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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American power, politics and society.

On each episode, I will talk to an American expert or an expert on

America about something that's going on in America in 2023. I am honored to be joined today

by Woody Johnson, ambassador, the former ambassador to the United Kingdom, but we are not going to talk about the special relationship or politics or even Donald Trump or any of that boring business.

We've had far too much of that. We are going to talk about NFL or American football to our listeners who don't know what the NFL is.

And we're going to talk about the Super Bowl, which is on Sunday, because Ambassador Johnson, you are the owner of the New York Jets

who are not in the Super Bowl, although they've had a pretty good season. We'll get on to that.

But I thought I'd start by asking you about the appeal of American football in Britain, because

it has grown quite a lot in the last few years.

And I wonder whether as Ambassador you had anything to do with that.

The NFL is expanding into Europe.

It's extremely popular.

We're now playing next year, 23, we're going to play three games, two at Tottenham and one at Wembley.

So that's three games.

They're going to be very exciting.

They're sold out.

They sell out within minutes of being available.

And we're also playing in Germany.

We started playing Germany.

So we're playing two games in Germany. We had a lot of interest in Germany based on the GIs that were over there during the war. We played in Trondonov last year. And it was, it was fully exciting to watch everybody walk for miles you brits you walk

like five miles to do a game so you can see these long long lines for miles to get in

...