AFL-NBC deal changes everything
by Campbell Blake
Published on March 6, 2002 under Arena Football League (1987-2008) (AFL I)
Hot off the heels of the XFL failure, NBC is getting back into the business of broadcasting professional football with the announcement that they will be the new television home of the Arena Football League starting in 2003.
AFL commissioner David Baker, along with the Chairman of NBC Sports Dick Ebersol, announced that NBC would begin broadcasting games starting in time for the 2003 season. NBC will televise 15 games during the regular season and all post-season games including the league's championship game, the Arena Bowl.
One constant of the AFL has been the spring to summer season, but that will be no more. It was also announced that as part of this deal the AFL season will shift to a February start in 2003. NBC's broadcasts will kick off on Sunday, February 2 and will conclude with the Arena Bowl on Sunday, June 22. A couple reasons for this could be the fact that NBC holds the broadcast rights to the second half of the NASCAR season and that the season would be over before the start of NFL training camps.
"With the NBA basically vacating NBC for cable games on ESPN and a few games on ABC it opened up a great deal of programming on NBC," said Baker. "We have been in there talking with NBC for about two years now and they know our game."
One thing known is that while there is a lot of potential for the AFL to gain exposure from this deal, the league will certainly not be getting rich from it. There will be no rights fees involved and NBC receives a stake in the league that is valued in the area of $20 million.
With the disaster of the XFL fresh on their minds, you would have to wonder why NBC's brass would be so willing to get involved with another football league. Even though the AFL appears to be on much more solid financial ground that the XFL was, it is still a league trying to find an identity within many of its markets which currently have teams. The one major factor that would make this an attractive deal for NBC is that nine NFL owners currently, or will in the future, own AFL teams and that the NFL owns an option to purchase up to 49.9% of the league itself. Ebersol, who partnered with the World Wrestling Federation to start the XFL last winter, said he is more comfortable with his new deal than with the one he had with the XFL.
"We are marrying up with an established league, a legitimate league and its 16 years of quality performance at the grassroots level," Ebersol said. "Against the backdrop of the enormous falloff in all major sports viewership in the last 10 years, where the 18-to-34 males demographic has fallen off in large numbers, here all the numbers are positive."
Football is a game America loves, and NBC and the Arena Football League are hoping that even with the bad taste of the XFL still in America's mouth, that football fans will sit in front of their televisions on Sunday afternoons and watch the more established AFL via network television. When the deal kicks off in 2003, the league will be in eight of the top 10 US television markets, so their wishes could become a reality, but only time will tell. The AFL is happy to let it.
Arena Football League (1987-2008) Stories from March 6, 2002
- AFL-NBC deal changes everything - OSC Original by Campbell Blake
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.
