Are You Ready for Some Different Football?
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by user JasonO
Over the past six years have you found yourself increasingly tired and unable to enjoy activities you used to love? Has being forced to watch NFL games left you feeling isolated, sad, and alone? Have you longed for the day when another football league would again emerge from the darkness and fill your days with light? If the failure of the XFL has left a void in your life, I am here to tell you there is hope. Mark Cuban is backing a new football league, called the United Football League (UFL). Okay, I am sure there are about as many people out there longing for the days of the XFL as there are people wishing the WNBA season could be turned into a year-round venture. But let's pause for a moment and take a look at what Mr. Cuban has to say before we write him off completely.
Cuban bills the UFL as a "different kind" of league, one with teams that would be owned not just by franchise owners, but also by the league itself, and by fans. Another backer of the project is Google executive Tim Armstrong, someone who has experience with IPOs. Essentially, if you wanted, you could buy some shares in your favorite team, and have a vote on team issues similar to the way stockholders of a company can vote on some company issues each calendar year. The number of votes you get of course corresponds to how many shares you own, so unless you put millions of dollars into it, your votes wouldn't mean much. And if the league did flop like the XFL, you'd lose all of your money. But you could truthfully tell a girl at a bar that you are the part owner of a professional football team, so there is some upside. I will hand it to Cuban, Armstrong, and the others involved in this project- this concept of public ownership is a different approach, though it certainly doesn't guarantee success.
Below is a list of points Cuban makes about the UFL on his personal blog, along with my responses:
1. There is obviously demand for top level professional football.
Yes, there is demand, but what is it that people are demanding? Do they just want football at any cost? If you put football on TV, will they watch it? Being a diehard football fan, I can tell you the demand is not just about football itself. We could just watch Madden simulations if all we longed for was football. When we think about supply and demand, we can't think of it like we would in another industry. If there is a demand for staplers, a new company can come in and make staplers and probably do pretty well by satisfying our need for staplers. Buy you can't satisfy our need for football just by having various people play football on TV. Football fans have relationships with their NFL teams, and the teams have a history with their fans and cities. There is a special aura and magic surrounding opening week, the playoffs, and the Super Bowl. Many fans have built up a mental database of NFL trivia to impress other guys at the local bar. Sure there is demand, but if the UFL wants to succeed, it really needs to identify what exactly is in demand. The NFL isn't just football. In many ways it's a lifestyle.
2. The NFL wants and needs competition. They have grown so big and powerful that every move they make is scrutinized by local or federal officials. A competitor allows them to point to us and explain that their moves are for competitive reasons rather than the move of a monopoly.
No one wants competition. On some level companies say they appreciate it because it makes them work harder and smarter and develop better products. It is true that competition does this, which is great for the consumer, but history has shown when you take away governmental protections, by nature businesses squash the competition until most (if not all) competitors are gone. The NFL does not want competition. It may "welcome" it in formal press conferences, but that's about as far as it goes. Does it need competition? Having a new league come along every now and then will certainly keep it on its toes, but a long term successful competing league would not be in the NFL's best interest, unless it could turn it into a kind of farm system, but then it would cease to be a competing league.
3. They just extended their CBA. Their CBA structure is not designed for a competitive environment. Competition for top players, even if the UFL gets just a few, increases prices at the top end for all teams. Every star will get paid more, but still have to fit under the cap. That forces teams to use more low cost players, at the expense of signing the middle of the roster. That gives us access to quite a few very, very good NFL players. The downside is that it will significantly impact small market NFL teams and its unclear how the NFL would respond to that and what the impact would be on the UFL.
This is a much harder idea to wrap one's mind around. The CBA is not indefinite, and it would be very interesting to watch how the next CBA talks go if the UFL was creeping up in the shadows. The UFL probably could not get too many quality NFL players right now, but what happens in the future if we have an uncapped NFL year? My guess is NFL teams would spend a lot more money on first term free agents (proven talent approaching the end of their rookie contracts) and make up for it by refusing to pay aging veterans very much at all. The result could be a flock of veterans getting pretty nice contracts in the UFL. In fact, depending on what happens with the CBA talks, you could have a scenario where the UFL becomes kind of a "senior league" if you will, with a lot of talented ex-NFL players over 30. All speculation of course, but Cuban definitely has a point about the makeup of the CBA and what it could mean for the UFL. I would expect the NFLPA would take advantage of the competition between the two leagues, and the NFL would find itself giving up more revenue as a result. So tell me again why the NFL would want this competition?
4. There are a lot of markets that are bigger than some current NFL markets that do not have teams that would love to have a pro football team.
I think these cities would like to have a successful professional football team. No city is going to want to pay for all the things cities have to pay for if their franchise doesn't attract many fans. Cities would rather work to recruit a new NFL team, even if their bid was a long shot. That being said, if Cuban and his fellow investors could work it out to where they made it lucrative for a city to have a UFL team, it may work. After all, if they have no reason to say no, they'll say yes.
5. There are a lot of smart people involved in the UFL
There were a lot of smart people involved in the USFL and the XFL too. Donald Trump, Vince McMahon, and Ted Turner come to mind.
6. Its a great TV product
You've got the NFL, college football, NFL Europe, and the AFL as options for TV viewers. Outside of the big games like the Super Bowl and the playoffs, the only people watching NFL games are the fans for the most part. The UFL will only be a great TV product if it has fans. No station will want to compete for something with continuously low ratings. I guess Cuban could set up a deal with HDNet. Maybe Dan Rather could do the play by play?
Now I have taken a (long) look at what Cuban had to say. What do ArmchairGM visitors think? Can the UFL succeed? Let me know why or why not. Would you buy stock if your city got a UFL franchise?
(a brief note about the author JasonO: JasonO is Jason Opdyke, and avid football fan, a less-than-avid writer, and founder of and contributing developer to SearchQB.com, THE football search engine.)
