LEEDS, England — Brotherhood in Leeds — or The Brotherhood of Pursuits and Pastimes, to give the grandiose full name that no one uses — is a late-night bar known as a place to go for Sunday night NFL in the northern English city.
In the main room, the wall behind the bar is stacked with four widescreen TVs, with two more on either side and another on the back wall, amid assorted American paraphernalia. Last Sunday, just after 9:30 p.m. local time, the Buffalo Bills' thrilling 33-30 win over the Las Vegas Raiders was in its early stages, as was the Los Angeles Chargers' latest sorry trudge against the 5-0 Kansas City Chiefs.
"It was definitely busier last week; it might fill up a bit," one barman told The Sporting News as he poured a cold one. At that point, there was roughly one television for each patron. It didn't really fill up to any great extent.
It's fair to point out that the aforementioned games, along with action from the Rams vs. Cardinals game on Red Zone, did not represent a lights-out slate in this particular kickoff slot. Brotherhood also closed up at 1 a.m. local time, shortly before the big Packers vs. Cowboys clash got underway at Lambeau Field.
Nevertheless, it was a vaguely underwhelming scene at the end of the latest weekend when the NFL planted its flag in the UK. Earlier in the day, the third and final installment of the 2026 International Series' London leg wrapped up at Wembley Stadium, where Houston Texans prevailed 34-31 on a last-second field goal over the omnipresent Jacksonville Jaguars.
No one was talking about that game, which went down around the same time as Leeds United took on Manchester United at Elland Road in the Premier League. That soccer match is a particularly big deal in these parts. The NFL is no different from other very popular sporting properties when it comes to the uphill struggle for eyeballs against the EPL in the UK.
There were a couple of die-hards in Brotherhood, one lamenting the scheduling. "We should be watching the best West Coast games now." The table of guys who had extended a well-refreshed day long beyond Leeds 1-1 Man United certainly felt an incredibly long way from California. Indeed, the most transfixed fans in the bar were… American. A couple, with the woman sporting a Josh Allen Bills jersey. The man was not wearing visible colors, perhaps understandably when he explained the much-maligned Chargers were his "sucky a— team".
This disclosure came after one of the Leeds fans picked up on an American accent and bundled over to ask an array of questions, including a request to "explain the rules". It was a small snapshot of the intrigue novelty can bring. The NFL used to have that in the UK.
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NFL at saturation point in London
It'll be 20 years next year since the New York Giants beat the Miami Dolphins in Wembley's first NFL game (we are absolutely not counting any of the London Monarchs' or NFL Europe's escapades). The league has been back every year since, with the exception of the coronavirus-impacted 2020 campaign, growing from the initial one-off games to a bumper run of four in 2015 and 2017. There were three this time around.
"That was the entire premise, to capitalise on the interest around the London games," said Matthew Sherry, who founded Gridiron, the UK's only dedicated American football magazine, in 2013. "To be honest, I would have suspected that NFL would be a lot more popular now, nearly 15 years on from when we started. I don't see the groundswell of popularity that I expected, relative to the amount of effort that's been put in. There's probably more NFL fans than there were, but it doesn't feel like there are many more than there were 15 years ago."
The NFL would dispute this. As per an article published by BBC Sport at the start of October, the league claims 18.5 million fans in the UK. with 4.5 million of those classed as "avid". This is what makes the London games such bankable commodities. Whether at the 90,000-capacity Wembley or the 62,850-seater Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, they're reliable sell-outs. Well, they always used to be.
Ahead of the Indianapolis Colts' 30-13 win over the Washington Commanders on October 4, tickets were available on retail sites for around £30. Complementary seats were dished out to students and local schools to watch two teams that failed to make the playoffs last season. It a departure from fans falling over themselves to get a place in the ticket ballot a decade ago.
"Just reading the temperature of fans, I think it has reached that point where the novelty value has definitely gone," said Nick McGee, a freelance NFL writer in the UK. "I don't think it's helped by changes they've made over the years, particularly in ticketing, where I think a lot of fans are quite angry now
"They used to do a season ticket, which was quite a good idea. You'd pay a couple of hundred quid, probably not even that; you'd get all three or four games, and you could sell your ticket to somebody else if you couldn't make one. They completely got rid of that and jacked the prices up. Some of the other changes NFL UK have made, such as getting rid of the pregame tailgates, some fans have taken umbrage at the fact they used to put loads of things on before games that they don't anymore.
