By Dr. James J. Barney
Faculty Member, Legal Studies, American Public University
Professional sports commentators have repeated a constant mantra that spring football is doomed to failure. These doomsayers cite a laundry list of prior attempts as evidence of this potential failure.
Critics of spring football, for the most part, have subscribed to a collection of myths about the sport that were previously circulated by individuals and institutions, including media companies and the National Football League (NFL). But these entities had vested interests in the failure of spring football or the creation of a minor league football system.
However, the recent incarnation of spring football that harkens back to the United States Football League (USFL) of the 1980s demonstrates that plenty of players deserve a chance to display their talents or say a long goodbye to the game they love. Many minor league small cities like Birmingham, Alabama, should have an opportunity for their moment in the sun. In addition, at least a million hard-core football fans in the U.S. will gladly watch a football game even as the spring flowers bloom.
The Longevity of Spring Football Depends Upon Avoiding Past Mistakes and Ensuring Profitability
While there are sentimental reasons that justify spring football’s survival, professional sports are multi-billion-dollar businesses. The success of spring football will come down to whether the current owners, a collection of media companies, can minimize costs and risks while maximizing profitability.
Reducing costs and risks and increasing profits are the central tenets of any type of business, including sports management. Therefore, the owners of minor league football will have to avoid the mistakes of the past.
There are many practical reasons why minor league football may now carve out a niche in the sports world. The most important reason is that the NFL, which once viewed spring football as a threat or competition, may have learned lessons from the National Basketball Association (NBA), another professional league that long opposed the creation of alternate leagues.
The NBA’s developmental league, currently called the G-League as a tribute to its Gatorade sponsor, serves as an example of a minor league system that could help the interests of a professional league. Despite the fact that the USFL has not been formally embraced by the NFL, the NFL has not opposed this minor league, creating the opportunity for future cooperation between minor league football teams and NFL teams.
Learning Business Lessons from the Past
The minor football league also seems to have learned from the past. Organizing a multi-city football league is no small undertaking.
While some commentators have focused on pictures of empty seats at Protective Stadium at non-Birmingham Stallions games, the current version of the USFL, owned by media companies and based in one city, addresses several of the problems faced by prior attempts at spring leagues that either aspired to go head-to-head against the NFL or who overextended themselves with a multitude of unnecessary headaches. These problems involved travel, stadium costs, advertising expenses and legal fees.
Beyond travel and stadium costs, a league that plays in a dozen states requires a team of lawyers well versed in a collection of laws dealing with insurance, the compensation of players and risk mitigation. Then, once the lawyers got their share, advertising companies in many media markets — especially in expensive areas like New York and California — bled those previous minor football leagues dry because they were more focused on getting fans in the stands. Basing a spring league in one location greatly reduces expenses, providing a minor football league with a chance to survive.
Focusing on a Media Presence and Corporate Sponsorships
The USFL has not only limited its costs by using one city for its headquarters, but it also understands that today, that it must focus on delivering a strong media presence that attracts at least a sizeable share of the TV sports viewing audience, rather than just filling football stadiums in multiple cities. In contrast, minor league sports teams of the past aimed to make the lion’s share of their revenue with spectators in the stands. The days of making the majority of one’s money selling t-shirts, drinks, popcorn and tickets are over.
In the modern era, sports teams and leagues make a large share of their money by selling media rights and corporate sponsorships. The current USFL, owned by media companies, directly addresses one of the main reasons prior spring football leagues failed.
Major media networks that entered into large media deals in the past with the NFL had an incentive to make sure that spring football failed. The networks may have viewed a minor football league as diluting their investment in the NFL. Ignoring minor leagues or providing negative coverage of a competitor may have played a role in the demise of prior spring football leagues.
USFL Owners Have an Interest in the League’s Profitability
The media companies that currently own the USFL have an ownership interest in seeing these leagues become profitable. They also have the resources and reach to help make sure that minor league football survives its initial growing pains.
Recognizing that money is made by creating a media presence, the owners of the USFL have focused their efforts on this front. The use of drones and players who wear microphones provides football fans with a unique, visually appealing sports experience.
Admittedly, the visuals of a largely empty stadium at non-Birmingham Stallions games have been the subject of much Internet derision. However, the attendance at Birmingham Stallions games has been respectable from my personal observation, even though official attendance numbers have not been released. These attendance figures, while not officially released, are in line with attendance figures from prior attempts to make spring football work in Birmingham, including the Birmingham Iron of the short-lived Alliance of American Football.
Spring Football Benefits Fans, Players, NFL Scouts and Sports Employees
The spectators at Birmingham Stallions games have not only been entertained but have also provided plenty of crowd shots for the USFL. These photos can be used in the USFL’s future promotions and game day visuals to obtain advertisers for the league’s second season.
