Despite skepticism in the advertising community and the media,
NBC and Time Warner are moving confidently toward a June 2000
kickoff for their fledgling pro football league. Architects of
the new league, including NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol and
Time Warner vice chairman Ted Turner, are considering having 10
to 12 franchises, a 10-week regular season and a championship
game around Labor Day, according to sources familiar with
discussions. The new league would not challenge the NFL, which
traditionally begins regular-season play on Labor Day weekend,
or the NBA, whose national-TV rights are owned by NBC and Time
Warner's Turner Sports. The new league's sole major league
sports competition would be baseball.
In all likelihood the new league won't have NFL-caliber players.
Rather than engage in a bidding war with the NFL for stars, it
would create regional franchises stocked primarily with former
collegians who have a local following and are willing to play
for less than $100,000 a season. One candidate city, for
instance, would be Birmingham, which fervently supported its
United States Football League team in that league's brief run
from 1983 to '85. Last spring 28 players from Alabama and Auburn
who were eligible for the draft—including Tigers star
quarterback Dameyune Craig—weren't selected. Another 53
eligible players from Mississippi, Mississippi State and
Southern Miss were not drafted. No one from NBC or Time Warner
(the parent company of Time Inc., the publisher of SPORTS
ILLUSTRATED) is speaking on the record about the prospective
league, but the planners clearly are counting on large regional
pools of players, mostly in college football hotbeds, to draw
enough fan and TV interest to make the league viable.
Cameras and microphones in the locker rooms and huddles are
among other elements that could serve to distinguish the new
league from the NFL. Also, to capitalize on NFL fans who are
turned off by uncaring millionaire players, the new league may
contractually bind its players to interact with fans—by signing
autographs and making public appearances, for instance.
As fan-friendly as that sounds, the last thing America needs is
a new sports league. So how will the two media giants sell
America on summer football? "The big question is, Can NBC and
Turner create a league that will keep the 21- to 34-year-old
male at home on a weekend night?" says Tony Ponturo, corporate
vice president of media and sports marketing for Anheuser-Busch,
which buys more than $200 million in commercial time on sports
telecasts. "Baseball's getting stronger, and the growth of
sports is outdistancing the growth of marketing dollars for
advertisers. It'll be tough for the new league, but certainly
you'd have to give it a hearing because of the brains of the
people involved."
The big test will be if NBC can get a 2 share in major markets
in the dead sports-TV weeks from late June until Labor Day by
showing the likes of Craig and former Florida State quarterback
Thad Busby duking it out for Birmingham and Orlando.
Issue date: August 17, 1998
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