A new league

[Bluewhale]

Hi, I am new to here and I hope this is not a stupid question. I doesn't know much about the NFL labor issue.

Since the NFL in lockout now and players complained the owners asking too much. Is it possible that some players form a new league? We know some of them are very rich.

Thanks.

[94feet]

The United Football League is still running, how about that one?

[cochiseuofm]

No...and it isn't in their best interests to try to do so in any shape or form.

[TSE]

The short answer to your question is absolutely yes, but the practical and realistic answer to your question is absolutely no.

They could, but to do so would basically require a massive amount of financial investment, as well as a ton of time and effort, and it would not be successful unless you had genius business minds behind it. Look at Vince McMahon, he had quite a bit of money and was a very successful businessman and he had tried to create the XFL league which ultimately just failed. Now they didn't really have the proper intelligence behind them imo, but he still had a great deal of effort in place to try and make it happen. To take on the NFL with a competitive product is really hard to do as they have a massive first-mover advantage already cemented, so everything has to be done perfectly right and the risk is still going to be perceived by the players as gigantic no matter what I or anybody says about being confident in taking down the NFL. So sure they could do it, but to get enough players involved and willing to take that risk is a very unlikely-to-be-successful coordination effort. I mean look at how the players have chosen to handle this CBA issue, they are losing because they don't have intelligence on their side to know how to pick/assign people to represent their business interests, and as individual businessmen they are mental midgets compared to a guy like Vince McMahon, and even he didn't have enough business brilliance to get it done.

Even if they were successful up to a point, then the NFL would have additional counter moves such as having "scab" players, and they would be able to hold out for long enough until the greedy and impatient NFL players eventually fold and come crawling back, and that would eventually create it's destruction. But theoretically they could win and kick the NFL's ass imo, that would be pretty easy to do if you could guarantee that they would have loyalty and solidarity with each other and the right person in charge of that movement, and all of those things are extremely challenging constructs to put together. I would have full confidence that I could do it if you gave me the money and the players' support, but you would never be able to get those things lined up. The NFL has weaknesses and is run by idiots, and whenever you have a situation like that, there is always a business opportunity. I mean look at the very basic evidence that gives you clues as to the mentality of these people, they couldn't get the Calvin Johnson play right, they still don't know how to solve that problem, and now they are talking about silly rule changes that result in more players taking willing TBs in the endzone. Those are just small items, but they show you an indication of the incompetence behind the thinking levels of the people in power of this league, and that has been a problem for the last couple decades.

People are so clouded by the NFL's success because they still have the best and most popular sport of the 4 major sports, but to me that doesn't sell me because I see them as quite the opposite that the majority of public perception sees them; I see them as a complete and utter failure for not having a far more massive generation of profits as well as coming up way short on fan generation on both a domestic and international level. The NFL has for a decade and beyond now squandered a golden opportunity of the highest order to completely go way off the scale of success and they have anchored themselves to a very conservative inside-the-box overall result.

I have been screaming about this for years now, because the NFL is my personal #1 favorite entertainment medium, and the only way I can describe it is like this, if Bill Gates' net worth was a billion dollars, well 99% of the people in the world would be in awe because he is in such a tiny exclusive group of people in this world who have had massive success, but to me he would be a complete dismal failure if that was his net worth, because the business opportunity he had created had potential for a $60B net worth, as evidenced by what he has today in reality. So while $1B is an impressive number in general terms, in relative terms it would be only 1/60 as a fraction of achieving the maximum of his own personal potential, and that would register to me as an epic failure. I see the NFL as being this kind of epic failure relative to their maximum potential if Goodell wasn't such a lousy Commissioner. And for that reason, the players could totally take the NFL down and win, but again, it would take extraordinary confidence, trust, faith, time, financial investment, etc. to pull it off.

Get all of the NFL players to buy into what I'm preaching and it's done, but if you can't then it's not going to happen. Good luck with making those 500+ key presentations and closes to get the ball rolling!

[CentralQB5]

negative

[Bluewhale]

TSE, appreciate your insightful response. This answered my question pretty much.

Too bad the XFL seems waste their opportunity at the wrong time.

[cochiseuofm]

Did any of you guys actually watch the XFL? It was awful. Any league which can't boast the best talent in the world isn't worth watching IMO. That is why MLS hasn't taken off, because all the best players are in Europe.

In reality, there is zero business opportunity here. To start a new league you would need to convince very rich people to make bad business decisions. Such as risking hundreds of millions of dollars of their worth to try and take on the most powerful sports league in the world. Do you know that out of the top fifty most valuable franchises in the world, in any sport, all 32 NFL teams make the list? But no, if the players show solidarity it no longer matters that the NFL has a powerful brand and is fully established in the world?

To convince players to leave the NFL, a new league would have to pay them more. How are they going to afford that long-term? They won't get TV contracts like the NFL gets at first, they won't have as many fans. Best case scenario they convince lower-tier players to join the new league and still have an inferior product to the NFL, only now the quality of the NFL is also damaged because secondary players are worse.

It is a bad idea that, thankfully, is not going to happen.

[TSE]

TSE, appreciate your insightful response. This answered my question pretty much.

Too bad the XFL seems waste their opportunity at the wrong time.

