Early morning football from London is here to stay.
The NFL announced today that all three London games in 2015 will kick off at 9:30 a.m. Eastern. The three early games are Jets-Dolphins on October 4, Bills-Jaguars on October 25 and Lions-Chiefs on November 1.
Last year the NFL experimented with morning football for the first time with the Lions-Falcons game, and it seemed to work well: English fans liked having the game in the afternoon rather than the evening, and the FOX broadcast drew strong TV ratings in America.
Eventually, the NFL may put as many as eight games a year in London. If that happens, expect all of them to take place in the morning, and expect the NFL to sell those games as a separate TV package. There’s really no such thing as too much football on TV, and the next way for the NFL to expand its TV offerings is to start some games earlier.
