Arsenal’s commerce guru Tom Fox has refused to rule out the Premier League allowing clubs to play games outside of England. And the Gunners exec says it would be ‘naive’ to think that talking our game to another continent wouldn’t be beneficial to the league and the profile of its clubs.
Asked if he thought the Premier League or Champions League will ever follow the lead of some U.S. leagues and play sanctioned or official games in the U.S, he told arsenal.com: “It’s an interesting idea. I mentioned some of the things I’ve learned and some of the differences I’ve seen, and if you look at every other U.S. league, Major League Baseball has played games outside of the U.S., the NFL and NBA have both played regular season games outside the U.S. and there’s a reason they have done that.
“It would be naïve to think that there is not a hugely positive benefit to exposing fans in another country to a regular season game, to a game that matters.
“I think there is a reason those other leagues have done it and I think we need to understand those reasons, we as a league need to understand the potential benefit to our league of doing that and weigh that against the loss of a home match for fans and determine if that’s in the best long-term interest of our league. And those are conversations I’m sure we’ll have continually as a league.”
In the first part of the interview, Fox said that it was ‘inevitable’ that we would tour the globe for pre-season friendly matches – flying in the face of AW who feels long plane journeys would make the players tired and fatigued ahead of the season.
So which country would you like to see the rip-roaring Reds? Me? Thailand…
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