People are not showing up to games.
Is there a market for a professional spring football league in the United States? The answer appears to be no, but Rupert Murdoch’s FOX Sports and the former owners of a football league called the XFL, an entity that failed three times since 2001, are soldiering on with a business called the United Football League. The UFL is not doing well putting people in the seats in six of the league’s eight markets. St. Louis football customers are turning out to see the product and in Washington, the local UFL team is selling tickets in a small capacity soccer stadium. The rest of the teams are doing poorly. The league is getting next to no support in Memphis. Arlington, Texas, Detroit, Birmingham and Houston are not doing well. People in San Antonio have seemed to have lost interest in spring football.
Spring football has always been a losing proposition. In today’s environment, the National Football League is a 365-day endeavor with the calendar starting in the spring with organized team activities, then training camp, the season, the post season and the Super Bowl and then free agency and the college draft. Interest in college football seems to follow a similar trajectory meaning that even in the spring, the NFL and college football will dominate the season leaving little room for a spring minor league football set up. Municipalities are not clamoring to land a United Football League franchise. If the UFL wants to rent out a building, the municipality will do that. Spring football is buried in the world of sports coverage. There are major events, The NFL Draft, The Masters, the Kentucky Derby, and the normal sports events, the Major League Baseball season, the Major League Soccer season, the NBA and NHL playoffs, the NCAA basketball championships that take place in the spring. The UFL has an uphill climb.
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Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
