Death of the Alliance of American Football

[Needschat]

10 hours ago, Wings said:

As a resident in the Portland area. Pro Football ain't happening. 

 

Portland is ALWAYS mentioned when a new league or an established league is rumored to be expanding.

Look at all the "When MLB expands to 32 teams, Montreal and Portland are shoe-ins" nonsense this site always has. 

 

 

[gosioux76]

2 hours ago, Needschat said:

 

Portland is ALWAYS mentioned when a new league or an established league is rumored to be expanding.

Look at all the "When MLB expands to 32 teams, Montreal and Portland are shoe-ins" nonsense this site always has. 

 

 

I also live in the Portland area, and this speculation is usually just the knee-jerk analysts looking at which TV markets don't host more than one team in the Big Four leagues. 

Baseball, though, is a far more legitimate option here than I think many (myself included) have thought previously. But football? Not happening. 

[verno]

On 3/21/2018 at 10:39 PM, WideRight said:

Several things come to mind with this new league.

 

1) I really want to see where the money is coming from, and are they ready to lose about 100 million a year for a while.   You have to be prepared for that.

 

2) You also have to be prepared to prop up (not relocate) whichever team or teams in the league start off with crappy seasons.  One of the worst part of many startup leagues is that teams are constantly moving, which makes it hard for anyone to trust enough to invest their time/money being a fan.

 

3) I like many of the names being associated with the football side of things, but want to see more linked to the TV and Financial side.

 

4) How do they deal with absolutely horrible weather in February and March?  Do you limit the teams to those states where it is not so bad or play in domes?  

 

5) Apart from the financial backing issue, which is where most leagues fail, the other big item is franchise location.   Do you go for larger TV markets to make CBS happy (NYC, LA, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Denver, etc.) but at the risk that attendance will be miserable because those cities also have NBA, NHL and MLB?  Or do you go for second tier cities that may do better at the box office but not draw big TV crowds?  Can a league pretend to be a big deal if it is made up of Louisville, Norfolk, Memphis, San Antonio, Albuquerque and Sacramento?  My guess is that they are going to try to go with the large market but smaller venues if possible.   

 

I would recommend they consider weather (or dome), mid-sized stadiums if they can, and a range of mostly NFL cities for TV.  So, a quick list for me would be these:

 

Detroit (Dome)

Minneapolis (Dome)

Indianapolis (Dome)

St. Louis (Dome)

New Orleans (Dome or Tulane Stadium)

Atlanta (Dome or Ga. Tech)

Miami (FIU stadium)

Orlando (UCF Stadium)

Raleigh-Durham (Duke, UNC or NCState)

San Antonio (Dome)

Dallas (SMU Stadium)

Houston (U. of Houston or Dome)

San Diego (Qualcomm)

LA (StubHub)

Portland (Providence Park)

Salt Lake City (Rio Tinto or U. of Utah)

 

I just don't see how you can put a team in NY, Philly, DC, or Boston with an open air stadium in February & March, so there goes the huge NE TV market. 

 

 

Aside from the fan experience, what affect does weather have on the play of football?

[Mac the Knife]

On 4/3/2018 at 2:17 PM, Sec19Row53 said:

I'll call for a friendly wager on this. NFL TV revenues will increase in their next deal.

 

Guaranteed.

 

[bookmark] :-)

Let's see... NFL had zero teams in the nation's second largest media market when it entered its last deal, vs. having two teams in it this go round... they've also added an entire new package into the mix with the Thursday night games.  Hmmm... I think I'll pass on the friendly wager.  But only because of those variables.

 

On 4/10/2018 at 6:37 PM, Needschat said:

 

I know about the Triangle.  I've had meetings at SAS, In Carey.

"Carey" is actually Cary, and saying you know the area because you've had meetings at SAS is like my saying I know upstate New York because I spent a night at a Holiday Inn in Schenectady.  And I swear, I'm retorting this in a Don Rickles, friendly, "I'm picking on you" sort of way than with any actual venom or hostility.  It's a retort that popped into my head, and I thought it was just too good to waste.

