You're right in that times are way different. No football league since then has come close to USFL ratings, in part because ( a ) there's more NFL football on TV now than ever, ( b ) there's more college football on TV now than ever (the USFL operated largely in the pre-NCAA-lawsuit TV universe) and ( c ) the USFL actually paid for star players.
No league since then has done that, the XFL didn't do that, the UFL didn't do that, the supposed new USFL won't do that, this A11 nonsense won't do that.
The public will watch the hell out of NFL football. And it will watch a lot of college football. It's not going to watch knockoff supposed pro football, especially as gimmicky as this A11 bs.
"Getting on TV" is not the same as "gaining a TV contract."And again the threshold for gaining a tv contract has been lower due to a focus on demographics vs raw numbers and thousands more hours to fill
Well, let's look at arena, shall we? Their ratings on NBC dropped every year, struggled to get to the 1.0 range despite incessant promotion when NBC didn't have NFL football, and no one knows if the AFL is actually getting paid for this.Look at arena
A new football league that purports to not try and take on the NFL and act as a complement or a developmental tool or offer live football in places where they don't have it could find a niche and exploit it. But they ain't getting paid to be on a reasonable TV outlet and people ain't gonna watch that **** just because they watched the USFL 30 years ago.
They're just not going to do it. I know the alternative league nerds act like there's huge pent-up demand for this, but if there was huge demand, the UFL wouldn't have played to crickets and the XFL wouldn't have lost $80M.
It's not happening. You can pine all you want for a successful league whose initials aren't NFL, but you're not getting it.
