Are you ready for the UFL?
by Nation Hahn
October 29, 2007 - United Football League (UFL 1)
Back in May the New York Times Magazine revealed that an old Wall Street rebel named William Hambrecht, a Google executive by the name of Tim Armstrong, and controversial Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban were working together to establish a new rival for the NFL to kick off in the fall of 2008. About the only information that came out of the article were the three initial tycoons involved in funding the upstart and the name they had created - the United Football League.
The immediate reaction was skepticism, as the professional sports graveyard is littered with grave sites for the USFL, XFL, WFL, PSFL - and various other acronyms that never grew out of the embryonic stages. Yet Hambrecht, Armstrong and Cuban were well known and well financed - and they all had a history of challenging the status quo, so perhaps they were capable of pulling off arguably the greatest challenge in sports.
For months little was heard regarding the league, which wasn't all that different from many other leagues that had little to show for themselves other than a press conference and a few media clippings. This all changed when the league announced a partnership with TicketRESERVE.com to allow the fans a voice in the initial eight markets for the league. The innovative TicketRESERVE process captured renewed attention for the league and will eventually aid the in the selection of the founding membership.
The UFL provided the locations of twelve potential markets in a press release and TicketRESERVE.com provided the fans the ability to help select the markets. Those initial markets are Birmingham, Columbus, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Louisville, Memphis, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Sacramento, San Antonio, Austin, and Raleigh - Durham. Those particular markets were chosen in part from a combination of interest from ownership groups, a sense of where the league wishes to go in the future, and market research.
I spoke recently with Andy Leach, a Vice President for TicketRESERVE, and he unveiled a little more about the process.
TicketRESERVE was founded in 2003, focusing the majority of their business relationships for their innovative buy and sell marketplaces with the rights owners for the tickets, such as BCS bowls. This prior experience gave them the ability to create a partnership with the UFL that would benefit both the company and the league. According to Leach, the relationship with the UFL developed about six months ago and he described the league as "innovative and quick moving".
The TicketRESERVE platform grants the fans of the UFL a chance to "vote" for the teams for the league by depositing five, ten, or fifty dollars towards season tickets for the 2008 season. This provides the league with market research as to what markets might be most receptive for the league, and it allows fans to get in on the ground floor with a no loss proposition. Either the fan gets the tickets they desire and thereby helps insure that their market receives a team, or they get their money back if the league doesn't choose their location.
This grants the league an early way to differentiate themselves from the competition, which is one of the advantages of being a startup. After all, what other league has allowed fans a voice in the selection of teams through reservations for as little as five dollars a pop?
My conversation with Leach revealed that the initial burst of purchases for the league's ticket reservations has been going well. Going forward they intend to do a lot of viral marketing for the reservation's process throughout the blogosphere, Facebook, and other Internet venues. TicketRESERVE and the league may also partner together to do future activities to jointly promote the league and the TicketRESERVE process, including name the team contests for each UFL franchise.
Leach went on to say that, "Our role in this is to give the fans a voice, to try to use our platform - an enabling platform - to help the league do a better job of selecting the markets. We are excited to be associated with these guys - between the commissioner, Cuban, and the rest they have a very well financed, talented group of founders. We want to provide them with an innovative, enabling platform to launch their league."
The TicketRESERVE partnership followed closely on the heels of the announcement in September that Michael Huyghue had been brought aboard as the first commissioner of the league. Huyghue had most recently been the CEO of Axcess Sports and Entertainment and in that role represented NFL star Adam "Pacman" Jones and other players. Previously he had been a lawyer for the NFL Players Association, a GM for the NFL's World League in 1989, the Vice President for the Detroit Lions, and was also behind the inception of the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Bringing on board a "football guy" such as Huyghue provided a boon of credibility for the league in the weeks prior to the TicketRESERVE announcement, and recently I caught up with the commissioner regarding the UFL and his plans for the future of the newest league on the scene.
His experience in the sports world will help provide the league with the credible leadership it needs to combat the natural skepticism that accompanies a challenger to the richest and most powerful league in the United States - or so the UFL hopes in the aftermath of various other rivals cropping up over the years with executives with little or no experience. Huyghue remarked upon the difference by saying, "This is not our first rodeo. We know what the outcome can be if we prepare."
