Last week, after days of avoiding questions over Sir Keir Starmer’s faltering leadership, Anas Sarwar finally took to social media… to call for the NFL to come to Scotland.
Obviously, less than 24 hours later, he went further and called for the Prime Minister to quit . But Sunday’s intervention, timed to coincide with the Super Bowl , was still a little jarring.
Then again, like most of Sarwar’s social media output, the video wasn’t really meant for me — or possibly even you. It was aimed at people who don’t engage with politics very much at all.
On that measure, it may have worked. So far it has clocked up around 374,000 views on X , another 13,000 on Facebook and roughly 2,400 likes on Instagram — far more than almost all of his other posts.
It’s Super Bowl night! Let’s bring the NFL to Scotland 🏈 pic.twitter.com/qaLRK6HrMd
— Scottish Labour (@ScottishLabour) February 8, 2026
Perhaps it landed. Or perhaps it was shared widely by people asking why the Scottish Labour leader was talking about American football and not Keir Starmer.
Could the NFL actually come to Scotland?
We know American football has a sizeable, if still niche, following in the UK. One statistic that gets regularly recycled — attributed to the NFL’s own market research from 2018 — claims there are 13 million fans in Britain, with around four million classed as “avid” followers.
That figure probably deserves a bit of caution. A YouGov poll in 2022 found that 9% of people in the UK said they were either somewhat interested in the NFL or counted it among their top interests. Still though, that’s a significant audience.
The sport’s popularity has also grown steadily. It skews heavily male and is strongest among those aged between 30 and 50. And the UK is a key plank in the NFL’s global strategy.
Since 2007, there have been 42 regular season games in London. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which opened in 2019, is the first purpose-built NFL stadium outside the United States.
No NFL game staged in the UK in that time has drawn fewer than around 60,000 spectators. The Jacksonville Jaguars v New England Patriots game in 2024 at Wembley attracted 86,651 fans.
So there is clearly an audience here. Speaking to some people who know about these things, they have little doubt an NFL game at Murrayfield would sell out comfortably.
Read more from Unspun
There is also a solid economic case. Analyses by Price Bailey and Deloitte found that the 42 games played in London since 2007 have generated an estimated £600 million in spectator spending.
In 2024, around 60,000 international NFL fans spent an average of £329 per head, per day, during the London games. The NFL alone accounted for £110 million in indirect economic impact across its three UK fixtures in 2023.
The idea of a Scottish fixture— from the league’s point of view — is not new.
Back in 2017, NFL UK’s marketing director said both Murrayfield and Hampden were “well equipped” and had the right pitch size, adding that conversations about a Scotland game “have certainly taken place”.
Scotland has tried this before.
The Scottish Claymores competed in the World League of American Football, later NFL Europe, from 1995 to 2004. They won World Bowl ’96 in Edinburgh, beating the Frankfurt Galaxy 32–27 in front of nearly 39,000 fans — the largest American football crowd ever seen in Scotland.
While the franchise folded eight years later, it shows there is some enthusiasm.
All of which brings us back to Sarwar’s video. It was clearly overshadowed by his decision to knife Sir Keir Starmer in the front the next day, but it raises some interesting questions.
Is this just content, or is there any sign Labour are thinking about sport strategically?
The real question isn’t whether an NFL game in Scotland is plausible, it clearly is, or even whether it would be popular. It would.
The question is what Scotland would actually be trying to achieve by hosting one.
In recent years, the SNP government has been clever at using sport as soft power, using it to showcase Scotland as a modern small nation able to punch above its weight on the international stage.
What do Labour want sport to do for them? Is the NFL coming to Scotland about our place in the world, or a chance to eat some hot dogs and drink some terrible beer?
I’ve never really watched American football, and I’m aware that my sudden interest probably has something to do with sitting through Scotland v Italy at the Six Nations last weekend.
But as ideas go, this one is at least worth exploring.