Is Spring Football Just Destined To Fail?
I’ve been a vocal proponent of spring football. I want to see it work. I like the idea of a minor league. I simply enjoy football in general. And yet…I have yet to watch a single live snap of XFL football this year. I either find myself watching something else, like youtube videos or shows I’m currently working through, or more likely, I straight up forget it exists. Every time I suddenly remember it, usually randomly in the middle of the week, I say to myself I should watch some. Then I don’t. And increasingly, instead of watching it, I’ve caught myself wondering why I’m not. And these days I’m wondering if spring football ever has any chance to genuinely work. At least in the current climate.
Before I talk more generally, I will reiterate that I think the current 3rd iteration of the XFL fumbled the bag from the get-go with their scheduling. Starting directly after the Super Bowl, when everyone is coming down from a massive high, was stupid. Running your league directly against NFL free agency and more importantly, March Madness, was incredibly stupid. The Rock is dumb and has a massive ego. I guess that’s why we don’t call him The Brain. Hell, even the new logo looks like a failed crypto exchange. The USFL at least figured the schedule part out and will come to us during the dry season.
The thing I keep running into with Spring football, or minor league football if you want to call it that (because it is), is that it has a lot of inherent problems that have no obvious solution. Below I’ve listed several of what I think are the major unwinnable conundrums they face.
How to make yourself stand out from regular football
As an NFL fan, the biggest and most glaring problem with spring ball is that it’s just…inferior. An on-field product that is inferior to both the NFL and College ball. It’s like watching an entire league of nothing but Hall of Fame games. The league is made up of washouts and wannabes. Anyone who is talented enough to make the games interesting is just going to get signed by the NFL. This is likely to always be a problem, so the leagues need to find some other way to stand out. An answer might be major rule differences and structure changes. But how far do you go? A large number of people, like myself, would probably prefer the leagues to get kinda weird and sort of experimental as a way to innovate. But that is going to alienate anyone who hates change and doesn’t get it. The Arena League actually did this, and a lot of people think it’s too weird, and Arena Football has died multiple times. So how far do you go? Stick close to NFL football and just be a worse product or try out some new stuff and risk turning people off?
How to do keep fans coming back?
Marketing your spring league will always be a massive issue because these leagues simply will not have the funds to really show up. Out of the new leagues so far, the AAF did the best job marketing itself with a major commercial push and getting major TV networks to air the first week. I think it generally worked. The AAF also folded several weeks later because they ran out of money. So the big major push didn’t get people to stick around, and the new league’s attempts to better manage their money also hasn’t worked because nobody remembers they are around. These leagues need every ounce of attention to survive at all and to get the attention you have to get people aware of you. One thing I’ve wondered is if they are approaching this the wrong way and trying to appeal to the wrong people. A number of studies seem to show that Zoomers are not watching football as much as Millenials and up are. Zoomers grew up in a different, digital world, with so many distractions to take their attention away from the sport. This might be the actual place to try and market a spring league, but it would probably require a different approach than the leagues trying to get on regular TV. These leagues maybe should embrace things like Youtube and Twitch, putting many of their marketing funds into social media. This will, of course, annoy anyone older than 35, but I think this would be a smarter approach. Make these leagues very modern and digital, cater to that side of things, and you might be able to inject yourself into a more welcoming market. If you do it right, that’s the hard part. I didn’t draw them, but the FCF (Fan Controlled Football league) is kind of doing this. I have yet to check it out. If any of you have, give me a report.