"So the novelty has worn off, they aren't doing anything to enhance it, and that's magnified a little bit by what you're seeing when they take games to other places."
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It's this element that puts London and the NFL's wider UK presence awkwardly between two stools. If things have levelled off, they've done so at a scale unlikely to disappoint Roger Goodell. As the International Series continues to expand following the introduction of the 17th game, London will always be the trailblazer. But more than 100,000 fans packing Australia's Melbourne Cricket Ground for the San Francisco 49ers' season-opening win over the Los Angeles Rams in September took the breath away in a manner UK games no longer can.
The 49ers face the Minnesota Vikings at Mexico City's storied Azteca Stadium in November, the country's first NFL game in four years, and there is likely to be similar fervour. Even in Europe, the annual one-off games in Germany since 2022 have come to feel like more significant events. This weekend, there's a Paris debut. Riots permitting, of course.
"From a globalisation and interest perspective, it's probably never been healthier. Getting the crowd that got in at the MCG at the time of the morning they did summed that up," said Sherry. "I think they could learn some lessons from London, because, ultimately, I think they play too many games in London and it's maximised where it's ever going to be. I can't see them playing eight games in London. I think it'll be somewhere between what they're playing now, maybe a little bit less.
"I never really understood why London – beyond English-speaking and the UK-US 'special relationship' – was the first port of call. The sport generally is way more popular in Germany than the UK, for example. The grassroots version of the game is a lot bigger in Germany as well."
Jaguars fatigue
The curious mainstay in all of this are the Jaguars, who just played their 15th and 16th matches in London. They have been present at the NFL's UK leg every year since 2013. It's not impolite to ask "why"?
Once upon a time – considering owner Shahid Khan's roots in London, his successful shows with AEW wrestling and even fleeting interest in buying Wembley Stadium – it was an open secret that the Jaguars becoming a London franchise was something desirable, a sort of European North Star for the NFL. That ship has sailed, if indeed it ever threatened to come into port in the first place.
"Maybe if Khan had bought Wembley it would have been more viable, but this talk of a franchise has always been for the birds a little bit," said McGee. "It's a fundamental misunderstanding of British sporting culture. This idea that people who have picked teams in the States are just suddenly going to support someone in London is not going to happen.
"You pick a team because you enjoy the sport, but it also gives you a reason to go to visit these places, to be fascinated by them. That's part of the appeal. People build these UK fan groups, and they put on tours together and go to all these different cities. The idea that they're going to scrap all that just to support a team in London, it's never going to happen."
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Anecdotally, there are examples of people who became interested in the NFL around the time it first landed in London who are Jaguars supporters, along with plenty who count them as their second team. At the same time, the dramatic win over the Eagles at Tottenham earlier this month felt like a Philadelphia home game. According to a report by the Associated Press earlier this month, the Jags were the 28th most-watched franchise on NFL Game Pass in the UK and Ireland in 2025. The marquee franchises still hold sway among the UK NFL romantics McGee talks about.
Until last year, the Jags had never brought a winning record to London but they now look like a genuine Super Bowl contender. Jacksonville will return to Wembley in 2027, but there is uncertainty over their plans after 2028, when the $1.4billion renovation of the EverBank Stadium will be complete. During preseason, team president Mark Lampling said: 'Our commitment to London is year to year," before adding it was time to,"totally reevaluate our London strategy." A sort of conscious uncoupling might be for the best as the NFL's UK presence approaches its third decade.
"If it was up to me, I think the answer would be two games a year in London and get it back to that kind of prestige thing," Sherry added. "If the Patriots play a game in London, for example, it's going to sell out in a week, because a lot of UK fans fell in love with them during the Tom Brady era."
A franchise of our own was never a dream grounded in reality, but solid interest remains. It doesn't align with British stiff-upper-lip tendencies to be needy in public, but NFL fans on this side of the pond — whether in Tottenham, Wembley or a bleary-eyed northern watering hole — still want to feel special as the league's plans for global domination motor on.
