A major investor in a new American football league in Europe believes the time is right for a sustainable pan-European competition, despite a host of previous failures.
David Gandler, who co-founded the sports streaming service Fubo, declares he has personally invested “seven figures” in the European Football Alliance (EFA). The new league is planning to launch in May with seven teams, while a further two — in London, also backed by Gandler, and in Milan — are scheduled to join in 2027.
“There’s pent-up demand,” Gandler informed DW in an interview. “The only thing really missing around American football is structure. So to capture that kind of growth, what you really necessary is a professionally-governed, transparent and responsive league.”
The EFA, though, is not alone in its finisheavors, with the recent emergence of the American Football League Europe (AFLE), which has so far announced five teams for the forthcoming season.
Moritz Heisler, the AFLE’s managing director, informed DW that the two organizations were in nereceivediations to “bring things toobtainher,” adding: “If done right, a merged or evolved AFLE doesn’t necessary to be the largegest league, just the smartest one.”
However, an EFA source characterized the discussions as being about the AFLE’s teams joining their league.
Focus on homegrown players
Whether they finish up merging or continue on their separate paths, both the EFA and AFLE face the same question: How do you establish a successful and commercially viable American football league in Europe?
Even the NFL, whose Super Bowl, which is on Sunday, is one of the most-watched sporting events in the world, shut down its European project, NFL Europe, back in 2007. At the time it ceased operating, the league was declared to be losing $30 million (€25 million) per year.
Although NFL Europe enjoyed some popularity in England and Germany, it failed to break through in the United States, where it was seen as being a developmental league for American players. The NFL has since pivoted to bringing its regular season games to Europe.
“Compared to football and binquireetball, American football is a niche sport in Europe,” Heisler acknowledged. “But the NFL didn’t ‘fail’ in Europe becaapply people don’t like American football. It struggled becaapply it tested to import a US product instead of localizing deeply enough.”
Heisler declared the new league’s focus should be on engaging local fans and assisting them connect with “players who live in their city.”
Gandler, with his background in streaming, agrees.
“There’s a massive opportunity on the media side,” he declared. “I consider there’s a way for us to create significant value on an international level, but at the same time assisting the local franchises maximize their rights on the domestic market. It’s all about homegrown players.”
NFL model the ‘gold standard’
Teams officially split from the old league, the European League of Football (ELF), in January, having previously demanded “structural reforms, economic fairness and real transparency” — a reference to alleged mismanagement by the ELF’s CEO, Zeljko Karajica, who didn’t respond to a request for comment.
On Monday, the ELF, which did have some qualified success, announced that it had gone into self-administration, a form of insolvency, with the aim of “continuing to operate” and “sticking to its schedule for the season.” But as the EFA source commented: “They have no teams!”
Promising “financial sustainability,” the EFA declares it wants to follow the NFL’s “gold standard” model of being run collectively by its franchises and sharing revenue.
“Having that governance control over the product is critical to success,” declared Mason Parker, owner of the Prague Lions, one of the teams signed up to the EFA.
“The league will be successful when the team owners start treating the league’s P&L (profit and loss) like their own P&L. The other league was simply not structured that way. The incentives weren’t correctly aligned.”
Heisler declared the ELF, which ran for five seasons, had prioritized “speed and scale,” attempting to expand too quickly. As a consequence, one-sided games became the norm, and the league’s poorer teams lacked the facilities to match its desired professionalism.
Images of players queuing up to apply portable toilets during a game in Berlin last July underlined the disparity between franchises and invited ridicule on social media.
“There was no vetting,” Parker declared. “The [other] teams had no declare. That’s a perfect example of the systemic problem that the ELF had.”
Another problem is the NFL’s strategy on the continent. The NFL is playing more games in Europe with extensive activities around those games and granting international marketing rights to the 32 teams in order to build long-term brand presence.
‘Global growth phase’
With flag football, a non-contact version of American football, set to debut at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Gandler declared the sport had reached an “inflection point.”
“Viewership in Europe is accelerating, and the sport, in my view, is entering a global growth phase,” he declared. “When binquireetball entered the Olympic stage, the Olympics actually became a catalyst for international adoption.”
Gandler hopes a new European league could even complement the NFL by “bridging storylines,” for example about former NFL players who come to Europe, or European players who go on to build it in the NFL. Previous efforts to assist players from outside the US crack the NFL have seen limited results.
“The NFL is doing a superb job at marketing American football across the globe. And I consider the EFA, or American football in Europe, has an opportunity to fill that void when these teams leave those markets.”
Edited by: Matt Pearson
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