lines in the lower bowl.
As of Tuesday afternoon, 65,000 tickets had been sold at prices ranging from $23 to $78. Abitante said he expected a sellout, calling Mexico "a walk-up culture." A capacity crowd would be about triple what the Cardinals usually draw at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe.
Festival atmosphere
"It's going to be quite an impressive sight, a celebration of the game of football," said Raul Allegre, a Mexico native who spent nine seasons in the NFL and won two Super Bowls as a kicker with the New York Giants. "You're not going to see just Arizona and San Francisco jerseys, you're going to see jerseys from every team in the NFL."
"Not only that," Parrish said, "but I imagine it will be the type of crowd that you only see when you're watching World Cup soccer games on TV. There is a type of fanfare -- songs, dancing, jumping around the whole time."
Football's roots in the country date to 1890, when Raul Dehesa, a Mexican who attended high school in the United States, introduced the game in Veracruz.
Interest began to perk up in 1966, when Televisa started broadcasting NFL games. TV Azteca began doing the same in 1972. Allegre, who will be a commentator for this weekend's game for ESPN Deportes, contends that the Raiders, Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys are the most popular teams in Mexico because "they were the teams that were successful in the 1970s," the NFL's fledgling years in Mexico.
The league, sensing the growing market, opened a Mexico City office in 1998 to work with sponsorship partners. By 2004 its television rights fees made it the No. 4 sports property in the country behind First Division soccer, the Mexican national soccer team and the Athens Olympic Games.
"Of course, soccer is still No. 1," said Rolando Cantu, a Mexico native and a guard on the Cardinals' practice squad. "You're not going to compete with soccer. Football is an expensive sport, which is why a lot of people still play soccer."
"Hopefully, in the near future, there will be more opportunities for kids to play football, too."
Cantu, who is 6-foot-5 and 361 pounds, earned a shot at professional football a year ago at one of the annual tryouts the league holds in Mexico for NFL Europe. The NFL also sponsors a flag football program for players 5 to 26; a Mexican team, the Diablitos, won the 2004 world title.
Despite football's strides, soccer commands 80 percent of television revenue. But the NFL hopes to make inroads. It has one of Mexico's largest youth programs, with 100,000 kids playing flag football.
Playing catch-up
Sunday's game marks the latest step in what the NFL calls its "overall Hispanic strategy." Roger Goodell, executive vice president and chief operating officer, has said the league was slow to recognize the marketing opportunities in Mexico.
The NFL is the last major U.S. sport to play a regular-season game on foreign soil. The NBA did it first, playing two games in Japan at the start of the 1990-91 season.
In 1996, the New York Mets and San Diego Padres played three August games in Monterrey, Mexico. And the 1997-98 NHL season began with two games in Japan.
Tagliabue, though, has indicated that the NFL could be a pioneer of a different sort by becoming the first major American league to put a team outside the United States and Canada. During his annual news conference at the Super Bowl, he said: "I think it could be very likely that the next franchises in the NFL beyond 32 are outside the United States."
Mexico City and Monterrey are potential destinations. Cantu said he has heard rumors for years about a move and said, "There is enough of a fan base. It's just a matter of time before something like that happens."
Not everyone is convinced. Several players said a foreign franchise would be impractical. St. Louis Rams safety Adam Archuleta, whose father has Latino roots, said: "Is it feasible? That's a tough question. It would probably be irritating from a travel standpoint. But anything is possible. Baseball has gone into Canada. I'm sure the fan base in Mexico would be huge."
Goodell, the NFL executive, stopped well short of predicting a long-term future in Mexico. Despite the sport's popularity, he said there were no plans to make a trip to Mexico City an annual event, even for an exhibition game.
Instead, the NFL might globe trot to places such as London, China and Japan for future regular-season games.
Buffalo Bills quarterback J.P. Losman, whose mother is of Mexican and American Indian descent, acknowledged that a Mexico City franchise might be difficult to pull off.
But, for him, this weekend is enough.
"On a personal level, the idea of sharing such an important piece of American culture with the Mexican people is exciting," he said.
"The United States and Mexico have a long history of influencing each other. I'm in favor of anything that brings the two cultures closer together." |
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