The Fight for Fans

By Samuel Robinson

Spring football leagues struggle to attract fans and avoid collapse

The crowd was stunned. They had just watched their team give up a commanding lead with less than two minutes on the clock. The stadium, which had been rocked by cheers all game long, was silent. But this comeback was different from the typical football collapse. It had taken a three point conversion and a 4th and 15 onside kick. And this game was not being played on a beautiful fall day, nor was it at a rustic college campus or sparkling NFL stadium. Rather, it was the XFL’s St. Louis Battlehawks spoiling the San Antonio Brahmas’ home opener in late February.

This type of moment is one that the XFL, and its rival, the USFL, hopes to happen many times this season. Both leagues play in the spring, and if they hope to attract fans, exciting games are a must. Nobody wants to watch boring games, especially if there are plenty of other sports on TV. Attracting fans has been the devil of every spring football league. In the past 40 years, nearly all spring football leagues have failed without a second season, with low attendance and TV ratings often being the culprit. The USFL has finally broken this trend, after their successful season last year. However, even if fans can be secured, financial challenges abound. The Alliance of American Football (AAF), a league from 2019, had seemed popular before a sudden collapse of funding forced them into bankruptcy after only eight weeks. Although the XFL and the USFL have a similar onfield product, each has a different business model and strategy to keep costs as low as possible, as they hope to create a sustainable spring football league, something no league has ever done before. In the past, spring football leagues have tried and failed to serve as direct competitors to the NFL. However, they often had far worse quality of play. In the more recent years, startup leagues have tried to gain a role as developmental leagues for the NFL, though without the NFL’s backing. Michael Huyghue, former commissioner of the now defunct United Football League, which played in the fall from 2009-2012, says that this is because college football already serves as a developmental league.

"The NFL really does not need a second developmental league as college football already fills that void. Thus far the NFL has just simply watched from the sidelines as the spring leagues continue to pop up."

This means that the rosters of these leagues are filled with players who may have missed their first shot at the NFL, but consider these leagues to be opportunities for making an NFL roster. Huyghue explains that players consider the NFL to be the ultimate goal.

"There are only a limited number of job opportunities for athletes in the NFL. The minor leagues offer an opportunity for athletes to get a second look or potentially hone their skills to create an opportunity to advance to the NFL. In many ways these athletes treat it as a developmental league."

Although being an official minor league for the NFL, with a system similar to minor league baseball or the NBA G-League in place, would provide much needed stability to these leagues, it is unlikely that it will ever happen. Mark Perry, who runs a network of websites about minor league football, says that although players may use the league as a minor league, the relationship is never going to be official.

"It’s never gonna be a minor league system, like baseball, but everybody wants to play in the NFL one day."

Still, even if the football isn’t as good as the NFL, Perry says there are plenty of football fans out there who could be eager to watch.

"Even if you get 20% of the audience that watches the NFL, it’s still a huge amount of people."

Perry also says that the popularity of football helps these leagues compete against other sports.

"Unless people decide that they don’t like football anymore and would rather watch pickleball or baseball or some other sport somehow takes over the consciousness of the country, at least for the next 10 years, football is king, so definitely there’s room."

Huyghue says that many fans want more football in the spring, and that TV networks are willing to give it to them.

"The spring is that time where football fans still interestingly want to see more football and the networks typically have content to fill."

Huyghue explains that getting that TV revenue is essential to the survival of a football league.

"The key to a professional football or amateur football league is television revenue" However, Huyghue also notes that these leagues aren’t only competing against other sports.

"Without any significant television revenue these leagues have to compete as alternative entertainment going up against things like movies, restaurants, concerts etc."

Another worry these leagues face is that football fans may just be sick of football, and stop watching, especially with two leagues in the spring. However, Huyghue doesn’t believe this will happen.

"Many experts say there is a saturation point of where the audience will say enough. I am not sure that is true though. I think the audience certainly diminishes substantially over the spring but there is definitely still an audience of hard core fans that will always want to see more football."

Even with a large pool of potential fans, in order to convince fans to support these leagues, they must have stability. In this aspect, the USFL has a bit of an advantage because they are owned by Fox, which uses the league to provide filler television. Perry says that this allows Fox to move staff into other shows in the USFL offseason.

"The nice thing about the USFL is they can take people, have them work and then during the off season they can put them in some other Fox property because Fox owns the USFL"

Conversely, Perry says that the XFL has to pay staff all year.

"They have all these people in there right now working, that they’re gonna have to pay year round."

Another advantage the USFL has is the completion of a full season, which helps them get established fans. However, their season was a little unorthodox. Instead of having each team play in a different city, all eight teams played the season in a hub in Birmingham. Tony Paul, a sportswriter for the Detroit News says that this was a good strategy.

