Each year, 257 dreams come true across the three-day NFL draft.
Commencing on the last Thursday in April, boys who grew up scoring touchdowns in the streets of their hometowns become men selected to play at the highest level of professional football.
The NFL is made up of stories, and the draft is no different. Narratives run deep, and this year, we had nail-biting moments, with Jacksonville trading up to steal Travis Hunter, Maxwell Hairston hyping everyone up, and, of course,Shedeur Sanders falling out of the first round and not being picked until the fifth.
Though plenty was happening in Green Bay, home of the Packers, where the draft took place, over 3800 miles away, across the Atlantic Ocean, amidst the glitz and the glamour of one of the celebratory events in football, another dream was coming true.
April 26, 2025
The Baltimore Ravens recently announced they were joining the Global Markets Program, which awards NFL clubs international marketing rights. Selecting the UK as the territory they’d like to focus on expanding their fanbase, the team decided to go big or go home this weekend by getting stuck in with the fans and inviting them to be part of the draft festivities.
On the south side of London’s Neo-Gothic Tower Bridge sits an aptly painted black public house: The Raven.
Perched atop the pub is “The H-Bar”, where on this day, more than 50 of the Ravens’ UK fans have flocked from across the United Kingdom to watch their team announce their fourth-round pick in the 2025 draft.
Gaz Poole, whose blonde hair has a tint of lilac, is the first to greet me as I join the congregation. He’s stood among some of the founding members of a group known as the UKRavens across social media. Today, their decades-long loyalty to the Ravens will get rewarded when one of the flock’s members gets to announce the pick live on television.
If you’ve spent a second in Baltimore, you’ll know that the Ravens are ingrained in the city. They are a part of its lifeblood, and they take football seriously.
That signature Charm City enthusiasm is palpable in London.
A jovial melody of voices floods the room, peppered with accents that traverse both the United Kingdom and the United States. It represents what a melting pot the sport has become over the years since games started being played out of The States two decades ago.
That enthusiasm crescendoes as team mascot Poe enters the room, taking the energy up a notch. He arrives just a few picks ahead of the Ravens’ time on the clock, and fans queue to snap a picture to pass the time.
Amidst them is James Ogden, whose lifelong fascination with the draft has led him to evaluate budding young prospects and write reports from his corner of the United Kingdom for almost two decades.
“I could say it was a dream come true to announce an NFL Draft pick,” Ogden writes in a recent post for Red Star Baltimore, “But, to be honest, it never entered my wildest dreams that it could even happen.”
However, his fellow UK Ravens community wanted to acknowledge his hard work by allowing him to stand behind the NFL mic and utter the immortal words, “With the 129th pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, the Baltimore Ravens select…”
But before the big moment, the group gathers outside the pub where a stunning view of Tower Bridge backdrops the historic moment.
While they work on herding themselves into a polite assembly, passersby stop to catch a glimpse of what the wave of royal purple is up to on the busy streets of London.
A prominent accent cuts through the crowd, “Oh my God, what is all this?” the voice belongs to a woman vacationing with her husband and their two friends from Baltimore, Maryland.
They cannot believe that their hometown team is being represented more than 3000 miles across an ocean in the tiny corner of London that they chose to explore at the precise moment a draft pick was made.
Whipping out their phones and frantically filming and snapping photos to send back home, they gush about how much they love the team.
“I was wearing my Ravens sweater every day until now,” one of the men shares.
The joy is infectious, and they can’t help but stick around to bask in it.
Sidling up with the group, they, too, get to be part of the moment Ogden declares that Linebacker from Cal, Teddye Buchanan, is the 129th pick of the 2025 NFL Draft and the newest member of the Baltimore Ravens.
The spectacle has gathered a crowd now. One man even stopped to stand with the creative team of the Ravens just to see live television in motion.
Another serendipitous moment happens just before the pick, when someone separate from the group walks by in a Lamar Jackson jersey, grabbing the #8 proudly and raising a fist in the air – a gesture met with lively cheers.
It is a welcome respite. With so much doom and gloom clouding our every day, there is something restorative about standing among strangers who found a community in one another over a shared love of football.
When the fanfare dies down and the majority have nested back atop the pub, one man stays outside pint in hand, chatting to the Marylanders.
His name is Dave Cressey. He first visited Maryland in 1991, vowing that if the state ever got itself a team, he’d support them.
In the meantime, he flirted with division rival – the Cleveland Browns – who fortuitously relocated to Baltimore in ’95, meaning Cressey could fulfil his prophecy of supporting a Maryland team.
He took his first trip to Baltimore in the early 00s’ where he connected with people he’d met on a web forum, one of whom was from the UK, Ben Mortimer. At the time, Mortimer lived in the city and would graciously host fans while they were visiting so the group could attend games together.
With the rise in social media, the reach of the group only expanded, now connecting hundreds of fans across the UK. Almost 200 of whom stay in regular contact over messaging service WhatsApp.
Testimonies From UK Baltimore Ravens Fans
Thomas Wilkinson, 35, a veteran from Liverpool, recalls falling in love with Charm City when he docked at Fells Point in July 2010 as part of a Royal Navy deployment.
“It was a home from home,” he says. The first game he watched fell on his 19th birthday, the 2010 season opener against the New York Jets, where the Ravens won 10-9.
There must’ve been something in the air that day because another fan, Liam, recalls working a night shift at a Casino where he turned the TV channel to that same Ravens/Jets game.
“I loved the way the defense celebrated every stop and how hard they played,” he says. “Never stopped supporting them since.”
Liam was in attendance when the Ravens played opposite the Tennessee Titans in London during the 2023 season, highlighting the tailgate the group of UK Ravens fans put on to celebrate as one of his fondest memories of becoming a Baltimore fan.
Another fan in attendance at that game is film critic Dallas King, who spent many years tuning into the Super Bowl for the trailers.
“I decided to start following the game properly when David Ojabo, who grew up in Aberdeen, was drafted by the Ravens,” King, also from Aberdeen, says, “Despite me having a name that suggested the Cowboys were the way to go, I was convinced that the Ravens were the ones to support.”
Having joined the WhatsApp chat during the 2023 season, King says, “No matter the highs or lows, the experience was made better by the community of the UK Ravens.”
Threads run through the UK Ravens community, tiny serendipitous moments that led to the group finding one another, including my own testimony. I joined the group ahead of the 2023 season after being a Ravens for almost 14 years. Until then, my dad and I were the only two Ravens fans I knew in the United Kingdom. Now, I’ve got a flock to celebrate or commiserate with no matter the hour of the day.
We can have fun tying pieces of the UK Ravens together all day, but we should round it back to James Ogden, who shares a last name with the first pick the Baltimore Ravens ever made: Jonathan Ogden.
Ogden’s #75 dons the back of one fan, Kris Prowse, who has opted – on this ceremonious day – to wear the jersey that started it all.
History is a circle, and the UK Ravens community represents that. It’s also representative of the future, with the NFL continuing to expand beyond the borders of North America. There are now even pathways for international players who want a shot at a spot on the 53-man roster, and, of course, many games are now played internationally each season.
With the warmth on display in that tiny corner of London on Saturday, it’s heartening to see what this expansion is doing, not only for the game but for communities of people around the world who need one another more than ever.
You can find the UK Ravens on Instagram at @_ukravens and on X at @UKRavens.
The team also have official international accounts as part of the Global Markets Program. You can find them on X at @RavensInUK or on Instagram @RavensInUK.
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