I attended an NFL game in London. Certainly the biggest fan groups were from the 2 teams playing, but it was interesting to me that many people came to the game that weren’t fans of either. Some were US expats or on vacation, but there were a lot of locals that just came. Jerseys from most NFL clubs were well represented. At one point we tried to spot a jersey from every team and we only missed one club (Browns I think). It was a unique crowd from that perspective, as you don’t normally see that kind of diversity in jerseys at a typical NFL game.
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Pretty sure NFL Europe was a financial disaster. I believe they were losing an estimated $30M per year by the time it folded.
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I forgot all about that! See… no one cares.
It’s only actual NFL teams that are drawing fans.
Wasn’t there a team in Brussels called the Sprouts?
You can join me in naming the European NFL teams.
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i thought they were the Muscles from Brussels
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Brussels Sprouts 
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BTW, there’s a Portland suburb with a MiLB team called the Hillsboro Hops. (Something like 90% of hops is grown in Oregon & Washington.)
I’m a fan of naming teams after produce. 
But when I wear my Hops hat people ask me if it’s an artichoke. 
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Germany definitely had the fan base to support this.
But will a German government (fed, state, county, burg, Großstadt) build the stadiums with public money for the poor billionaire owners? And then, pay for the renovations lest the team move to some other Gemeinden?
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So I looked it up and as I suspected, the top two European countries for American ex-pats are, by far, UK and Germany. Language and military, respectively. Big drop to the third-highest country: France. Spain and Italy round out the top 5. (I assume France, Spain and Italy are the three most populous in Western Europe that aren’t UK & Germany which have other reasons for being the top two.)
I’m still skeptical that they’ll find fans who care when it’s two European teams playing each other.
Not to mention all the great REAL football (played with feet) already available. Tough competition.
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The Hamburg Ers
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More like
The Hamburg Patties
The Frankfurter Dawgs
I think that if there’s “excitement” and interest in US teams going over to play, then there’s going to be interest in even two “European” teams playing knowing that they’ll also play US teams.
In fact, it might actually draw more interest in supporting a “home-town” team “over there”.
I don’t think the fan base is going to be the real deal breaker. It’s going to be player recruitment (where are they all coming from now?) and the cost to have a US draftees to relocate overseas.
You know how NFL teams move around. The Hamburg Ers might end up moving to Frankfurt.
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Maybe among ex-pats. I don’t think Americans living in the US are going to make a special point to travel to Hamburg when the Hamburg Ers host the Brussels Sprouts. And I’m skeptical that Europeans will care.
That does leave ex-pats though. Americans living in/near Hamburg may well say “oh, the city where I live has an NFL team now? Great, I’ll buy season tickets.” That would happen at approximately the same rate or, due to less competition from other American sports, perhaps a slightly higher rate than Americans living in/near Las Vegas said the same thing when the Raiders moved into town.
But there’s way more Americans living in/near Las Vegas than there are Americans living in/near Hamburg. By a factor of maybe 200. (Maybe only 100 if active duty military are not included in the number of ex-pats in Germany that I looked up.)
You’ll pick up a few Americans traveling still. I’m a Mariners/Reds fan but when I had some time to kill in Phoenix I decided to take in a Giants @ Diamondbacks game. That will happen in Hamburg too. But I didn’t do like my friends did when the Bengals played in London and buy a ticket and fly to Phoenix specifically to see the game. I was already in Phoenix for other reasons, and I had extra time, and the Diamondbacks randomly happened to be playing at home on the day I had the time. When I was in Houston and Miami and Oakland I didn’t do the same thing. Wrong season, too busy, team playing on the road…
I suspect a lot of ticket-buyers are also Americans living in Europe but not the city hosting the game. Like my friends in Luxembourg looked into buying tickets to the Cologne game just for the novelty of it. They’d drive from Lux to Cologne once… when it’s a novelty that’s never happened before. They’re not going to drive to Cologne for 8-9 home games each season though.
So that leaves Europeans to fill in the remaining seats. Will they? That’s why I said I’d like to see stats on the nationalities of the 700,000 folks who requested tickets to the Cologne game. How many of that 700,000 are actual Europeans?
Because the interest by non-local ex-pats and people flying over from the US just to see the game is going to dry up fast when we switch from 5 NFL games a season in Europe to 68. (8 NFL teams in Europe * 17 games * 1/2 at home)
According to this (As NFL heads to Munich, interest in American football creates ‘crazy’ demand - The Athletic) there is a summer league in Central Europe with 12 teams in Germany, Poland, Spain, Austria, and Turkey).
I think the biggest obstacle is that the NFL season is concurrent with European soccer/football, not that the interest isn’t there.
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Who’s ready to circle the wagons with the Bills!?? 
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