 

On 4/11/2018 at 7:17 PM, Jacobseye said:

Tulane built a new stadium a couple years ago named Yulman Stadium and it has about 30,000 seats.

I didn't know that.  Cool.  I'll have to look into it.  That being the case?  Yeah, it would make New Orleans a place with potential for an AAF or XFL.  Despite only having the team for a year, one of the smartest locations the USFL had in its three year history was New Orleans.  It lost a boatload of money and wound up in Portland, but neither of those instances had anything to do with an inability of the team to draw fans.

 

On 4/12/2018 at 7:00 PM, verno said:

Aside from the fan experience, what affect does weather have on the play of football?

Nothing.  But if the fans won't come to have the experience because of the weather, it's kind of a moot point.

[verno]

3 minutes ago, Mac the Knife said:

Let's see... NFL had zero teams in the nation's second largest media market when it entered its last deal, vs. having two teams in it this go round... they've also added an entire new package into the mix with the Thursday night games.  Hmmm... I think I'll pass on the friendly wager.  But only because of those variables.

 

"Carey" is actually Cary, and saying you know the area because you've had meetings at SAS is like my saying I know upstate New York because I spent a night at a Holiday Inn in Schenectady.  And I swear, I'm retorting this in a Don Rickles, friendly, "I'm picking on you" sort of way than with any actual venom or hostility.  It's a retort that popped into my head, and I thought it was just too good to waste.

 

I didn't know that.  Cool.  I'll have to look into it.  That being the case?  Yeah, it would make New Orleans a place with potential for an AAF or XFL.  Despite only having the team for a year, one of the smartest locations the USFL had in its three year history was New Orleans.  It lost a boatload of money and wound up in Portland, but neither of those instances had anything to do with an inability of the team to draw fans.

 

Nothing.  But if the fans won't come to have the experience because of the weather, it's kind of a moot point.

Good point, this league needs to strike a stellar TV deal to succeed. But in a vacuum, football doesn't NEED acceptable weather, hell, growing up in northern Missouri, I played better the worse winter got!

[Mac the Knife]

Players LOVE playing in bad weather outdoors.  I ran a flag football league for 15 years.  Any time that it was raining, snowing, etc., despite my organization having a contract which mandated that games had to be called due to potential field damage, my players begged me to play the games.  And to be honest, as long as it wasn't currently raining, I let 'em, because I enjoyed the hell out of watching them pretend they were playing in the 1978 (or was it '79) AFC title game.

 

Fans HATE attending games in bad weather though.  By far, the worst-drawing games in the three year history of the USFL (aside from markets where the league shouldn't have been in the first place, like Chicago and Washington) were played under lousy conditions in outdoor stadia.  The Birmingham Stallions front office people believed (and there's at least some data to back it up) that rain cost them 20,000 fans a game.  In looking at Memphis Showboats attendance figures, you could tell when the weather was lousy vs. when it wasn't.  That's part of the problem of a spring season league overall.

[Needschat]

1 hour ago, Mac the Knife said:

Let's see... NFL had zero teams in the nation's second largest media market when it entered its last deal, vs. having two teams in it this go round... they've also added an entire new package into the mix with the Thursday night games.  Hmmm... I think I'll pass on the friendly wager.  But only because of those variables.

 

"Carey" is actually Cary, and saying you know the area because you've had meetings at SAS is like my saying I know upstate New York because I spent a night at a Holiday Inn in Schenectady.  And I swear, I'm retorting this in a Don Rickles, friendly, "I'm picking on you" sort of way than with any actual venom or hostility.  It's a retort that popped into my head, and I thought it was just too good to waste.

 

I didn't know that.  Cool.  I'll have to look into it.  That being the case?  Yeah, it would make New Orleans a place with potential for an AAF or XFL.  Despite only having the team for a year, one of the smartest locations the USFL had in its three year history was New Orleans.  It lost a boatload of money and wound up in Portland, but neither of those instances had anything to do with an inability of the team to draw fans.

