​Super Bowl Britannia: How We Celebrate America's Sporting Centrepiece

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports UK.

This feature is part of Super Bowl Week at VICE Sports.

Welcome to the Super Bowl – one of the biggest global sporting events of the year, and an NFL fan's last chance this season to watch oversized millionaires don battle armour. It's the final blowout after a long campaign which has ended in disappointment for everyone except the two teams playing, who this year are the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers. Regardless of affiliation, however, fans turn out in droves to enjoy the day.

In America, people enjoy it so much that there is a push to make the Monday after the Super Bowl a national holiday. It's a cause that makes regular appearances on White House petition sites, and the International Business Times reckon that four per cent of the U.S. working population don't make it through Monday (with 1.5m people expected to call in sick altogether).

But what about the other side of the pond? After all, American football is a growing sport in the UK; three regular season games are exported here each year, and there is the on-going talk of a team being deployed in 2022. With the sport becoming increasingly mainstream, what does the Super Bowl mean to a Brit?

Well, despite the NFL's current strength, these heady days have not always been the norm. Since the sport suffered a popularity crash in the mid-to-late nineties it's been a long path back. Looking around city centres and various nightlife guides, it seems like every bar worth its salt is having a Super Bowl party on Sunday night. With so many options now available it renders unthinkable that, 10 years ago, I had to drive from London to Bristol to find a mate to watch the Super Bowl with, and a bar open late enough for us to get drunk at while achieving this.

Since then I've lived on both sides of the pond, watching the NFL grow in the UK and experiencing it in full force while living in Boston, Massachusetts. I've been to the now-defunct NFL UK Super Bash parties, highlighted by the impromptu Snow Bowl held after Super Bowl XLIII, and watched the game from a fraternity house (Phi Alpha, Brothers!). It's the same game we're watching on either side of the Atlantic, but the experience is rather different.

This might sound like a blisteringly simple thing to say, but the biggest difference between watching the game in the UK compared to America is one of time. Stateside the game is a mid-afternoon/early-evening affair, while in the realm of tea and crumpets it's a strictly late-night event. An 11:30pm kick off – and the resulting finish around three in the morning – means that fans are left with some tough choices.

If you go the house party route then you're left with a living room floor covered by collapsed and tired bodies. If you head out to a bar then, by the final whistle, there is little public transport still running. A few are lucky enough to be able to get a night bus, or a pricey taxi, but for many it means the big outlay of a hotel room to sleep off the night's frivolities.

Of course, the one advantage of the late kick-off is that there is plenty of time to enjoy said frivolities.

"With Monday morning being a work day, we wouldn't be surprised if we heard of people failing to make it in the next morning," says Dan Deer from Magnify Marketing, who run sports marketing for Walkabout, one of the UK's bigger bar chains. A few of their branches started staying open to show the Super Bowl in 2012; this year, for the first time, every one of their bars is staying open for the game.

Perhaps surprisingly, the NFL crowd on a Super Bowl night are no trouble. Compared to some other sports – where British fans are not the most trustworthy when left unsupervised around large amounts of time, alcohol, and adrenaline – it's good to see that late-night drinking doesn't tend to lead to trouble. Walkabout say there is seldom any problem with rowdy crowds.

"It's more of a celebration compared to some of the more tribal atmospheres you get, particularly in British sports," Dan says.

Indeed, attend any of the dozens of late-night Super Bowl parties and a celebration of Americana is front and centre. Regular menus are thrown out and replaced with a slew of wings, hot dogs, burgers, and nachos (after all, that's a menu which typifies modern America, right?), country music plays, and you can order a Bud without being roasted mercilessly.

However, while bar events offer a good place for those wanting to watch the game in some proper American-style atmosphere, it's not for everybody. The traditional British sporting tribalism is very real for some, and the Super Bowl is when they gather.

