Perched on bleachers inside a London television studio, a crowd of NFL fans erupt as the Denver Broncos score a touchdown in the opening minutes of the AFC Championship game.
Moments earlier, the audience had been ushered into a studio that is a homage to America’s favorite game, with Stars and Stripes hanging from the ceiling, NFL memorabilia on the walls and a large plastic football attached to goalposts in the center of the set.
This is the United Kingdom’s newest NFL show, Big Game Night, which started on free-to-air Channel 5 in September. Hosted by Dermot O’Leary, who presented the X Factor when One Direction shot to fame in 2010, and Olympic gold medal-winning hockey player Sam Quek, the show has star appeal.
London-born Super Bowl champion Osi Umenyiora, who won his rings with the New York Giants in 2008 and 2012, is a co-host and sits on the panel with a regular celebrity guest and seven-year NFL pro Efe Obada.
The Athletic joined the audience as the Broncos were beaten 10-7 by the New England Patriots to experience the live show.
On the corridor walls of the expansive Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, west London, are posters of past productions, from the BBC gameshow, Richard Osman’s House of Games, to another popular British quiz show, Eggheads.
Big Game Night is unlike other NFL shows in the UK. It incorporates family-friendly games to attract new audiences, but also provides analysis for the more traditional fan. Its concept has divided opinion.
The Athletic joined the Bristol Barracudas, the University of Bristol’s American football team, in the audience of around 30. On our seats were our diet for the next three to four hours: an apple juice, a non-alcoholic beer, and a pack of sweets and popcorn.
A hype man, Stuart Holdham, greeted us enthusiastically. “Come on in, get yourselves seated,” he said, before spending the next few hours standing in front of us like an orchestrator, prompting us to clap, cheer, and chant.
The set was spacious, which it needed to be, with around 25 crew members, including camera operators, runners and makeup artists working behind the scenes. Four of the cameras faced the panel, and one rotated to join another fixed on an audience who had been provided NFL jerseys of various teams to wear, but only for the evening.
As the show prepared to go live at 7.30 p.m. (2.30 p.m. ET), a countdown from five began for hosts O’Leary and Quek, who sounded surprisingly quiet in the studio. A remote was needed to adjust the volume.
Obada and Umenyiora were joined by former Liverpool, Chelsea and England footballer Daniel Strurridge. Former Premier League players Troy Deeney and Ashley Williams have been guests in previous weeks, as well as comedians such as Katherine Ryan and Ellie Taylor.
Sturridge, 36, revealed he was an avid NFL fantasy player and rooted for the New England Patriots to win that week as his partner’s family is from Boston. After Denver’s early touchdown, Sturridge said it was important as an athlete not to get carried away, which proved on the money as the Broncos didn’t score again.
As the name of the show suggests, Big Game Night incorporates American football-themed games before kick-off and during commercial breaks to provide entertainment during game breaks.
Before one of the shows, Quek, who has been the in-stadium host at the NFL London games for the past seven years, told The Athletic, “To get into a sport like NFL, it always helps if you’re sat next to someone who understands what’s going on to explain different rules.
“It can be quite overwhelming, the amount of time it goes on for, the number of players, the different plays. If you are sitting next to someone or you’re watching a show like ours, you’re just getting a nice introduction to it.”
Some of the games on the show have been a tad cringeworthy, such as a competition to cut up hot dogs. But there is also proof in the pudding, with a clip of former rugby union player Joe Marler, who appeared on the UK’s Celebrity Traitors last year, and Obada playing ‘Holes of Glory’ gaining over three million views on Instagram.
Troy Hawke, a comedian and internet personality, is the on-screen host for the audience and splits us into blue and red teams. A member of the panel plays the games to win a prize for one of the teams.
On this night, show No 22, games included ‘Let’s Get Ready to Fumble’, which essentially involved catching and keeping hold of as many footballs as possible.
As a member of Team Blue, The Athletic came away with an NFL blanket and Big Game Night T-shirt, but missed out on cupcakes.
All games involved the Barracudas, although one lady in the audience was told she could not play ‘Field Goal Frenzy,’ as she was not insured to kick with heels on. A member of the Barracudas comically fell over on his attempt, the objective of the game being to kick field goals through the in-studio set of goalposts.
These prizes were small fry compared to what was on offer before the play-offs. During regular-season games, five fans of whatever NFL teams were playing that night would be invited onto the set for the chance to win a trip to the United States.
During one celebration, the studio’s three cheerleaders, who were American but from the London-based group Skylar Cheerleaders, danced in the crowd, and audience members narrowly avoided a pompom to the face.
O’Leary, who has Irish parents but is from Colchester, the largest city in Essex, a county near London, is a Miami Dolphins fan and started playing for the Colchester Gladiators youth team at 13.
“We don’t take as many commercial breaks as they do in the States, so the premise of this game show is what if, when they take a break, we come back and there’s a game show for as long as the break and two sets of fans are up against each other. And then at the end of it, one set of fans wins a trip to America?” O’Leary said.
“That sounds great, but it isn’t straightforward. We’ve got two guys in the gallery that I call the NFL whisperers because they tell us when they are going to take a break, which could be 30 seconds or two minutes, 15 seconds, which means we can fit a game in, but that’s not guaranteed.”
When game footage was on, O’Leary mainly kneeled on the floor next to a tablet device on the table, and Quek took notes. The three panellists spoke among themselves, with Sturridge posting on his Instagram story that he was being teased for his Prada sneakers.
The last audience game came during the second quarter, leaving us to be glorified sound effects during the second half of the show. It is structured this way to hook casual viewers at the start but also allows Obada and Umenyiora to provide analysis for seasoned NFL fans.
“I just try to put myself in the audience’s shoes. I didn’t know anything about American football until I was 15,” Umenyiora, who returned to the show two weeks ago after posting on social media how he had been in a coma for five days, told The Athletic.
“So I always think to myself, ‘OK, what would I want to see if I didn’t know anything about football?’. It wouldn’t be just to know all the X’s and O’s and all of that. I just want a broad overview and then just to try to understand and enjoy the game and let it be presented in a fun way.
“The most important thing for me is when people come in, they’re like, ‘Hey, I got into the game because of the way you talk about it’, and that’s just the ultimate compliment.”
Osi Umenyiora, left, won two Super Bowls with the New York Giants (Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)
The show is attempting the impossible when it comes to attracting new fans and appeasing diehard ones. It debuted with 166,000 average viewers, according to television news outlet Broadcast, below the timeslot’s 522,000 average, and maintains between 100,000 and 150,000 average viewers most weeks. In the States, NBC averaged a record audience of 23.5million viewers for Sunday Night Football games this year, according to SportsPro, showing the sizable gap between audiences.
O’Leary and Quek travelled to Santa Clara, California, this week to host Sunday’s Super Bowl. There will be no live audience, no game show, but it could be their largest audience to date.
“You’re never going to please all the people because it is a game show within a game,” O’Leary said. “So what we tried to do is give a little bit of insight for people who are interested, but aren’t completely au fait. But also, and this is TV’s big challenge and always something I am passionate about, you never patronize your audience at the same time. You credit them with intelligence.”
“Hopefully, you have a great game of football and it’s for us to build the excitement and the understanding of why the sport is so great,” Quek added.
The other options to watch the NFL in the UK are Sky Sports, which offers British coverage but is a paid subscription channel, and DAZN, which feeds into NFL Game Pass coverage and has all games available for a monthly cost.
There is a problem to be solved. British people often describe American sports as too stop-start and bemoan the amount of adverts. But Big Game Show hasn’t found the perfect solution yet.
Caoimhe O’Neill contributed to reporting