New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
CT’s NBC Sports broadcasting new football league
STAMFORD — NBC Sports’ NFL Sunday Night Football coverage perennially ranks as the No. 1 prime-time show with an audience that frequently averages around 20 million viewers.
Executives at Stamfordbased NBC Sports think that many of those fans will want to watch games on spring weekends as well.
Last Saturday marked the kickoff of the inaugural season of the USFL, the latest professional football league to launch during the NFL’s off-season. While several other football startups such as the XFL have floundered in recent years, NBC Sports officials are confident the eight-team USFL can capitalize on the NFL’s popularity to build a strong following.
“We think there’s a strong appetite for wellplayed and well-executed football that is coached and produced in a really highend fashion” Jon Miller, NBC Sports’ president of programming, said in an interview.
As the USFL’s official media partners, NBC
Sports and FOX Sports will carry all of this season’s games, which include a 40-game regular season, two semifinal matches and a July 3 championship game.
NBC Sports will present 22 of the games — with nine on the NBC broadcast network, nine on the USA Network cable channel and four exclusively on the Peacock streaming service. All games broadcast on NBC will also be streamed on Peacock.
The opening game last Saturday, in which the Birmingham Stallions defeated the New Jersey Generals 28-24, was aired on the NBC and FOX broadcast networks. It represented the first scheduled sports competition to air at the same time on two competitive networks since the NFL’s Super Bowl I broadcast on NBC and CBS on
Jan. 15, 1967. A Dec. 29, 2007 game between the New England Patriots and New York Giants was broadcast on CBS, NBC and NFL Network, as a result of a scheduling adjustment made days before the game.
“The same people who oversee Sunday Night Football for NBC will be overseeing our production on the USFL. It’s the same thing for the folks at FOX — those folks who are involved with their terrific FOX NFL Sunday product
are overseeing the production here,” Miller said. “Fans will know that games will be well-produced and directed. And I think you’ll find consistency of programming windows, which I think was the downfall of some of these other (nonNFL football) leagues.”
Factoring in international broadcasters, USFL games will be carried in more than 130 countries this season. U.S. service members stationed around the world, for instance, will
be able to watch games through the American Forces Network.
Seeking to create ‘its own identity’
During the past few decades, a number of nonNFL football leagues have emerged. But none of them has come close to matching the dominance of the NFL. Its Sunday night games on NBC Sports averaged about 19 million viewers in the past season, putting it on track to finish No. 1 in prime time for a record 11th-straight season.
“There is room for more football, but the NFL is the premier property and not in peril of being taken over,” said Josh Shuart, director of sports management at Sacred Heart University’s Jack Welch College of Business & Technology. “Once you get past that, you realize that there is still plenty of opportunity — opportunity to generate revenue. American football is so wildly popular, and executives and investors have homed in on the myriad of ways of generating media interest and money. This goes way beyond traditional television ratings.”
In 2001, NBC broadcast XFL games, which lasted one season in its first incarnation. Founded by WWE CEO and Chairman Vince McMahon, the XFL returned in 2020, but the comeback season was ended prematurely by the COVID-19 pandemic. It subsequently filed for bankruptcy and was sold for $15 million to an ownership team including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The XFL plans to return again in 2023.
“We did look at the XFL before we made the decision to go with the USFL,” Miller said. “When the XFL declared bankruptcy and came back, they approached us. But we really were looking for product for this year, 2022. They were far away and not able to execute a strategy to launch this spring. They were also very adamant about starting in February, which just doesn’t work for us for a lot of reasons.”
A number of other nonNFL football leagues have come and gone, including a USFL that played games from 1983 through 1985. Other than the shared league and team names, there is no connection between the 1980s version and the new USFL.
The non-NFL leagues have struggled to survive in large part because of their lack of stars, given that the sport’s biggest names play in the NFL. The USFL will not have any household names — at least, not immediately — but its personnel includes several NFL veterans.
“With the timing of this league and the fact that we’re going to end in early July, you’ll have a lot of
NFL interest in watching these players because they’ll have a full six weeks after our season ends, if some of them want to go on and play in the NFL,” Miller said. “But this is not a developmental league. This is a competitive, professional league that will be designed to be its own league and have its own identity.”
While USFL aims to attract a global audience, in many ways it will be a hyperlocal operation. All of this year’s regular-season games will be played in Birmingham, Ala. — most at Protective Stadium and some at the neighboring Legion Field. The semifinal games and championship will be played at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
Officials at the USFL, NBC Sports and FOX Sports agreed that running the regular season in one city would work best for the league in its first season. Birmingham was chosen because of a number of factors, including the quality of its facilities and the popularity of football in Alabama, where the USFL will not have to compete with any major-league professional sports teams.
Some teams could play in their home cities next season, while the league aims to have all of them playing local home games in the third year. Among the eight squads, the New Jersey Generals are the closest to Connecticut.
“The feeling was to get started and established in the first year and keep everybody in one location, which has been great for practices and meetings,” Miller said. “And it’s very good for us productionwise.”