Embracing the community
Going along with keeping people coming back I often wonder about the teams simply being in the wrong place. One of the joys of minor league sports is that teams are everywhere, and games are cheap. Paying a light fee to fuck around with the boys watching a minor league baseball game is a great way to spend a few hours on a sunny afternoon. This is especially true for cities that are smaller and underrepresented on the sports stage. But they keep putting these teams in major cities. Houston, DC, Seattle, LA, Vegas, Dallas (Arlington Renegades), Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, San Antonio. I can see the logic to it. These cities already have lots of sports fans, and these cities are large, so you have the best chance of getting more people to casually show up. But at the same time, why would a sports fan with many different options decide to spend their weekend at a minor league football game? I wonder if the right way to go would actually be to embrace the smaller cities starving for sports. The USFL has a team in Birmingham, a city with a decent population deep in football country that is severely devoid of other major sports teams. Places with little to no major representation are often eager to glomp onto a little piece of community identity. Instead of sticking yet another team in Houston, why not try Austin or El Paso? Albuquerque? Tuscon? Colorado Springs? Omaha? Tulsa? Lexington? Columbus? Richmond? Raleigh? Charleston? There are a ton of smaller cities without any sense of sports identity, and a team could potentially be embraced there. But they have less people, and less money, and less national attention. But it might be easier to survive if you can spend less money in these cheaper cities and embrace the locals.
Timing
Kinda went into this with the XFL already, but a big issue with spring and summer football is…spring and summer. Sports are great in winter when you can’t often go outside if you live above a certain latitude line and watching them on TV is no biggie since you can’t do anything out. This is the time of year when the sun comes out and I want to go outside and do yardwork, or go hiking, or ride my bike, or just sit in the damn backyard and read a book. I want to sit outside at a cafe and sip a drink and do lunch. Going to live games in this weather is cool, but watching them on TV is not. The games are on in the afternoon too, so I can’t settle in for some primetime XFL action. By the time I settle in on Saturdays, the games are long over. This only becomes more of an issue the later you go into the year. Of course, the earlier you start it, the more of a different problem you have. The USFL is being played in the doldrums of post-draft season when football fans experience severe atrophy, but will be going up against NHL and NBA playoffs. The XFL is playing right now, but March Madness is happening and the NFL is still interesting thanks to free agency drama and draft fun. The weather will be nicer in June, but will also be hotter and more dangerous.
Connection to the NFL
Unfortunately, spring football is kind of a competitor to the NFL, and in that sense, it’s fucked. But connecting itself to the NFL to function as a sort of summer league, getting the league’s backing, might be the only way to give it a strong foothold. Of course, the summer league works great for the NBA. Just send your young bench players into a summer tournament to get experience and develop. Can that work for the NFL? Football is a wildly different sport. If you are already signed on an NFL roster, why risk your body for this cheapo league? Would we really tune in to see teams UDFAs and 6th-rounders balling with washouts and whoever else is around? The Spring leagues have effectively gotten a few dudes into the NFL, like PJ Walker.
The biggest problem of all – apathy
Unfortunately, the biggest problem here is that getting people to watch requires an investment from the individuals. NFL football has been a default part of American life since before I was born, so sticking by it is easy. I grew up with it. It’s a part of me. Spring football is not. Like any other league I didn’t grow up with and already considered a part of my life, getting interested requires a committed investment on my part. It requires me to put in the effort to watch it. To go out of my way to choose it over a multitude of different things to do. It’s surprisingly difficult to stick with it. I lost my investment in Baseball the instant I went to college and was no longer in the vicinity of the Orioles. I gained an investment in the Trail Blazers since I moved to Portland and saw them on local bar TVs all the time, and they are a major source of city sports culture. I have tried and somewhat failed to get into Kraken hockey, but since I don’t live in Seattle and can’t casually go to games when I have the time and didn’t really follow hockey before this and didn’t know what to get attached to, I have struggled to keep up with them. Caring requires effort, and most of us just aren’t going to put it in. This is the big reason why I think the leagues should try smaller cities. Big cities have so much to do, but a football team can add a lot to a smaller city. Portland has two major sports teams (Blazers and Timbers) and the city fucking loves both of them. LA has like 10 teams and only cares about the Lakers and Dodgers.
The current XFL is probably going to die and the Rock will pout about it while drinking his stupid vodka. The USFL has smarter people and more funding behind it, with FOX backing the league and attempting to play the long game. I think this will work. The USFL was watchable last year and this year could be again. But I just can’t keep shaking the feeling that something is missing from these leagues. Something that truly sets them apart, that makes them worth paying attention to. They need to offer more than just “more football!”. They need to offer more community, or modernization, or personality. Compared to the original XFL and even the reboot, the Rock’s XFL is bland as shit and if they slapped the USFL or AAF logo on the field you wouldn’t be able to notice a difference. Spring football needs to find its little niche, but I worry that no league can keep our attention long enough for that to happen.
