Into the Fire: The AAF & XFL Can Both Succeed

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The best part about living in the digital age is the easy access we all have to information and entertainment. If you we really want to watch something or listen to something there is nothing really stopping us from zapping it to our television screens or getting it on our magical handheld phones. If I were to tell you back in 1998 that you would be able to watch every NFL game on your phone, have every song ever easily played from your phone, and be able to video chat with your brother or sister cross country after a game all from your phone you would probably have thought the United States elected a wizard as President. But here we are! This opens the door for so many different voices to be heard, creative endeavors to be pursued, and new ideas to be brought to the forefront. Some ideas that are not actually all that new but different from the general thinking, are the ideas Charlie Ebersol and Vince McMahon have for two new football leagues. It is because we live in the digital age that Ebersol’s Alliance of American Football and McMahon’s XFL can both survive and thrive.

The XFL created a template of both what not to do and what to do when it trying to earn the attention and dollars of the football starved public in the United States. Portions of that template, especially on the presentation side, were even taken and put into use by the NFL. There are different and unique ways to present football and there are people who can do it. With the amount of resources there are now compared to the original run of the XFL, it is a completely different atmosphere than it was nearly 20 years ago. Television networks, while important, are not the end-all-be-all for these leagues. The AAF has a good deal with CBS to air on their network and cable channel, but the majority of their games will be featured through streaming. The XFL has McMahon’s WWE Network to potentially land on or if he chooses to, McMahon is a pioneer in the world of streaming content to fans; the XFL is in good hands when it comes to someone knowing how to get their product to the people.

The NFL is the best football there is and it will continue to be. It may be the only football you want to watch and that is cool, but in this brave new world where sports betting is going to be bigger and more legal than ever, other leagues have an opportunity to reach an audience that will gladly watch and bet on their games. The player pool is large enough and the amount of money to be made is too. There handcuffs are off and there is an easier path to success compared to the last time anyone really took a good shot at the monolithic NFL’s stranglehold on pro football. Even if the XFL and AAF become de facto minor leagues, the MLB, NHL, and now the NBA all have minor league systems that garner at least local attention. The AAF is targeting football starved markets and the XFL is presumably going to be an interactive new take on the sport. These are smart strategies and both can work! It’s not like we all aren’t talking and thinking football in the spring months anyway.

Ebersol is right when he stresses the AAF filling in the gap in the calendar of no football for the millions of people who stop after the Super Bowl. The NFL will rule over this land for as long as it wants, but the sport of football is what we all love and if someone wants to give it to us, I don’t see why anyone would ridicule or not want that. This is 2018; pro sports and college athletics are on our screens 365 days a year. Streaming services are giving us the games on demand and wherever we go. Even the sport of Pro Wrestling has six, count them, six different television deals in place for six different promotions that are all streaming and successfully finding an audience in every way possible. The audience for that sport and for football is gigantic and in the case of football, a massive demand is going to be met and I think met successfully because there are just too many ways for the AAF and the XFL to find their audience.

– Alan Michael