The quality of the games, while far from the level of the NFL, has been respectable. These games have been largely competitive, providing many players with new, live-action game tapes. More than a handful of current USFL players will likely get a call from NFL scouts or agents; other players will have an opportunity to engage in a long goodbye with the game they love.
The unsettling reality is that more than 98% of college football players never have a chance to play in the NFL. The lack of a football minor league has deprived many talented players of the opportunity to either hone or showcase their talents after college.
However, the USFL can fills the void that long existed for the thousands of players who didn’t get drafted or didn’t make the cut after being drafted. The current USFL provides a small percentage of those players with one last chance and the NFL with a way to scout low-cost talent.
In addition to providing a valuable platform for players, the USFL serves as a potential training ground for other professionals. The USFL could provide coaches, referees, reporters, and others interested in entering the sports industry — including women and people of color — with valuable work experience. This experience could, in the future, help to break down gender and racial barriers.
USFL Games Also Benefit Communities
Additionally, many critics of spring football overlook the impact that football games can have on cities like Birmingham which aren’t quite ready for an NFL franchise, but they deserve a chance to spotlight their cities. In a 2006 article, Professor Jeffrey G. Owen, an economics professor at Indiana University, persuasively argued that proponents of sports have often emphasized the economic benefits of professional sports. However, according to Professor Owen, cities do derive a collection of intangible benefits from hosting a professional sports team.
Since the dark days of the 1960s, Birmingham has done a tremendous amount of work in healing its racial divisions. The USFL provides the city, its mayor, and other civic leaders with the opportunity to illustrate that many popular stereotypes regarding the city do not comport with modern reality.
Cities like Birmingham may not be significant media markets warranting a major league franchise, but the city is full of wonderful people who deserve their moment in the spotlight. Similarly, there are numerous small and mid-size cities that could benefit from spring football.
Attending a USFL game in Birmingham’s Protective Stadium, you can see people from different races, social classes, and different areas of rural and urban Alabama, unified by their love of a simple game. In this hyper-polarized era, our country needs as many opportunities as possible for people from different communities to come together and share experiences. During these shared experiences, people from different backgrounds can recognize that there is a tremendous amount of commonality between people.
The USFL also has given free tickets to children accompanied by an adult, and this gesture has filled the stands with families and their children. Many of these children may be attending a sporting event for the first time and will get to create memories that will last for a lifetime.
But these feel-good stories will not ensure the survival of spring football. Instead, the media companies that own this minor league are driven by viewing statistics and money, the heart of sports management and any business enterprise.
There Is an Ongoing Demand for Football Games
Over the past weeks, there have only been a few stories about the television ratings for the USFL. These stories have emphasized how the USFL’s first week had nearly three million viewers and then dropped to around one million viewers. While the decrease in viewers from week one to week four looks alarming, these stories downplay that the USFL met or surpassed viewing ratings for the NBA playoffs, English Premier League soccer and the NHL playoffs.
The ability of an unestablished league with no recognizable stars to compete against playoff games in other sports leagues and the world’s most-watched sports league illustrates that there is a demand for football of any variety among viewers who are either hard-core football fans or bettors looking for some football action. A million viewers, if sustained, will provides the USFL with the ability to sell advertising time to a diverse demographic group.
If there is a second season, the USFL can work on developing relationships with a collection of corporate entities, including sports betting companies who could act as sponsors and travel and leisure companies to bring out-of-state fans to the games. These partnerships will also improve the league’s profitability. Given the prior failures of spring football, these sponsors — the key to long-term profitability of the USFL — should be prudent and exercise caution, however.
Predicting the Demise of Spring Football Is Premature
While there are many people looking to write an early obituary for the USFL, there are a collection of factors, including the league’s efforts to cut costs and the NFL’s neutrality, that differentiate the most recent attempt at spring football from earlier attempts. So those people looking to proclaim the current USFL a failure at the halfway mark should save their ink.
A true assessment of USFL success will be made by media executives privy to viewership ratings, the league’s profit and loss ledger, and its long-term business plan. At this time, few people know how or if the most recent experiment in spring football will end.
In the meantime, football fans and their children will enjoy good times and quality games. If the USFL comes to an end, the experience of another failed attempt at spring football will make for a great case study for future sports management and business students.
About the Author
Dr. James Barney is a resident of Birmingham, an avid sports fan, and a Professor of Legal Studies in the School of Security and Global Studies. James teaches numerous law classes, including sports law. In addition to possessing a J.D., James possesses several master’s degrees, including one in U.S. foreign policy. He recently obtained a Ph.D. in history from The University of Memphis. James serves as one of the faculty advisors of the Phi Alpha Delta law fraternity and the Model United Nations Club, and he is the pre-law advisor at the University.
