On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 12:57 PM, Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote:
> Haven’t we established in prior threads that — for a myriad of reasons — > football ratings are down, earnings at sports networks are down, and > layoffs are common? As a business decision, it would make more sense to > invest in an abacus company than a new sports franchise. > I would say all that means is it makes no sense to replicate the NFL. The NFL and media companies made their multi-billion dollar contracts under the assumption that the demand for NFL games would grow forever. Once the ratings drop everybody scrambles to make up lost revenue. A new league made to a smaller scale would not have those burdens. Even with falling ratings football still has the largest audience and largest revenues by far. And there's a large enough group of recent college players and NFL rejects to put together teams in a small league. Two lessons from the previous version of the XFL: no broadcast network is going to touch it. And with the concerns with brain injuries, making rules to encourage more violent collisions will be very unpopular. The main reason I think the idea of a new XFL will come to nothing (assuming it's not the equivalent of vaporware right now) is that there is a form of off season football being played now which is arena football. On the last page of the sports section of the print newspaper (I am that old) there is a roundup of "other leagues," for sports that do not have local teams. One thing I have noticed over the last few years is how the MLS is growing while the Arena Football League is shrinking. Without doing research, it looked a few years ago like the arena league had 20 teams while MLS had 6. Today the opposite is true. I don't think a new XFL would do any better than the arena league. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