The XFL would definitely have much preferred to have this timing scenario as opposed to when they pulled the trigger, but still even during this timeframe the XFL was too much of a half-measure of not being thought out well enough and coordinated the same way that I would envision a worthy effort. There's no doubt that any rival pro football league would be inherently risky, but I think the risk is worth it if you had enough money and connection to the relevant networks of business professionals and players/agents etc. You just need the right kind of people involved who are passionate enough about football that can identify the weaknesses of the NFL and exploit the opportunity, and they would have to have the foresight of a comprehensive contingency plan to do all the right moves so to speak. It's not as difficult as it sounds, the hardest part is finding the seed money and a few visionary minds, everything else would fall in place from there. But this isn't a window that just sits around and can be done anytime one person says let's do it. You need hardcore serious people that know what they're doing, and I sure as heck dont know who those people are and how to find them, as I am a bit short on billionaire friends.

[cochiseuofm]

Its not as difficult as it sounds? Starting any business, much less one to rival a multi-billion one, is a hundred times more difficult than it sounds.

And the XFL is not a good example to what you are proposing. The XFL never tried to compete with the NFL for players, it took guys who weren't talented enough to make the NFL and paid them next to nothing. I think the highest a player could make was $7,500 a week, and that was if they were a quarterback and they won the game that week. And they aired all of their games after the Super Bowl but before the draft, aka one of the slowest periods of the year for the NFL.

[TSE]

The XFL is not a great example, but nothing has ever existed that is a good example. The XFL was recent and therefore still relevant to bring up as it relates to some aspects that are at least similar to the NFL, i.e. in that at least it was a pro football business. Any way you slice it though, the NFL doesn't deserve to exist after all that they've done to so barely scratch the surface of it's max potential from a profitability and a fan-interest standpoint. There can and should be a new and better league to put the NFL out of business, and if that doesn't happen then that's just unfortunate, cause the NFL is not doing a good job in managing their league, opportunity, and the sport itself. It sucks compared to what it could and should be, and any organization that realizes this and moves on it appropriately has huge profits to gain, in addition to performing a glorious service for the sports world.

[Icness]

I did my senior thesis in college on the USFL and why it failed. To summarize 6 months of effort into one concise post, here's why it failed:
1. Division amongst ownership. Some wanted a viable stand-alone league, some wanted to merge with the NFL. One wanted cash by suing the NFL, which is what they ultimately did.
2. Player costs far exceeded initial estimates. Certain owners grossly ignored the proposed spending limits, and the others either caught up at their detriment or sold/folded.
3. Depth of talent. The front-line players for most teams could (and eventually did) start for NFL teams. But the bottom half to 2/3s of USFL rosters was made of players that would be lucky to stick on NFL practice squads. That hurt the level of play and fans knew it.
4. The move of the season. Fans perceived it as weakness when they changed seasons for their season. Attendance went down almost 80% at some venues after the move.
5. The NFL flexed its muscle with sponsors. Two major USFL sponsors were Dr. Pepper and Toyota. The NFL struck a richer deal with Dr. Pepper, essentially paying them to not do business with the USFL. The NFL renegotiated their deals with other automakers to get more revenue and they (correctly) guessed that Toyota wouldn't follow along and would pull back out of sound business practices and/or shame of being seen as cheap.

That last point gets overlooked quite a bit and IMO is as big of a problem as any for a competitive league. One of the reasons the UFL is struggling is lack of lucrative sponsorship. In short, upstart leagues need sugar daddies that don't mind throwing $$ at it with little chance for immediate return. That's what killed the WNBA (which costs the NBA tens of millions to keep afloat) and the AVP volleyball tour too, and it'skilling NASCAR right now. In this economic climate, good luck with that to any new football league.

[LAKESHOW]

I did my senior thesis in college on the USFL and why it failed. To summarize 6 months of effort into one concise post, here's why it failed:
1. Division amongst ownership. Some wanted a viable stand-alone league, some wanted to merge with the NFL. One wanted cash by suing the NFL, which is what they ultimately did.
2. Player costs far exceeded initial estimates. Certain owners grossly ignored the proposed spending limits, and the others either caught up at their detriment or sold/folded.
3. Depth of talent. The front-line players for most teams could (and eventually did) start for NFL teams. But the bottom half to 2/3s of USFL rosters was made of players that would be lucky to stick on NFL practice squads. That hurt the level of play and fans knew it.
4. The move of the season. Fans perceived it as weakness when they changed seasons for their season. Attendance went down almost 80% at some venues after the move.
5. The NFL flexed its muscle with sponsors. Two major USFL sponsors were Dr. Pepper and Toyota. The NFL struck a richer deal with Dr. Pepper, essentially paying them to not do business with the USFL. The NFL renegotiated their deals with other automakers to get more revenue and they (correctly) guessed that Toyota wouldn't follow along and would pull back out of sound business practices and/or shame of being seen as cheap.

That last point gets overlooked quite a bit and IMO is as big of a problem as any for a competitive league. One of the reasons the UFL is struggling is lack of lucrative sponsorship. In short, upstart leagues need sugar daddies that don't mind throwing $$ at it with little chance for immediate return. That's what killed the WNBA (which costs the NBA tens of millions to keep afloat) and the AVP volleyball tour too, and it'skilling NASCAR right now. In this economic climate, good luck with that to any new football league.

that is damn good stuff.