Emma Kahle

Published on Transitions.org as part of my internship in Prague in Fall 2024. Link to original article.

The Prague Lions bus makes its journey back from Hungary on an August evening after the American football team won a game for the first time in nearly two years. Defensive end Marek Danik hears a teammate begin to rap a Czech song. He is surprised to find a normally reserved linebacker hitting every word perfectly.

Winning their first game was one of many hurdles that the Czech Republic’s best American football team has faced since joining the European League of Football (ELF) in 2023. Going from a six-time champion of the Czech League of American Football to being one of the worst in the ELF, the Lions demonstrate the hardships of playing in a country where American football is seen as more of a beer-league hobby than a serious sport.

Danik joined the Lions in 2022 in a package deal with fellow defensive linemen Jakub Smutny and Jan Stary when the team they played with, the Znojmo Knights, decided to leave the Austrian League of Football and return to the lower-level Czech League. Eager to continue playing in a more competitive league, the trio accepted offers to join the Prague Lions for the 2023 season.

“We decided that we would go to the ELF because all of us had already spent a lot of time in the Czech League, so we wanted to go higher and find new challenges,” says Danik.

And the Lions have had no shortage of challenges since joining the top American football league in Europe. When financial hardships forced the team to forfeit a game midway through the 2023 season, its future in the elite league looked uncertain. American investor Mason Parker came to the team’s rescue, providing essential funding to keep the team playing for the duration of the year. After the first season, Parker officially took over the team. He formed a U.S.-based investment group, including Mötley Crüe lead singer Vince Neil and former NFL wide receiver DeVante Parker, to raise the funds needed.

Homegrown Players Help Draw Fans to New League
The ELF’s 2025 season will kick off in mid-May with 16 teams from 10 countries, including one each from Poland, Hungary, and Czechia.

Czechs and Slovaks, who count as “homegrown” players, will again dominate the Lions roster. Since ELF  teams can only have 10 imports from other countries, local players make up three-fourths of the roster.

The rules limit the numbers to preserve the idea of a country serving as a rallying point to create a team’s identity, says David Zamorano, head of operations for the Lions. “So there’s a little bit of a struggle, but we have to find ways to be competitive with our guys.”

When the ELF launched in 2021, this rule was established to make a sharp contrast with the defunct European league backed by America’s NFL. During its existence from 1991 to 2007, NFL Europe operated almost like the minor leagues in U.S. baseball, recruiting talented players who fell short of playing for an NFL team in the United States. Each team was required to have just seven homegrown players on the 40-man roster. These teams struggled to garner a fan base without any sense of national identity. Many of the teams, as with the EFL, were based in Germany.

“To the Germans in the stands, it was strangers on the pitch, and to the Americans they were in purgatory,” Parker says. Worse still, the league was reportedly losing $30 million a year.

With mostly local players on the field, “That means that for the kids in the stands, there’s Czech names on the backs of the players, which makes it more connected,” says Parker.

Youth Development Lags Behind
The league where all Czech teams but the Lions play, the Czech League of American Football, consists of 25 teams, with eight, including two Slovak teams, in the top division. Some games are aired on national TV. Around 15 teams have youth programs, but they struggle to compete with the hundreds of established soccer and hockey programs. Additionally, in the youth and junior divisions these teams often play flag football in a five-on-five format, failing to prepare players with the necessary skills to compete in the full-contact 11-player version of the game.

“Unfortunately, our league is not really built to develop players for the ELF, and I don’t think that it’s like that for Germany and Austria – those nations are ready to develop players,” says Radim Kroulik, chairman of the Czech Association of American Football.

So how do the Prague Lions start winning games in a league that demands the majority of their team are Czech players? Enter Dave Warner, the new head coach for the 2025 season. Warner, a long-time Michigan State quarterback coach, developed future NFL superstars like four-time Pro Bowler Kirk Cousins and Super Bowl MVP Nick Foles.

“It still does come back to the homegrown players, because 43 of those players on the roster are from the Czech Republic, so obviously that’s a great majority and that’s where the strength of the team needs to come from,” Warner says.

Serving as offensive coordinator for the Madrid Bravos last season, Warner showed that even players from countries just starting to play American football can thrive under the ELF’s homegrown policy, helping the team make the playoffs in their first year in the league.

“Spain is not known for having great players [either] and they made it to the playoffs, so maybe this coach knows the recipe to make the team great,” says Radim Kalous, a local player who led the Lions in receptions last season.

