England home games could be relocated away from Wembley Stadium if fixtures clashed with matches played by a future American football franchise.
Three games are being played at the venue in Engineers Way, Wembley, this NFL season, and the commercial and profile-raising success of the 90,000-capacity stadium hosting gridiron contests has raised the prospect of one of the NFL's 32 teams moving from the United States to Britain: some are owned by businessmen who also own English football clubs.
Mark Waller, the NFL's executive vice president of international, told USA Today: "I'd be disappointed if we didn't have a team there [in] another seven years at the most.""
This would mean eight home games roughly every two weeks between September and December as part of a regular NFL season and there is a possibility some fixtures would clash with England men's national team matches, meaning an alternate ground would need to be found for soccer.
The Football Association (FA) refused to comment to getwestlondon this morning about this morning but getwestlondon understands England matches have to contractually be played at the stadium at least until 2017 because, when England relocated back to Wembley Stadium following the stadium rebuild, 10-year debentures called Club Wembley were sold to fans.
David Tossell, the NFL's director of public affairs, said: "We very much appreciate the interest in a potential NFL team in London and are excited about the future of our sport in the UK.
"Our focus continues to be on building our fan base.
"We have had a great response from our UK fans to the NFL games and events in London, including attracting more than 600,000 fans to NFL on Regent Street last month and a passionate, sold out crowd at Wembley for the Dolphins-Raiders game.
"We are looking forward to our two upcoming games in London and continuing to build and strengthen the ties between the NFL and our UK fans."
William Hill spokesman Joe Crilly said its odds of a London-based franchise being established before the end of 2020 were slashed to 9/2 earlier this week.
Mr Crilly said: “The FA have suggested that they would be willing to move England fixtures away from Wembley in 2018 should there be an NFL franchise in place.
“These are the shortest odds that we have ever offered on this happening and it would seem like a London team is close.”
One fan, Technix, posted on an NFL forum: "I don't suppose a team that is well established and successful in it's home city is going to bother re-locating to London. No need.
"At the moment Wembley sells out the International Series games because they are the only games we get here.
"People travel from all over the UK and Europe for them. Would that happen if we had eight games a year, every year, at Wembley?
"You only have to read the posts on this forum to realise that the cost of the tickets and then the travel and over-night accommodation is quite a stretch for some people.
"NFL thinking seems to be that because Wembley sells out each year, then whatever franchise moves here will have a ready-made fan base of 80,000-plus."