The UK and Ireland Packers are one of the biggest fan groups outside of North America. They've got a huge social media presence, close ties with their beloved Green Bay Packers, and a core group of fans that treat the Super Bowl as their annual get-together. This year is no different, as they take part in their annual Fan Bowl in London. It starts with a friendly game of flag football against the Arrowheads Abroad, the official UK-based Kansas City Chiefs group.

"We meet up in Regents Park, we supply the gear, tell the guys the rules," explained Stephen O'Brian, one of the co-founders of the UK and Irish Packers. "A lot of the dudes haven't been there the previous year, so it's great craic. We go and just throw the ball around for hours, until the light goes really, and then everyone heads back to their [hotel] rooms, has a shower. We meet for a few pints, have a meal, and watch the Super Bowl."

Stephen is flying into London from Ireland for the event, where he'll catch up with his fellow Packer faithful. I've met some of the group before, at Wembley back in November, and you could see their passion for the sport and their team. They were fresh back from their annual pilgrimage to Lambeau Field then, and clearly bleed green and gold as hard as any Wisconsinite.

Equally passionate, although not as large, are the British bases for the teams who'll face off on Sunday. The biggest British Broncos group is Denver Broncos UK, lead by founder Thomas Ritchie, a student of just 16.

"I've been an NFL fan since 2012," he explains. "I watched a game on Channel 4 and I really enjoyed it, so carried on watching. [It was] a Broncos game, and they won that, so I thought… I'd go with that."

Tom started the UK group because there wasn't a large online presence uniting Broncos fans, and he spends his time using Twitter and the group's website to bring them together. They're hoping to have their first meet at one of the London games next year.

These groups are common in the UK as teams' fans are spread out, with no geographical allegiances dictating who we must root for. Some are solely an online presence like the Broncos UK, others organise trans-Atlantic trips like the UK and Ireland Packers. Regardless, they're places where followers can talk about teams and a sport which most British fans now know, but still don't fully understand. It's a lot of work for no money, and they're all driven by passion; the same passion that fans feel in America about their teams and a sport they love.

Fan movements like these have all created demand to watch the game. Bars such as Walkabout aren't driving the growth of the Super Bowl – this is not like St Patrick's Day being popularised largely by the Guinness marketing department – they are businesses responding to demand from British NFL fans for places to watch in a proper atmosphere. Such are the options for us now that, after 11 years, the NFL UK Super Bash parties have been discontinued, with the 'official' party now that of British NFL magazine Gridiron.

What's more, the Super Bowl holds an extra special place in the hearts of many UK fans as their initial entry point to the sport.

"The Super Bowl is the gateway drug to the NFL," says Stephen, reminiscing on how he first began watching. "You start watching the Super Bowl because everyone is talking about it. There's an awful lot of hype, it's the biggest sporting event in the world. I was like, 'screw it, I'll watch it then.'"

Now, years later, he's co-founder of a group who are models of what a British-based NFL fan club can be. It's a far cry from watching alone on a sofa in a small Irish town.

In America, the whole of Super Bowl Sunday is defined by the event: Is your team in it? How about your second team, or that good player from your college? Do you watch the whole show? Are you more interested in the adverts? The half-time show? How about an 'alternate' show, like the Puppy Bowl or Lingerie Bowl? Short of a big World Cup game, nothing brings us together like that in this country.

And the sport continues to grow on these shores. Gone are the days of British fans not having anywhere to watch apart from their sofas with a few beers. Hopefully this growth means that watching the Super Bowl in the UK wouldn't be too alien for an American stranded here over the weekend.

We might have to stay up later, ask our more knowledgeable mates about the rules, and not get the added entertainment of the adverts, but the NFL's growing British fan base celebrates the Super Bowl just as hard as those back across the pond. That celebration promises to get bigger as the Super Bowl brings more and more fans into the brutal and beautiful world of American football.

Perhaps in a few years, by the time we get our own team, you won't even be able to tell the difference. That is, until you walk outside at three in the morning and realise you can't get home.

See all of VICE Sports' Super Bowl 50 coverage here.

@benhalls