Strong Team Spirit, but No Rolexes – Yet
Warner believes building a sense of pride is essential for the team’s success, and wants players to get angry when people doubt their capabilities.

“I think that one of the few things that has been working for us is the family part of the team, like staying close to each other, hanging out outside of practices – not just being just teammates, but also friends,” says Josef Janota, another Czech player with the Lions.

Danik is especially close with his fellow defensive linemen. He explains that their names – Smutny, Stary, and Danik – translate in English to “sad old Danik.” The trio has a game-day tradition of wearing matching watches, courtesy of Danik. Inspired by a U.S. Marine Corps tradition, he bought six identical Casio lookalikes of the Rolex Day-Date. He promises to someday replace them with real Rolexes.

Travier Fields-Jackson was one of the four American imports on the team last season. He played at Trinity Valley Community College in Texas before transferring to Missouri Southern State University to play NCAA division II football, the second-highest level of the American college game.

“These Czech guys really have a love for the sport,” Fields-Jackson says. “I really made a brotherhood. I still talk to some of the guys there on the team now … the Czech guys are really cool.”

Danik, known for his humor and for quoting lines from the football comedy The Longest Yard during practice, adopted a more serious streak during the 2023 season, pushing the team to keep playing even after it was forced to forfeit a game in July because the prior managers failed to pay the players on time.

“I would say I was one of the guys who, even though I was new, tried to motivate and change the atmosphere in the team to be positive and finish [the season],” he says. “I know we would lose, but I preferred to lose on the field then lose in the statistics and not even step on the field.”

Being a homegrown player is also challenging because most of the players work day jobs in addition to playing football.

“You show up to your job on Monday at five or six in the morning, you get home, eat quickly, get to the practice, get chewed out by the coaches because you didn’t really make good plays or there were missed assignments, etc.,” Janota says. “So it has been pretty hard to keep at it.”

Parker says he achieved all of his objectives last season: to deliver 12 good games, pay all the players on time, have the players walk away with a positive experience, and rebuild credibility among the football player community.

Kalous praises the new team management as “amazing,” but adds, “the only question is: ‘are you going to have enough good players?’ ” A team can have a coach like six-time Super Bowl winner Bill Belichick, “but if you have a guy who’s not willing to learn or not a good enough football player, it’s not going to matter.”

Danik was also very impressed by the changes under Parker. Last season, players had the services of three physiotherapists at each practice, and Danik was surprised that he did not need to pay for his own athletic tape as in past seasons.

“It’s almost like the NFL, so that is definitely progress compared to the first season,” he says. “And I’m guessing that next season is probably going to be the same or even better.”

A Rocky Start, A Bright Future?
Without a clear third favorite sport after hockey and soccer, team owner Parker feels that the Czech Republic’s central location, low cost of doing business, and sport-loving culture could help American football become more popular, saying it could see the same growth that soccer enjoyed in the United States.

“I thought for all those reasons, that kind of rising tide will lift all ships,” he says.

While American-born sports such as basketball and baseball have a longer history in the Czech Republic, U.S.-style football is the newbie: the Lions and the Prague Black Panthers were only established in 1991 as the pioneers of the sport here.

“Some people in the Czech Republic, especially in the countryside or outside of Prague, tend to not really like Western culture influence,” and some still look down on anything “American,” Danik says.

The Lions’ attendance figures reveal this lukewarm reception among many potential fans: the team had the lowest attendance in the ELF over the last two seasons, drawing just 638 fans per game in a league that had an average attendance of nearly 4,000 in the 2024 season, according to data from Sports Metrics.

With the team’s financial health on the rebound, Parker says the crucial next step is to close a deal on a home field for the upcoming season. The team also plans to hold a kid’s camp and visit local schools.

“We think getting kids is important, not just because it’s a target market we’ve identified, but also because it’s where the talent will come from,” Parker says. “We want the kids to like it, because that’s where our players 10 years from now will come from.”

For head coach Warner, attracting more fans is the key to success, and the way to do that is by winning games.

“I think if we secure this venue, we will provide a game-day atmosphere. Then it comes down to us as a football team, providing the product on the field, giving them a reason to come, but especially giving them a reason to come back,” he says. “Give them a reason to leave the stadium on a Saturday or Sunday and go to tell people about what an experience it was.”