It could just be me being dumb and not knowing things but the Xfl seems to be doing ok for the time being. At least it looks like they’ll finish this year anyway. Spring football in general probably isn’t going to garner much attention overall but I do want it to keep existing to fill some niches for junkies like me.
Also love that you brought up LA and how only the lakers and dodgers get any respect around here in this city.
I thought USC football/UCLA basketball at least got some traction in LA…. But I live in FL, so what do I know.
I’ve heard it said that the Chargers are likely to be perpetually doomed because in terms of football they’ll be behind the Rams, USC and even residual Raiders fandom from almost thirty years ago. And in terms of overall LA sports also behind the Lakers, Dodgers and UCLA.
Oh both of those colleges have traction here. In terms of professional teams though, it’s just lakers and dodgers here is all. Hell even the raiders still have some love despite being in a different state now.
I liked the AAF a lot, have had a lot of issue watching these other ones. Unfortunately the AAF was actually doing pretty well but got nuked by that billionaire so he could steal their gambling tech.
That said, competing against the WBC this spring was not great for spring football. This year’s WBC got insane viewership, even in America.
Pity they couldn’t even spell Louisiana right.
My personal Keys for Success for Spring Football
1. Sign/Draft Exciting young College Football Players that probably wouldn’t stand a chance in the NFL.
2. Become a Developmental League to help ease in the College to NFL Transition
3. Locate your Teams in Markets that don’t have a Football Identity, places like Portland Columbus or Milwaukee
4. Be Persistent, don’t blow all of your money on advertising
5. Offer a Unique Game Day Experience
1. Not enough of those players, and many of them won’t play in a league like that and will be NFL or nothing.
2. The NFL doesn’t want them to be a developmental league really. They will use them for rules development, like the sky judge or onside kick alternatives. But this also deters people as they feel it makes the league gimmicky.
3. This can be hit and miss due to many factors. Orlandos XFL team has had the 2nd worst attendance, but they are 0-5 and absolute dog water. So people won’t go to see them score 2 TDs all day and lose by 30. And there is no guarentee places like Portland will show up just cause they don’t have the NFL.
4. Can’t comment here much. But Im sure the Rock being the face helps get some “free” publicity.
5. Easier said than done. Only so much you can do and it will cost usually cost money to make it happen, so not sure the returns justify it. The product ultimately needs quality more than the experience around it.
You actually made this exact point a few weeks ago: They need to put spring football in the spring. Stop putting it at the end of winter. Let us miss football. No one wants to watch the Super Bowl one week then the very next week watch a bunch of scrubs who failed at the pro game.
Have the XFL run April-June and people will watch. Have the XFL championship games lead directly into minicamp, so that the players who excel in the XFL immediately get the chance to show their stuff at the NFL level. Let spring football be the _start_ of the football year, not a shitty tack on to the end of it.
This right here. Beneficial to all parties involved timing wise.
April and June? That is NBA and NHL playoffs and Championships. Also Baseball starts right at the start of April too. The gap after the Super Bowl will do the opposite of what you guys are saying. People will be out of “football mode” and be on to one of the 3 other major sports, or just Summer in general. You capitalize on the Super Bowl momentum and try to get people hooked enough to go to a few games or buy some merch.
I feel like this is the biggest problem. Spring is just an all-around terrible time to try to start a lower-level football league because it’s the point in the year where there’s oversaturation in sports content. March Madness alone is already killing the XFL in ratings, and the NBA/NHL Playoffs plus Opening Week of the MLB are going to do the same to the USFL’s ratings.
The only time that a football league could possibly try to milk any sort of viewership is during the Summer following the end of the NBA and NHL seasons. At that point, the only sport they’re competing with domestically is midseason baseball. Sure, it’ll likely clash with the beginning of NFL Training Camp and preseason, but if the goal is to try to get viewership, this is literally the only time period that would possibly work.