"I thought they were pretty smart last year not trying to bite off more than they could chew."

However, Paul notes that the hub system may have decreased fan support.

"Last year they weren’t playing in the market, I don’t think the fan support was huge"

Paul says that the USFL didn’t have much of a footprint in the cities its teams claimed to represent.

"I thought they’d open like a team store or something like that. But there really wasn’t any [footprint]"

That being said, Paul explains that fan support wasn’t the primary goal last year. "I think last year was all about proving that the football was good and if you can prove the football is good, then you can expand into these markets" numbers. They’re still happy with those numbers because something on Fox Sports 2 is some repeat that’s probably getting 10,000 views"

This season, the USFL has a new model, where there are four hubs and two teams per hub, and attendance is more of a concern, with league president Daryl Johnston having stated that the USFL wants 15,000 fans at every game. Paul believes that the home teams playing in their home cities will increase fan support.

"Once they announced they were coming to Detroit back in late January, that made them pretty relevant here."

Still, Paul notes that the price must be low to get fans to go to these games.

Within fan support, TV viewership was valued far more than attendance. The USFL was happy to play in empty stadiums as long as people were watching on TV. Perry said that Fox was happy with the viewership numbers the USFL was getting.

"When they were on Fox and NBC, it was 1.2 to 2 million, somewhere around that range and when they started moving them into cable, like Fox Sports 2, that’s when you get the lower

"They’re marketing it as a family friendly, affordable event and when the ticket prices are cheap. But a lot of it’s gonna depend on how much parking is and how much concessions are, because the USFL controls the ticket prices, but they don’t control the parking prices and they don’t control the concession prices."

Paul also says that if the USFL can’t attract fans, Fox may be forced to pull the plug.

"This year and next year are gonna be more about making money in these markets. And if they can’t do that by the end of next year, they’re gonna have a hard time convincing Fox to continue to pour money into it."

Perry explains that the XFL considered going with the hub model, but ultimately decided not to.

"We had heard that the XFL was leaning towards doing the same thing in Texas, but when word got out, when it was released by us at XFL News hub, our main man, Mike Mitchell, threw it out there, and fans were like, no, no, no, no, no."

Instead of a hub system, the XFL has a hybrid model where all of the teams practice in Arlington, TX, and then travel to their home city for games. Greg Luca, a sportswriter for the San-Antonio Express News says that this system helps keep the XFL financially stable.

"It helps to have all the teams centralized in one place. It minimizes what they’re having to pay in terms of expenses, compared to having training facilities in eight different cities."

Luca notes the football leagues are expensive, and that the XFL has tried to find ways to cut unnecessary costs.

"They’ve tried to find a way to make it sort of feasible and manageable where it’s not putting a huge strain on them financially. A football league’s never gonna be cheap, but I think from all the other leagues that have come before, they’ve been able to figure out a way to do it in a way that’s as sustainable as possible for them."

The XFL does have some staff on the ground in its home cities, but Luca notes that it’s a very limited presence.

"It’s a minimal group, but they do have some people on the ground here in San Antonio to try to build local connections"

This is not San Antonio’s first foray into minor league football. The AAF had had a very successful team in the city before it collapsed, called the Commanders, and Luca says there have been 13 teams in San Antonio before the XFL.

"13 teams that we’re aware of now in the city that have come and gone without lasting more than a couple of years in these different leagues, whether it’s an arena type team or whether it’s an outdoor team like the Alliance or the XFL, they have come and gone and have never had that staying power."

For most of those teams, it was the league, rather than the team, that failed. Luca says this is because football leagues aren’t very profitable.

"It’s just been the money issue with every different league. That’s kind of typically where they’ve always gone under. And that’s not that surprising because it’s a venture that’s not necessarily that profitable and it takes a huge amount of equity to get a football league off the ground but all of these different things that have come and gone, it’s been stories about players and their paychecks not coming through. Guys scrambling to try to make it work and not having the resources available and maybe the facilities are falling apart and did to try to get on people’s radar and to build that connection and whether it was at autograph signings or they were at different sporting goods stores, bars, and restaurants, it felt like everywhere you went there was some kind of Commander’s thing." attributable to many tickets being given away for free.

However, Luca notes that he hasn’t seen that level of involvement from the XFL, primarily due to the lack of staff on the ground.

"UTSA season ticket holders got in for free, essentially. Either that or the, the tickets were steeply discounted, so there was a lot of different ways that they kind of pumped up [the attendance] number" the equipment is not what it should be."

Luca believes that the success of the Commanders was helped by their community outreach efforts.

