XFL could learn from indoor football
January 28, 2018 Updated: January 28, 2018 6:41pm
The proposed XFL reboot serves as a reminder that only one rogue football league has ever survived on its own.
It wasn’t the American Football League. The AFL did well, but was ultimately absorbed by the NFL.
The Arena Football League, which turned 30 years old last spring, has figured out how to survive. In fact, the indoor game has grown, spawning four other national indoor football leagues: the Indoor Football League, the National Arena League, the Champions Indoor Football League and the American Arena League.
The short formula for indoor football success: Focus on the small things and don’t scale up.
“It’s a popular sport,” said Ron Oswalt, strategic partnerships and sponsorships director for the Shreveport-Bossier Sports Commission. “But mainly, it’s an affordable sport.”
Other leagues weren’t as lucky. The American sports landscape is littered with the carcasses of failed football leagues: Continental, United States, United, World and the original XFL.
The new XFL doesn’t care. With $100 million to spend, it will start with eight teams playing a 10-game schedule. Cities and other specifics are still to be determined.
San Antonio’s only experience in indoor football lasted two years, with the Talons playing in the Alamodome from 2012 to 2014. No prospective local investors have stepped up since then.
Indoor football survives, Oswalt said, because of the money it didn’t spend and thus didn’t lose. It’s the sports marketing equivalent of finding spare change between couch cushions.
A successful indoor team focuses on small, sports-starved markets. Big city indoor teams pick up the stragglers who can’t afford other pro sports in the city.
The league keeps payroll low, Oswalt said, looking for players who aren’t ready to hang up their cleats.
Those players are happy to do any sort of public appearance. And in small towns, those sort of promotions translate to tickets.
Indoor football teams paste advertising on anything, even the game itself.
“You have the ‘Coca-Cola first down,’” Oswalt said, “or the ‘Cedar Park Nissan field goal attempt.’”
The result? A cheap night out.
“A family of four can go to an indoor football game and sit in the balcony for $20,” Oswalt said. “For another $20, they can eat supper at the game.”
It’s a winning formula, said Oswalt, who has helped run four indoor football teams.
When Oswalt was hired to market sports for the city of Brownwood, his first official act was to measure the floor of Brownwood Coliseum to see if it could hold an indoor football field.
“Ten yards short,” he said, recalling the disappointment.
Speaking of disappointments, World Wrestling Entertainment mogul Vince McMahon is likely in for another one.
Oswalt believes the XFL could succeed if it followed the indoor football, small-town, community-focused formula.
Forget that.
McMahon said the new XFL will be a $100 million venture in search of national sponsors and a national broadcast partner.
Good luck, Vince. With existing leagues and networks scrambling for eyeballs and ad dollars, successfully creating a national footprint from scratch will be a long shot.
Nor will the league bring anything new to the table.
The old version had an assortment of gimmicks, such as in-huddle cameras, nickname jerseys, wrestling-style sideline reporting, and an emphasis on cheerleaders.
None of the hype mattered. McMahon and NBC lost $70 million in 2001, the league’s only season, because it was bad and it was boring.
The new incarnation of the XFL will offer more of the same. Fans have grown accustomed to the size, speed and strength of the NFL. They won’t get any of that with the new league.
And then there are the unspoken political and cultural undertones of McMahon’s announcement, all of which work against the endeavor.
McMahon promised the league would not employ players who break laws or have criminal histories.
It’s a great idea, except that it isn’t.
Fact is, most fans don’t care about off-field behavior unless it involves domestic abuse or sidelines a player on an opposing team.
All of the misbehaving players in the NFL happen to be top-tier athletes, hence their ability to continue working. The XFL won’t be able to afford great players, and it won’t take guys in trouble, so it’s going to be stuck with second-tier players who happen to be good citizens.
It would be great if fans rallied around that, but they won’t.
The new league, McMahon said, won’t tolerate political protests, either.
If you’re a fan of irony, that previous sentence was for you.
Creating a new league that bans political protests in order to draw fans tired of a existing league with political protests? That new league is itself a political protest, folks.
Building a league around ideological purity translates into a misguided business plan. Decisions made in anger are rarely good ones.
At some point, even the most enthusiastic XFL fan is going to get tired of rooting for a team with flat-footed, stone-handed receivers who support small government, or an offense that only runs sweeps to the right.
Twitter: @roybragg
Roy Bragg
Columnist | San Antonio Express-News