Matt Leonard

@tweetsfromben Yea I get that, I’m not been funny with you. You’re reporting it, I’m trying to understand it. To me it seems people want a badge of honour to say I’ve been an NFL longer than you and not wanting new fans involved.

@Matt_UKFS I am choosing to not point fingers at individuals because I think in my position that would be massively inappropriate. There are dozens of people who run UK fan groups who would fill you in

Been saying this for years but Fletch has said it much more effectively and succintly 👏 It's the fans who bought all those tickets (about 3 million in total) for the London games between 2007 and 2021 that led to games in Germany, Brazil, Ireland, Spain and Australia. Legends

@tweetsfromben Nah I’m just trying to understand the frustration. If 1 of them has only watched it for a year or whatever it’s not that bad. I just seem to ask questioned of numerous people and get no specific examples back.

@Matt_UKFS That’s obviously not what I said. You’re not even misinterpreting things here, you’re just sealioning

@tweetsfromben And they’ve all just watched it for a year?

@Matt_UKFS Yes each team does one so we’ve had 64 winners so far

@tweetsfromben These the team specific international fans of the year?

@Matt_UKFS The thing is in its 3rd year. There are loads of negative stories

@tweetsfromben Maybe I’ve missed that the only thing I can see was the guy from Brazil. 2025 hasn’t been announced? Looks like the Brazilian has been a dolphins fan since 2007? Who was flown round the world?

@Matt_UKFS So some people won fan of the year and got flown around the world, making draft picks when they’d only been watching a year and were not involved in the fan community with organisers who help supporters book trips to the US, host big events etc. Left a bad taste for many

@tweetsfromben Not seen*

@tweetsfromben I’ve just seen the uproar on that subject mate. Ive seen a lot of uproar on the other stuff I’ve mentioned.

@tweetsfromben @kissmysponge Mostly yes when I’ve been able to.

@Matt_UKFS @kissmysponge And you’ve gone to each game?

@tweetsfromben I’ve not seen the uproar, what was that?

@Matt_UKFS Again you’d need to ask the fan groups themselves but a) the fan groups tend to know who’s a newbie and who’s been instrumental in organising events etc and b) you must’ve also seen the uproar over some of the people selected as International Fan of the Year

@tweetsfromben @kissmysponge The main issue for this stems from not having something in place to stop resellers. However as a previous STH I’ve always had priority for tickets the following year.

@kissmysponge @Matt_UKFS There are a lot of factors at play. But if we’ve deliberately made it harder for the former STH to get in why aren’t those spots filled by the new fans?

@tweetsfromben What freebies did the new fans get and how did the NFL know how long they’ve been a fan?

@Matt_UKFS As for which people in the media you’d need to ask the core fans themselves. I did a longish post on this on LinkedIn in fact

@tweetsfromben Specifically at London games or in general across UK coverage of the sport? And which people in the media?

@Matt_UKFS I think a big part of it is that the core fans dislike the output from certain people in the media area for being so brainless

@tweetsfromben No, but people are frustrated because influencers are in those areas and not them. Even though they have no media affiliation. For those fans what specifically is different now to 10 years ago?

@Matt_UKFS Firstly I think many fans are conflating various issues such as thinking there are fewer tickets because of celebs and influencers. The celebs are in corporate boxes and the influencers are in media area

@tweetsfromben Having someone from Twitter with no influencing power outside their own group of people unfortunately isn’t attractive. Those people in that group are already fans of the sport. TikTok influencers are paid every day to direct traffic to certain places

@tweetsfromben I’ve asked the question a million times but never got an answer. What is the solution? If you’re a fan, enjoy the game as you always have. Just because younger people consume content in different places doesn’t mean they can’t support the NFL

These people aren’t growing the sport they’re just trying to gate keep and cause division between people who want to watch the sport in different ways.

What’s the obsession with wanting to have “media” passes for the UK NFL Games? I don’t get the sense of entitlement from UK Fans at the moment. Especially ones that think they have personally contributed to the growth of the sport in the UK 😂