 

Nothing.  But if the fans won't come to have the experience because of the weather, it's kind of a moot point.

 

I know the area, is like saying it's the same as we have here in the Capital Region: We're grouped together but fiercely independent.  Chapel Hill, Durham, Cary, Raleigh, Zebulon, just like us in Albany, Schenectady, Troy, Glens Falls, Saratoga Springs, Amsterdam-Johnstown-Gloversville.  If there was a college football stadium larger than the 10Kish on SUNY at Albany's campus, we'd be considered for the AAF.

[Mac the Knife]

Yeah, I can relate.  The only thing that ****es me off is the use of "Raleigh-Durham," the only thing to which that term actually applies is the airport here.  If the airport had been named for Orville or Wilbur, or Ronald McDonald for that matter, "Raleigh-Durham" is never conceived.  Whenever someone references "Raleigh-Durham," I tend to ask them when the airport authority entered negotiations with (insert sports league here), and which runway the team would be playing on.

[Mac the Knife]

2 hours ago, verno said:

Good point, this league needs to strike a stellar TV deal to succeed. But in a vacuum, football doesn't NEED acceptable weather, hell, growing up in northern Missouri, I played better the worse winter got!

 

AAF doesn't need television.  It needs adequate capitalization to survive without television revenue.  TV as a source of revenue for all but the "big four" leagues is drying up faster than, well, think of something really dry.  The future is on the internet, with ad-supported live streaming.  The Arena Football League and Ted Leonsis have the right idea in this regard - but it's going to be a while before it takes sufficient root to actually work, for any league.

[Gothamite]

It’s going to take decades before streaming or other media come even close to eclipsing television revenues.

 

Until then, the AAF needs television.  

[BBTV]

42 minutes ago, Mac the Knife said:

 

AAF doesn't need television.  It needs adequate capitalization to survive without television revenue.  TV as a source of revenue for all but the "big four" leagues is drying up faster than, well, think of something really dry.  The future is on the internet, with ad-supported live streaming.  The Arena Football League and Ted Leonsis have the right idea in this regard - but it's going to be a while before it takes sufficient root to actually work, for any league.

 

17 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

It’s going to take decades before streaming or other media come even close to eclipsing television revenues.

 

Until then, the AAF needs television.  

 

 

I think we're seeing the start of this now, at least with MLB.  There's been a few Phillies games that have been broadcast exclusively on Facebook, and at least one or two on NBC Sports app.  It's clear that they're at least cognisant that the cable TV subscriptions are down and likely to continue to go down, so they must be at least thinking about either a subcription-based app system, or maybe even selling rights to Facebook.  People HATED this, as the Facebook experience had stupid emojis floating all over the screen and it took me like 10 minutes to figure out how to disable the chat, and lots of old heads didn't know how to get either the NBC App or Facebook stream to work.

[dfwabel]

43 minutes ago, Mac the Knife said:

 

AAF doesn't need television.  It needs adequate capitalization to survive without television revenue.  TV as a source of revenue for all but the "big four" leagues is drying up faster than, well, think of something really dry.  The future is on the internet, with ad-supported live streaming.  The Arena Football League and Ted Leonsis have the right idea in this regard - but it's going to be a while before it takes sufficient root to actually work, for any league.

Leonsis is so right regarding sports on Monument that Vinik folded the Storm but partnered for a Tampa Bay lifestyle OTT network.

 

Leonsis is hedging on SCOTUS ruling favorably on legal sports betting (which could be as soon as Monday) and using Monument as his vehicle to betors.

[Mac the Knife]

I didn't say it was going to happen overnight.  But it's coming.  Production cost reductions coupled with an exacting ability to measure audiences will see to television's demise in terms of dominance when it comes to non-major sports properties.  How long it will take to make them money - not how, because it's only going to take one of two paths (i.e., a subscription service, or, more likely, a free, ad-supported model) - is the only question left unanswered.

