Goodell may be calling London: Super Bowl may someday go overseas

AP-
A
future Super Bowl champion may someday be crowned overseas in a game witnessed
predominantly by a foreign audience, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said.

“There’s
a great deal of interest in holding a Super Bowl in

London,” Goodell told reporters Monday.
“So we’ll be looking at that.”

The
commissioner said

London’s
new Wembley Stadium would make a great candidate for pro football’s biggest
matchup, given the enthusiasm overseas for the game.

The NFL
has been expanding its overseas presence for years by televising games in
Mexico,
Canada
and the

United Kingdom.
It’s held preseason games in numerous countries and in 2005, the Arizona
Cardinals and
San Francisco 49ers played the
first regular season match outside the

United States.

The game
at Azteca Stadium in

Mexico
drew the league’s largest crowd to date, Goodell said, with 103,467 fans in
attendance

On Oct.
28, Wembley Stadium will host the first regular season NFL game outside
North America.

It took
just 90 minutes to sell the first 40,000 tickets for the Oct. 28 game between
the Miami Dolphins and New York Giants. Goodell said that event organizers have
sold 95,000 tickets in all.

Goodell
spoke about the possibility of a British Super Bowl after a luncheon Monday in
Scottsdale sponsored by the host committee for the 2008
Super Bowl in

Arizona.

He said
Arizona has done an “A-plus” job of getting
ready for the Feb. 3 game at
University
of
Phoenix Stadium in
Glendale,
a

Phoenix
suburb. The location of
Arizona’s previous
Super Bowl in 1996, Sun Devil Stadium at
Arizona

State
University
in

Tempe, was
criticized for its lack of restrooms, limited skyboxes and crowded concourses.

Goodell
said in the past, a lack of a decent stadium hurt the state’s chances of
hosting more Super Bowls.

But the

University of
Phoenix Stadium, which opened in 2006,
is “a state-of-the-art facility,” he said. “It gives an
experience that I think our fans appreciate.”