Why Jeff Bezos should own a London NFL franchise | You Pod to Win the Game
Yahoo Sports’ Charles Robinson and Dan Wetzel suggest that Bezos and his bank account could handle all of the issues facing owning and running a team based in Europe. Hear the full conversation on the You Pod to Win the Game podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
CHARLES ROBINSON: Do I think the NFL would love to have a London franchise? Yeah, I think, like, in its wildest dreams. But there's just no way to make that work financially, all these different array of problems. I actually think the one person who has the net wealth to make a London franchise actually work would be Jeff Bezos, because he could he could literally break even with the business operation.
But he still has-- he's in the NFL fraternity. He's, as they said on "Billions" when they talked about becoming an NFL owner, someone said, that's how we knight people in America. That's how we knight billionaires in America, we give them an NFL franchise.
He would be knighted in America, given-- What if the league said to him, you know what? We're going to look at potentially expanding to 34 teams. And we're going to give you one of those brand spanking new franchises. But it needs to be in London, and you need to make this work, and it's going to cost you a ton of money, and you're probably never going to make a dollar on your football operation.
But you're going to have an NFL team, and oh, by the way, you're going to have it where no one else has an NFL team. You're going to literally have London, you're going to have the United Kingdom, you're going to have Western Europe all to yourself.
And if you're Jeff Bezos, I'd be like, yeah, you know what? I'm going to make that work, because I'm Jeff [BLEEP] Bezos, and I've made Amazon work. I'm worth $200 billion. I'm going to do it. I'm going to make London happen.
DAN WETZEL: So how do you make it work? Because you and I have both been-- I've covered three or four games in London. There's so many practical problems, everything from midweek free agent tryouts, you know, that no one really pays attention, but every single team in the NFL has got 10 guys on Monday and Tuesday try-- I need another quarterback.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Here's how.
DAN WETZEL: There's that. Hold on. There's what happens when you win a game on Sunday night in the playoffs, and now you have a Saturday game in San Francisco the next round?
CHARLES ROBINSON: Yep, Absolutely.
DAN WETZEL: How the hell do you get there? All those. Do you have-- I would say, this would be my thing. Bezos could have two facilities, right?
CHARLES ROBINSON: Yes, yes.
DAN WETZEL: He could spend X number of millions of dollars and put a damn thing-- he could put it in St. Louis and grab that.
CHARLES ROBINSON: That's how I'd do it. Yup.
DAN WETZEL: That's it? Spend is so much money that you have to have dual facilities.
CHARLES ROBINSON: I think what you do is, you set up a base of operations in the continental United States for, as you said, operations such as workouts, anything that interferes with the time change problems. There's always someone-- as soon as Park Avenue office lights get flipped on at 6:00 AM in the morning, it's fine. You got a base of operations. You have it fully staffed here in America. There's someone always there working.
DAN WETZEL: And you can train and practice there if you've got a couple of games in the US.
CHARLES ROBINSON: If you got a couple of games in the USA, all that stuff. You build out a facility so that if you come and you got to stay for a month in the United States, you got that for that.
DAN WETZEL: Housing for your players, trucks that can get their equipment.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Housing, yeah, everything. Lay it out. Let's say you spend $500 million on building your US hub.
DAN WETZEL: The appeal of being like, you're going to be the superstar in all of London, London's as big as LA.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah, oh, yeah.
DAN WETZEL: And then the rest of the country and Western Europe.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah, and oh, by the way, guess what you're also doing when you're having this massive hub of operations in London? All that does is present further business opportunities overseas to Amazon.
To me, if you're Jeff Bezos and you're like I want to expand my empire, this gives me entree to do that. I can become this massive sports mogul in an overseas market that, by the way, is very impressive. We have a lot of people who listen to this show who watch the NFL as fervently as anyone in America, if not more.
DAN WETZEL: Oh, 100%.
CHARLES ROBINSON: People stay up in the middle of the night. They're up at 2;00, 3;00 in the morning watching games. I don't know, man, I'm just telling you, if I was Goodell, I'd get Jerry on the phone and Stan Kroenke on the phone and Robert Kraft, and I'd say, hey, we're going to solve the Rams problem. We're going to solve this problem right now with Jeff Bezos.
DAN WETZEL: Going to Bezos.
CHARLES ROBINSON: We're going to--
DAN WETZEL: If Bezos had our money, he'd burn it.
CHARLES ROBINSON: We're going to go to Bezos. We're going to get our London franchise out of this. We're going to get our actual physical foothold. It would be the, I mean, the deal of the century. You want to-- and by the way, you want to talk about Roger Goodell having a statue forever in the history of the NFL, forever, I mean, you want to talk about Goodell in Pete Rozelle type terms, because Pete Rozelle is the guy we will talk about forever with the NFL. If you want to see Goodell ascend to that level, pull off this kind of move.
DAN WETZEL: Yeah, because as much as they can't give them the rights to all of Europe, they give them the rights to Great Britain. But once you get that London one set--
CHARLES ROBINSON: Germany is next.
DAN WETZEL: Paris, Berlin, Madrid, done, right? Add three teams, and you've got a division over there.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Look at Wetzel and I. We're taking the NFL into the next century right here.
DAN WETZEL: Jeff Bezos, just text me. I'll help you out with this. Just hit me up. I know you listen to the pod.