"The Commander’s side, they were always in the community. There was so much that they

"The guys haven’t been here. They did one thing at a brewery the week before the home opener, and they’ll be in the markets probably every home week just for one or two events here or there. But it’s not the same level of connection."

The San Antonio Brahmas still had strong attendance for the home opener, but attendance has since dropped off. Luca believes that their sold out opener may have been

Luca also believes that the decline in attendance is likely due to when the games were scheduled, and the Brahmas’ poor on field performance. "San Antonio has had a couple of bad draws in terms of the timing of the two most recent home games, with a late kick on a Sunday night and then an Easter Sunday game. The losing, of course, is also a factor. I know from the comments on Twitter that some people are specifically turned off by the offense, which ranks near the bottom of the league in most categories and struggles to put up points. The style of play just isn’t fun to watch." Luca explains that many people in San Antonio are driven to support minor league teams in the hopes that it could attract a major league team.

"If San Antonio throws their full weight behind it, and if they’re ending up getting 30,000 or 40,000 people in the Alamodome somehow for this, then that’s sort of a symbol that an NFL team could be worthwhile to put here."

However, the decline in San Antonio’s attendance could be catastrophic for the XFL. Mark Perry has identified San Antonio and St. Louis as the critical markets for the league to succeed in.

"San Antonio, and the Battle Hawks in St. Louis, they need to have strong teams to fill up those stadiums."

St. Louis has the highest attendance in the league, with over 35,000 fans at each game, but after 24,000 people attended the Brahmas’ opener, they’ve regressed to around 12,000 people, which is what most of the other XFL teams are averaging.

Although many XFL crowds have been low, San Antonio Brahmas’ head coach Hines Ward says he was impressed by the intensity of the fans.

"The stadium was awesome, the atmosphere, the fans really got into it. We heard the boos coming out on the field and things like that."

Ward believes that the quality of play is high, and that the games are fun to watch.

"The game doesn’t take forever. The game is probably over in less than three hours. You’re going to see some hard hitting, you’re going to see some exciting plays."

Still, similar to the USFL, selling tickets is only part of the puzzle, and TV broadcasting plays a very important role. Perry says that the XFL’s deal with Disney is unique, because unlike other minor football leagues in the past, the XFL is getting paid for its broadcasting rights.

"Supposedly the XFL has gotten money from Disney to put games on ESPN and ABC. So the pendulum has shifted and that kind of gives them more stability"

Luca says that the XFL has added features to their broadcasts that give fans an inside look of the teams in order to help bolster ratings.

"You can hear everything the offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator are saying, and they have the quarterback’s microphone on the whole time and you hear a lot of different things that Hines Ward is saying within the game. It’s interesting that they provide that level of transparency, and you see why people can get engaged with it"

Perry believes that with these strategies for attracting fans, both in person and on TV, it will take both leagues about three years to gain a solid foundation of fan support, and reach their peak strength. "The leagues need three years to maximize their value."

Currently, both the USFL and the XFL own all of their teams. However, Perry explains that another level of complexity." after three years, the leagues will start moving to a franchise model.

Perry says that right now, the USFL holds a slight advantage over the XFL, owing to the fact that they have lower costs.

"If I was prognosticating, I would give 51% to the U S F L right now because they’re not spending a ton of money."

However, Perry believes that the XFL may have a slight long term advantage if they can make it to a stage where they are selling franchises.

"If the XFL can make it past a year or two, which I think they will, I think the XFL might have a little bit more valued franchises".

"The goal of all of the leagues is to demonstrate that this is a profitable business, that this is a good business to get into. Find somebody willing to pay 50 million or a hundred million for a franchise, and then they take care of the rest."

However, Perry also notes that the franchise model, though lucrative, isn’t without its problems.

"The problem is then you start getting more people making decisions and, and you have to pass it with the owners. It adds

However, it may not matter who has the advantage. Perry says that the leagues will eventually merge instead of competing with each other.

"All the fans think at some point in the next four to five years they’re gonna have to merge"

However, Paul thinks that the leagues are fundamentally incompatible, and won’t merge.

"I think they’re two different products, and, I think that [the USFL] honestly is a little bit more about football. "

Regardless of whether or not they merge, Perry believes that right now is the make or break moment for spring football.

"If this doesn’t work, if neither of these two leagues make it happen, then spring football will never work."

However, Perry is optimistic that the leagues will be able to pull it off.

"Everybody that I talk to is like, yeah, this is gonna work."

It is certainly a very exciting time to be a football fan. At the moment, it is possible to watch football year round. However, whether or not fans want that will be the ultimate decider of the fate of the leagues. The success of the leagues during this spring and summer, which will be the first time where the leagues will be competing against each other, will likely tell us whether or not these leagues will be able to survive, or whether they will suffer a dramatic collapse.