Name: The NFL's Logistics Problem
Uploaded: 2021-06-11T09:13:53.000Z
Duration: 14 min 2 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

基礎受動態

This video was made possible by Skillshare.

Learn from over 25,000 classes for free for two months at skl.sh/wendover6.

No sports league in the world makes more money than the American National Football League.

The NFL earns more yearly revenue than the English Premier League, the Champions League,

Formula One, the Japanese Nippon Professional Baseball League, and the Kontinental Hockey

It is by far the largest sports league in the world by revenue.

Making up the NFL are 32 football teams each themselves essentially acting as their own

These teams are spread out all across the contiguous United States—some only 30 miles

or 45 kilometers apart from each other, some nearly 3,000 miles or 4,500 kilometers apart.

Now, American football teams are some of the largest in sports, both physically and in

They have a roster of 56 players—the majority of which play in any given game.

These players weigh on average about 250 pounds or 110 kilograms.

This team size leads to some particular travel needs.

Players each require a first class seat or, at the very least, the seat next to them free

in economy meaning those 56 players take up far more than 56 seats.

On top of that, a team typically brings more than 100 support staff and an immense amount

With the exception of the largest, most valuable ones, most other professional sports teams

in the US will just fly on chartered narrow-body aircraft like a320's, 737's, or 757's,

but most NFL teams, given their size, require something larger.

NFL teams tend to charter their aircraft from commercial airlines—American, Delta, United,

or Hawaiian Airlines—and they'll typically fly something a bit larger than other teams

like a 767 or sometimes even a 777, but the nature of this charter job makes finding a

plane to take them particularly difficult.

You see, let's take the example of the New York Jets' last game of the 2018 season

versus the New England Patriots on December 30th.

For this game, they left the day before on a United Airlines 767-400 at 3:37 pm landing

30 minutes later, at 4:07 pm, in Providence, Rhode Island.

The plane then sat on the ground at Providence airport for the next 26 hours until the game

The following day, the plane took off at 6:30 pm bound for New York.

The aircraft's previous flight had been to Buenos Aires and its next flight was to

London and yet for these 26 hours, United only made money from the half hour charter

It's easy to understand why this wouldn't really be worth it to the airline, but at

least the Jets are located next to a United Airlines hub at Newark airport.

Many teams, like the New Orleans Saints, for example, are not located in a city with any

That makes finding an airline to take their charter contract even more difficult.

That's because, for example, when the team had to travel to Charlotte last season, the

767 that took them had to fly in empty from Houston, the nearest United hub, then fly

to Charlotte, sit on the ground for 33 hours, fly back to New Orleans, then once again fly

empty—this time all the way to New York.

All told, for the 2 hours and 51 minutes of flight time United was paid for, they used

Being located away from an airline hub, where planes are based, means charter flights will

almost always require a plane flying in empty.

It is for this reason that airlines are raising rates or just flat-out stopping flying NFL

teams as they find normal, commercial flying a more lucrative use of their aircraft.

American Airlines, in recent years, for example, dropped all the many teams they previously

flew except for the Carolina Falcons, the Dallas Cowboys, and the Philadelphia Eagles—three

More teams have moved their contract to dedicated charter companies such as Atlas Air or Miami

Air International, while the New England Patriots even bought their own set of planes to solve

Some other teams still have contracts with commercial airlines but have switched to flying

multiple smaller planes as these can be in less demand.

The Indianapolis Colts, for example, now typically travel in two Delta 757's leaving within

Other American sports, such as Hockey, Baseball, and Basketball, don't have nearly as much

of a problem because they play far more games a season, which makes their contract a more

attractive one to the airlines, and they also typically use smaller aircraft of which there

The NFL briefly considered investing in its own fleet of aircraft or at least negotiating

a deal with an airline in bulk, like the NBA does with Delta, but for now, NFL teams are

seeing their travel costs skyrocket as the laws of supply and demand take hold.

After losing their contract with American Airlines, for example, the Jacksonville Jaguars

saw their travel costs double to $4 million a year as they chartered an Atlas Air 747

and remember, those $4 million pay for the travel costs to a mere eight away games.

But the NFL's most daunting logistics problem is not this.

Their most daunting logistics problem relates to the NFL's other big problem—expansion.

You see, part of the reason the NFL is the most valuable sports league in the world is

because of how saturated the football market is in the US.

That's an amazing level of market saturation for what is, at its core, a business, but

that also presents a problem because, with such a high proportion of the population already

fans, it's quite difficult for the NFL to expand their audience, at least within the

In the past decade or so, the league has turned its attention internationally.

The NFL now plays regular season games in Mexico City and London.

These cities don't have home teams but rather, two teams from the US will come out and play.

For the most part, these international games are about promoting the sport in these two

countries which already have significant fanbases watching the sport on TV.

There's never been more than one game a season in Mexico City but in London, in the

2019 season, they're playing four regular season games.

With the 16 regular-season games per team per year, any other city that has a resident

NFL team typically only has eight home games meaning London's quantity is really not

What's more, the Jacksonville Jaguars are designated as a sort of home team for London

and therefore play at least one of their games there each year in an attempt to give the

city and country a clear team to root for.

The league has even said that it plans to eventually have a full eight games per season

in London—the same as any home city in the US.

The reason there are now so many NFL games in London is because the sport of American

football has gained significant inroads in the UK audience.

The NFL estimates that it has 13 million fans in the UK, 4 million of which watch regularly,

and 47,000 of which buy games to every single NFL game in the UK.

字幕リスト動画再生

The NFL's Logistics Problem

significant

potentially

typically

tend