The problem with Spring Football is that it will be compared to the NFL, not that it can’t be successful on its own. It needs to be built as a local sport with local interest (like DPD said). St. Louis has attracted more than 35K fans to their XFL “home” games. The NFL is the only “national” sports product we have; whether they can sell tickets locally barely factors into their budgets. Spring football needs to focus locally for success and in under-served (or in the case of STL, actively abandoned) markets. #KAWISLAW
Avoiding March Madness is probably an especially smart way to go, because XFL ratings fell dramatically when the tournament started. I don’t know if they were in line with league and network expectations before the tournament, but they were and frankly still are comparing quite well to other mid-tier sports properties (the NHL, various English-language soccer broadcasts, non-traditional sports on major networks). The USFL did not perform quite as well last year, but perhaps year 2 will see improvement.
One thing the XFL and the USFL have going for them over the AAF is a consistent presence on widely-available networks known for hosting major sports broadcasts (ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, FOX, FS1) with only some broadcats shuffled off to odd places (USA, FX) while most of the AAF schedule was on the less widely-available NFL Network and CBS Sports Network or an odd place for football like TNT. This absolutely tanked viewership numbers for the AAF after the lauded debut on CBS. The XFL’s worst games this season still about double a typical AAF game from 2019 in viewership.
On the USFL, at some point they are going to have to play true home games if they want to build local fanbases and attract any gate money or local sponsorship. Maybe the financials work regardless of that, but it seems weird to me that they still haven’t done that when that has probably been the most notable success of each iteration of the XFL (Las Vegas in 01, Seattle and St. Louis in 20 and 22).
I actually really love the idea of putting these teams in smaller markets. I know everyone wants to see these teams playing in front of packed arenas, but you’re never going to do that if you’re fielding a team lead by Ben DiNucci at Lumen Field in Seattle. It’s just not going to happen. But if you have a smaller stadium, you can pack it more reliably and start to generate a little more buzz.
In MSP we have two baseball teams: the Minnesota Twins and their AAA team, the St Paul Saints. Twins play at Target Field, a massive pro baseball venue. Saints play at CHS field, a beautiful stadium that is a FRACTION of the size. The Twins always sell more tickets than the Saints, but it’s hard to find a night when the stands at CHS field aren’t PACKED. It’s a perfect case study for a “minor league” team can really shine if the expectations and the optics are right.
Zoomers grew up in a different, digital world, with so many distractions to take their attention away from the sport
at least in terms of the zoomers i know (so, purely anecdotal), they actively dislike football because of how injury-prone it is (think CTE), so it would require more change on the game side than the advertising or presentation side to rope that group in
zooming out (lol) i find a lot of what you wrote very speculative and geared implicitly or explicitly to your own experience, and while thats certainly not wrong (or even undesirable–this is your site after all) i think you give the nfl itself far too little credit in the failure of competitors. its not unusual for near-monopolies to structure the market to make it very, very difficult for competitors to find a niche, regardless of their marketing strategies or unique takes on the sport itself or attempts to address apathy. they could do everything right and still fail because the nfl has its hands on most of the market’s knobs
If it wasn’t running at the same time as March madness and this year, the World Baseball Classic, maybe it would be able to capitalize. But this is prime “check out something other than football before the withdrawal kicks in” season.
Too much football all the time causes football burnout. Plus, this is running in March, you’re against:
The NBA end of season and Playoffs
The NHL end of season and Playoffs
NCAA March Madness
The World Baseball Classic (this year)
Formula 1 starting
NASCAR starting
IndyCar starting
The more economical thing to do is to put this from mid June to August. About the time that NBA and NHL have finished and we’re into the long slog of the Baseball-only part of the year.
We love our battlehawks here in St. Louis
I think it’s too much of a good thing, watching more football on TV.
If there was a local Halifax Explosion I could go see play for a reasonable price I would give that a try though.
I really liked the 2nd version of xfl that was snuffed out by covid. I forget to watch and do think they should move a spring league to run from April to June.