For the United Football League to be successful, they are going to have to grow in market fan bases and not worry so much about being a national sport, at least for now.
The League announced its TV schedule and partners this week, and many fans were kind of disappointed. I think the public expectations for this league, in the ESPN era of sports, is to have every game on national TV just like the NFL.
The problem with that is the UFL is not the NFL, and has no delusions that they can compete with the biggest North American Sports league. The UFL has to be smart, has to find the grey area to grow its fan bases and going local is absolutely the best way to do just that.
Every UFL team has a local TV partner. The Hartford Colonial will get some games on the New England Sports Network, the Omaha Nighthawks will be on Fox Central, The Sacramento Mountain Lions will be on Fox Pacific, ETC.
On top of that Versus and Mark Cuban’s HDnet will broadcast a game a week to a national audience. While that does not sound like a lot, the league is also being very savvy and utilizing the internet to reach fans.
Every UFL game will be streamed live on the UFL official website. Now I watched probably half of the 2009 UFL games on my laptop and it worked well, and since I live in a non UFL region it helped grow the fan base of this league.
This is another step in a coordinated effort by this league to find a fan base and then grow it. They moved their teams out of markets with NFL teams, and now they need to take a year or two and grow some local fans. Having the games on local TV will help do that, and given the low cost of UFL tickets I think that will even lead to some increased ticket sales.
That is how this league will make it, one step at a time. Step One was to get on the field, they did that in 2009. Step Two will be to grow local fan bases to make each UFL franchise economically viable, and then Step Three or Four would be to get their games on a network like the NFL Network.
Slow and steady is how this league avoids the mistakes that took down other upstart leagues and insures its place in the football world.
Related Links:
• The Business of the UFL
• UFL News reservationforsix.com
• UFL Notes inquisitr.com
• Sacramento Mountain Lions news
• Omaha Nighthawks news
• Hartford Colonials news
Comments
I would like the UFL to try to go into markets that the NFL are not in. One day the NFl may want to expand and we need to know where we can expand to. I have been GM of the NFL for 4 years and I want to have 4 more teams in the next 5 years. So it is good the UFL is testing markets. Also, with no NFL team the UFL can be the only football show in town (or maybe just compete with a local college team).
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