Broncos May Play an Exhibition in Australia Next Summer

The Denver Broncos may become one of the first two American professional teams to play a football game on Australian soil next summer, if negotiations currently under way are successful.

The Broncos have been approached by a group of Australian businessmen about the possibility of moving one of the team’s 1986 exhibition games to Sydney, which has a population of 3.3 million and is the largest metropolitan area on the continent.

The talks are only in the preliminary stage, but the Broncos interest in the trip is sincere.

“They’ve written us a letter, outlining what they’d like to do and asking if we think it’s satisfactory,” Broncos owner Patrick Bowlen said this week. “There are still a large number of things that would have to be negotiated -- where we would stay, how we would get there, how long we’d be over there, things like that.

“But if we could get to a position where the economics of a trip like that make sense, the other things would fall into place quite easily.”

The National Football League has taken exhibition games abroad in the past, but never to Australia. In 1968, the New Orleans Saints and the Philadelphia Eagles played in Mexico City, and the San Diego Chargers and St. Louis Cardinals played in Tokyo in 1976.

The most recent international site for an NFL preseason game was London, which played host to the Cardinals and the Minnesota Vikings in 1983.

The Broncos are the only NFL team the Australian group has approached, but Denver general manager John Beake has spoken in general terms with the Saints about the possibility of playing in Sydney next year. New Orleans and the Broncos tentatively are scheduled to meet in the exhibition-season opener in Denver next August.

“We’re definitely interested,” said Saints president Eddie Jones on Wednesday. “We’d have to know more about it, of course; but provided everything could be worked out, we’d definitely be interested.”

The New Orleans-Denver game -- as the first exhibition -- normally wouldn’t to be part of the Broncos’ season-ticket plan, which makes it a likely candidate to be moved if arrangements to play the game abroad can be ironed out. Bowlen, too, may ask the league to allow the Broncos a fifth exhibition game, which might involve another team and be played in Sydney the week prior to the New Orleans game.

However, to date, the negotiations, which have included a letter exchange and a number of phone calls, haven’t involved the financial incentives the Broncos need to make the trip worthwhile, Beake indicated.

“Mr. Bowlen and I both feel it’s quite an intriguing proposition from the standpoint of expanding the future of the National Football League into the Far East and Australia,” Beake said. “It’s something you explore to expand your own horizons -- not only the club’s, but the league’s.

“But the financial remunerations would have to be worthwhile for making a trip of that length and putting up with the disruption you’d have in your training camp; and right now, they’re not.”

The amount of money in the initial proposal from the Australian group, according to a source, probably will have to be tripled before the Broncos will agree to go.

“We’ll keep exploring it as long as we keep getting the right dialogue back,” Beake said.

The Australian group originally contacted the Broncos through Fred Hemmings, a Honolulu-based friend of Bowlen and a member of the team’s board of directors.

Some of the principals in the organization attempting to promote the game are also involved with the Australia Bowl, which will take two American college teams (Wyoming and Texas-El Paso) to Melbourne for a Dec. 7 game.

The Broncos will pay close attention to the promotion and operation of the college game, Bowlen said, as a guide for his team’s interest in playing there. In fact, the Broncos are expected to send a representative to Melbourne in December as an eyewitness.

“Pat Bowlen isn’t going to do anything if it’s not done very well and on a first-class basis,” said Ray Nagel, the football coordinator for Pan Pacific Sports in Honolulu, one of the groups trying to organize the proposed NFL game. “This won’t be a fly-by-night operation.

“It’s a matter right now of putting all the pieces together to see if it makes sense to go ahead. It isn’t going to be a big profit-making proposition, but I think it would be good for NFL football and for the people of Australia.”

Nagel said his group hopes to have a television package with an Australian network in place for the proposed game by the first of the year, which will be a key to the success or failure of the negotiations. Most of Australia has viewer access to delayed telecasts of ABC’s Monday Night Football, so the populace is somewhat familiar with the American version of the game.

According to Bowlen, the team may not make a final decision on the game, which is expected to be played (if it is held at all) in the 75,000-seat Sydney Cricket Ground, until sometime during the first quarter of 1986.

Reaction from Broncos coaches and players to the prospect of playing in Australia was mixed. Coach Dan Reeves indicated he may be unwilling to spend three or four days (not counting the 16-hour flight time each way) away from training camp.

“I don’t know how those things work, so I really haven’t thought that much about it,” Reeves said. “I know if I had my druthers, I’d stay in Greeley and play all four exhibition games there.”

Said quarterback John Elway: “I think it’d be kind of neat, unless it meant we had to go into camp any earlier than normal.”

“Heck, yeah,” said linebacker Tom Jackson. “I’d love to play over there. I’d love to go see Australia.”