The
China Bowl was the name of a proposed National Football League (NFL)
pre-season exhibition game that had
been scheduled to take place in August 2007, but later postponed to
2009 and ultimately canceled, between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks at the National
Stadium
in Beijing.
The
originally scheduled China Bowl was to be played at Workers Stadium
in Beijing, China
, on August 8, 2007. The game was to kick-off the one-year
countdown before the
2008 Summer
Olympics in Beijing, and would have been the first
NFL-sanctioned game to take place in China, as well as the first
NFL preseason game played outside the United States since the
league abandoned the
American Bowl
series in 2005.
On
April 2, 2007, the NFL
announced the rescheduling of the preseason game in Beijing to
August 2009, so that more focus can be placed on the start of the
International Series, the
first regular season game to take place outside of North America,
which took place at Wembley Stadium
, London
that
October. Both teams have expressed interest in still playing
the game, and the Patriots, having operations in China, would have
been an opponent either way.
As a result of the recent recession, the Patriots closed their
China base, and the game will not be played. The Patriots were
instead assigned to the next game in the International Series,
against the
Tampa Bay
Buccaneers, which was played at Wembley on October 25,
2009.
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