The NFL’s mid-1970s European ambitions through the lenses of grobalisation and glocalisation

The National Football League’s unrealised attempt to introduce professional American football to Europe in the mid-1970s is examined here through archival meeting minutes, American and European press coverage, and interviews with organisers of the Intercontinental Football League. Drawing on these sources, the internal and external conditions that shaped the proposed venture are reconstructed. The initiative is situated within debates on sport globalisation by engaging Ritzer’s conception of grobalisation and ‘something’ and ‘nothing’, alongside Andrews and Grainger’s framework of glocalisation. Points of tension and convergence between the frameworks emerge from the analysis. As evidenced, the NFL’s ambitions were curtailed by geopolitical instability, stagflation, labour conflict, and competition from a rival league. At the same time, both the grobalising logic evident in the NFL’s efforts to project American cultural and commercial forms abroad and the role of European actors engaging in strategic and organic glocalisation are apparent in the historical record. Overall, the case provides substantive material that scholars working within either framework may interpret as supporting their perspective.