Throughout the interview Huyghue expressed confidence about the reception of the league from prospective owners, sponsors, and players. He felt like the ownership groups and personalities behind the league will help overcome any skeptics who wonder whether or not this is another fly by night venture. He revealed that among other factors that should lead to stability, the league is expecting in the range of $90,000,000 in capitalization per team from the beginning. He said, "We're going to be around and we know where other leagues have faltered."
Significant amounts of financing are in place already, although local ownership groups still need to step forward. The league are in constant discussions with various ownership groups and they have finished the prescreening on many of them to determine their financial viability. Research continues on floating IPOs for UFL franchises down the road among the fans of each team. The commissioner remarked that, "the idea structure [for fan ownership] is something that is really important and something that makes sense along with the [overall UFL concept] of giving fans better connectivity."
In terms of differentiation with the NFL from a rules perspective, the UFL seems bound and determined to avoid any potential gimmicks. Huyghue commented that, "Ninety-nine percent of what you see in a traditional pro football game will be the same in the UFL. We want to maintain the tradition of the game. By and large the rules will roughly be the same."
By and large the biggest change from the NFL will be enhancement from a fan perspective, not rule changes for the sake of rule changes that critics charged the XFL sought to do. The UFL wishes to allow the fans to have greater access to locker rooms, halftime speeches, practices, and the game itself. They also intend to have an active Internet presence despite the relatively sparse UFL2008.com web site which is currently up. Possibilities include webcasting of games, among other Internet activity. In the "Web 2.0" era huge opportunities exist for leagues that are innovative and willing to take chances to change the way professional sports use the Internet.
All of these plans will begin to come to fruition in mid-to-late December when they announce the eight initial markets for UFL franchises. According to Huyghue, corporate buyers have made up a good percentage of the bulk buys for fanforward reservations through TicketRESERVE. It should come as no surprise that Las Vegas and Los Angeles are among the leaders in buys, as they are the largest markets currently planned for the UFL; however, Raleigh is also coming on rather strong, along with several other of the smaller markets targeted by the league.
Coaches and general managers for the teams will be announced in January, which will lead up to a combine in February and the draft in March. The league also intends to follow the schedule of an NFL-type offseason program which will prospectively help the UFL avoid the pitfalls of the XFL, which only gave each team about a month to come together - a schedule critics saw as one of the reasons for what most observers derided as poor play in the early days of that effort. Each UFL team will then begin their offseason programs in March, with minicamps in April and training camps in July. The inaugural games are planned for August.
Another way the league seeks to differentiate itself from other rivals to the NFL juggernaut is that the players for each team will be paid with a $20,000,000 cap per franchise. This should lead to high quality players, as the UFL will pay out more than any challenger since the mildly successful USFL attempt in the 1980s, something that Huyghue referenced by saying, "We are only going to sign NFL players. Players have to be invited to participate in the UFL and we feel that there is a large number of very quality players out there. We are only seeking players with an NFL pedigree."
Huyghue and the league hope that all of these elements will add up to a league that is attractive to fans - but also to television outlets. He told me that they had held a number of conversations with various networks and that he is optimistic that the UFL will be televised in year one. Additional talks with networks are planned for the week of October 29th through November 2nd. Television coverage is something that is highly sought after, although according to the league their expense projections do not count on significant revenue from television until several years down the road. They are counting on ownership groups that will be willing to sustain losses in the first few years, something that other ventures overlooked when they courted owners that either planned on an early profit or didn't have the financial heft to sustain the losses that startups tend to collect.
The league also has an aggressive plan in place for expansion, as they hope to add teams after each of their first three seasons. The blueprint calls for 16 teams in quick order and some of those may be international. Pushed on the idea of international expansion, Mr. Huyghue mentioned that, "Every league recognizes the cache in being international, but the costs will be a factor. Europe will only be seen in the context of natural growth. It has to be under the right circumstances."
While it is clear that they have serious plans in place for success, the UFL still has a lot of work to do to secure ownership groups, stadium deals, players, and television deals. The league has around twenty employees at this point - including Larry Upson who was the Director of Officiating for the NFL - and all are working to put in place the pieces for kickoff in just over nine months.
The UFL is trying to pull off one of the greatest upsets since Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson in Japan - or since Appalachian State beat Michigan in the Big House . Yet any sports fan knows that those upsets did occur despite long odds and the UFL is hoping that in a few years people will look back and say that these folks dared to take on a giant - and won.
United Football League Stories from October 29, 2007
- Are you ready for the UFL? - OSC Original by Nation Hahn
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer(s), and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.
