@hydro11 said in NFL Season 2020/21 - Bubble NZ:
@shark said in NFL Season 2020/21 - Bubble NZ:
Watching how the MLB season has started. Games already postponed due to players testing positive for Covid. US media questioning how long it can go on for whilst also praising the NBA bubble. Podcast hosts mentioning New Zealand as a safe place to host major league sports. And thinking NFL is only six weeks away and wondering more and more often why we shouldn't as a country make a push to host the entire season here. At the highest level.
The Labour-lead Govt should be all over it. We're a relatively safe haven, we have numerous stadiums capable of hosting games, the season is only 4 and a half months long so it's not as extreme as hosting an NBA season would be, and the financial injection would be enormous. The NFL gets it's TV content to fulfill it's obligations - albeit with some odd kick off and viewing times - and New Zealand gets to host the National Fucking Football League.
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. NFL logistics are insane. Some examples of why it wouldn't work:
- Each team takes 56 players and over 100 support staff to every away game. They will need to take more for a full season. That's at least 5000 people who need to be quarantined.
- It can cost up to a million dollars to fly a team to London for one game.
- Wellington's airport cannot accommodate the size of the aircraft required.
- Air NZ do not have the planes to fly people over.
- It would not be economic for American air carriers to fly people over.
It would presumably be at least one and at most 3 flights per team (that's the number of planes that the US president needs for travel and security). Assuming that they were based in NZ for the full season. That's about 72 flights in total. Given that the pandemic is massively reducing the number of international travellers it wouldn't be too hard to get 72 charter flights.
The bigger issue would be nz grounds - are our facilities big enough to hold both teams and all their support staff?
But actually, it's not logistics that's stopping this (the nfl is rich enough to do anything that money can pay for). It's politics. Fans would be outraged by their teams moving, and covid in the US is so deeply politicised at the moment, it would be seen as a massive statement of opposition to Trump, which goes against the natural inclinations of the nfl owners (who are the real decision makers) and the desire of the nfl to avoid political controversy.
The only way that I could see it is if the nfl starts, has massive covid issues and is forced to stop and then has an abbreviated 10 week or so mini competition.