 

Leonsis' SCOTUS bet is a smart one, but I don't think it's going to have nearly the positive impact on some of his properties (AFL) as others (NBA).  But if they can find a way, it'll be more dollars collected, which is all that ultimately matters.

[Brian in Boston]

12 hours ago, Mac the Knife said:

The only thing that ****es me off is the use of "Raleigh-Durham," the only thing to which that term actually applies is the airport here.

 

Given your experience in the broadcast industry, does it particularly aggravate you that Nielsen lists the market as Raleigh-Durham for radio and Raleigh-Durham (Fayetteville) for television purposes? 

[Mac the Knife]

That's an exception, Brian, because they do that with a lot of markets for radio and television.  When you see "Boston-Providence-Hartford" (as I have), you kind of know they don't consider them one and the same; they're just grouping them together for demographic purposes.

[Needschat]

3 hours ago, Mac the Knife said:

That's an exception, Brian, because they do that with a lot of markets for radio and television.  When you see "Boston-Providence-Hartford" (as I have), you kind of know they don't consider them one and the same; they're just grouping them together for demographic purposes.

 

Adding Hartford to Boston-Providence is like adding Albany, Saratoga, and Glens Falls to NYC.  

[Needschat]

I remembered this afternoon that the Professional Spring Football League's Carolina Cougars - original huh? - were going to play on South Carolina campus.  If the AAF needs a mid-Atlantic stadium, they could hit that one.  

[dfwabel]

9 minutes ago, Needschat said:

I remembered this afternoon that the Professional Spring Football League's Carolina Cougars - original huh? - were going to play on South Carolina campus.  If the AAF needs a mid-Atlantic stadium, they could hit that one.  

Sure...and not draw $hit!

 

Speaking of South Carolina, the first QB Steve Spurrier contacted to workout and possibly sign was Stephen Garcia!

Yaknow, former Gamecock, former MLFB's #6 overall pick in 2016, problem child, spent 2012 on the CFL I/R and never on a NFL roster Stephen Garcia. And to try to gain interest of Gator fan, he dropped Tim Tebow's name.

 

 

[Mac the Knife]

And yet?  That's how media markets work...

 

And to go off on another, similar, old man tangent... no more than one sports team, across all leagues, should be permitted to use a particular state or regional name.  If you have a Minnesota Vikings (which did it first in that region), you have to have a Minneapolis Twins, a St. Paul Wild, and a Minneapolis Timberwolves.  My rationale for this?  "Carolina."  "Carolina" is a region that encompasses two entire states, yet invariably is reduced in the minds of casual sports fans to either Charlotte (most frequently) or Raleigh (less so, but frequently as well).  I cannot count how many times I've told someone I live in Raleigh and been told "Oh, where the Panthers play!"  Similarly, I can't cite how many times (including in the media), the NHL's Hurricanes have been referenced as playing their games in Charlotte.

 

So, New Rule:  one team, and only one, gets to use a regional/state moniker, and only then if there's a real reason for doing so (e.g., the Texas Rangers would in my view have a valid reason given that they're named for the lawmen of the same name; the California Angels, much as I prefer that name to any other they've used in their history, wouldn't).

[Brian in Boston]

5 hours ago, Mac the Knife said:

When you see "Boston-Providence-Hartford" (as I have), you kind of know they don't consider them one and the same; they're just grouping them together for demographic purposes.

 

I've been involved in the broadcast industry in one way or another for going on 31 years and I've never seen Boston-Providence-Hartford lumped together as a single television Designated Market Area or radio market. On the television side of the industry, you're looking at the distinct Boston (Manchester), Hartford & New Haven, and Providence-New Bedford DMAs. In radio, you'd see the same real estate divided between the Boston, Providence-Warwick-Pawtucket, Hartford-New Britain-Middletown, New Haven, New Bedford-Fall River, and Manchester markets. Over 3-plus decades, there have been some slight shifts in market area - particularly on the radio side of the industry - but I've never known "Boston-Providence-Hartford" to be considered a single market for demographic purposes.