Tag: XFL

After last week’s XFL ratings were released, there were a number of stories with quotes from Vince McMahon and Dick Ebersol trying to spin the low ratings. I wonder how they’re going to spin the fact that the overnight ratings for this weekend’s game on NBC was a dismal 2.9.

Of course that rating couldn’t have been helped by a low-scoring game played under ugly weather conditions. NBC says it is definitely committed to a two year run, but look for chinks in that commitment. The other day McMahon was quoted to the effect that it might take a year longer than he thought for the league to hit profitability.

A good sign of a sinking ship is the rats lining up to jump off. Honda already decided against any further involvement with the XFL (Honda blamed the in-your-face attitude, but the low ratings probably had more to do with it).

The way things are going, by the middle of the XFL season (mid-March), ratings might be hovering closer to the 2.0 level and at that point NBC might be better off with their former Saturday Night Movie format.

What a turnaround. Three weeks ago the XFL posted ratings that were the highest NBC had received for a Saturday evening broadcast since it had the Olympics. Last week ratings fell to a 5.2 share, which was the league’s goal, and this weekend’s broadcast earned a very weak 3.8 share.

An even bigger problem is that the XFL is not keeping the young male demographic that it wanted. Rather than kids tuning in to see a WWF spectacle, the XFL seems most popular with older men hoping they might see a football game in between all the T&A shots. Unfortunately, that’s not the market that NBC promised to advertisers.

In today’s USA TOday, Rudy Martzke asks the obvious question: how serious is NBC’s two year, $100 million commitment? Probably not serious enough to stick with ratings this low.

Now things should get interesting. Vince McMahon knows how to get ratings, but the question is whether or not NBC will allow him to do the things that the XFL would need (i.e. pander, pander and pander some more) to really bring in the WWF audience. I was watching a documentary on McMahon the other day which explained how McMahon had emerged victorious after Ted Turner and the WCW almost destroyed the WWF.

McMahon’s solution — he could take the WWF into the sewer and garner ratings while Turner, because of his numerous partnerships and associations, simply couldn’t follow him there. Somehow I don’t think NBC will give McMahon the free reign he needs either.

Which is probably a good thing. In an interview a couple weeks ago, somebody asked McMahon about the cheerleaders and the sophomoric sexual innuendos that Jerry “The King” Lawler made on the initial broadcast, to which McMahon replied that it was impossible to have too much sex on television. Maybe not for the 11 and 12 year olds he markets the WWF to, but the XFL is often painful to watch because of these ridiculous antics (I should add that I simply don’t get wrestling either — a couple minutes of the current incarnation of the WWF is more than enough to completely disgust me).

I still think, however, that the idea of a small second tier football league is viable. A lot of the rules changes the XFL uses make a lot of sense and some of the broadcast methods the XFL uses are innovative, but need to be used more sparingly. For example, unlike a lot of critics of the broadcasts, I liked some of the sideline stuff, but it needs to be used more sparingly and to enhance the understanding of the game not for sheer shock value.

What is becoming clear is that the same thing that brought the XFL to life is the same thing that’s probably going to kill it: McMahon. On the one hand, few people aside from McMahon could step up and say he’s going to create a new football league out of nothing and be taken seriously. On the other hand, I think NBC probably underestimated what a liability McMahon’s involvement would be to the success of the XFL (i.e. most sports news outlets don’t take the league seriously, largely because of McMahon).

Unfortunately, when the XFL finally croaks it will probably mean the death knell for any attempt at an alternative league for decades to come.

Jon Katz thinks the pervasive cameras an microphones at the XFL premier were too much. According to Katz, “this may be a good example of how technology can take us places we don’t really want or need to go.” I think what Katz misses and what other critics and supporters of the XFL have missed is that the XFL’s competition is not the National Football League.

The XFL’s real competition is “Survivor” and other pseudo-reality programs. Do people balk at seeing cameras invade people’s personal lives? Then explain the popularity of “Survivor” or its knock offs like “Temptation Island” or even reality-based shows such as “Cops.”

As Business 2.0 noted in a profile of the XFL, the NFL has been moving in the XFL direction in recent years. Vince McMahon says he’s going to mic dozens of players? Hmmm, suddenly Monday Night Football starts equipping a player with a microphone and replaying the highlights at halftime. Then CBS courts disaster when it put mics on several players at the beginning of the Super Bowl only to have them utter a string of expletives (hadn’t they heard about seven second delays?)

The difference is that the NFL existed prior to television and sees itself as an entity completely independent of its media coverage (which is sometimes taken to absurd levels by sports writers and commentators who go on and on about sports as if it is anything but entertainment). There’s no way that the NFL would allow the sort of access the XFL is based upon — at least not until it is forced to by the economic situation, and given the relatively strong ratings of the NFL in recent years, that is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

The problem the XFL faces it that unlike other reality shows, which are usually heavily edited to create compelling story lines, the XFL occurs live in real time (allowing for the delays to edit out the cursing). The only other completely live reality show on NBC, “Big Brother,” also had incredibly high initial ratings before it sank like a stone. Of course it didn’t have the sort of structure that a football game has and it didn’t have the constant display of juvenile sexual fantasies either.

Whether or not the XFL will satisfy American’s craving for reality shows or whether it goes down in an already oversaturated market remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that there is a market for such voyeuristic, intrusive shows.

The first thing to note about the XFL’s opening week is that it more than accomplished its goal. The whole point of putting the XFL on Saturday night was to try to capture more 12 to 24 year old male viewers, and NBC said it hoped for a 4-5 share. Initial ratings figures have the XFL garning a 10 share on Saturday night. There’s no way it will keep that high a share throughout its 10-week season, but it seems likely to meet and probably exceed its expectations as far as number of viewers.

As for league itself. Ugh.

I thought the level of competition on the field was respectable. A lot of sports writers are comparing the games to NFL games and finding the XFL lacking, but in that they’re just buying Vince McMahon’s hype. The XFL didn’t come close to the NFL, but it was certainly equal to (and in my opinion better than) the Arena Football League which, like the XFL, is filled with gimmicks but is taken seriously as a legitimate football league.

There were some standout performances…and some not-so-standout performances. It was fun watching former Western Michigan University quarterback Tim Lester airing it out for the Chicago Enforcers. On the other hand after watching a few series it became obvious why he never fulfilled his potential in the NFL.

As for the off-the-field stuff, I expected all of the cheerleader shots and other crude devices, but thought that was held pretty much in check for most of the broadcast. McMahon thinks you can never have enough sex on TV, but I think he’s dead wrong about that. Proof of how wrong McMahon is was demonstrated when NBC switched from showing the Las Vegas game with Jesse Ventura, to the Orlando game with Jerry “The King” Lawler.

Lawler embodied everything that critics feared the XFL would be about. After a few minutes of Lawler I was hoping Andy Kaufman would rise out of his grave and smack a few chairs over Lawler’s head. Lawler clearly knew nothing about football. Ventura wasn’t exactly a font of football knowledge, but Lawler acted as if he had never even seen a football game. Instead he engaged in endless banner about the cheerleaders involving the sort of innuendo that can only be truly appreciated by 13 year old boys (which, again, is the target market for the XFL).

On the other hand I thought putting microphones and cameras everywhere worked very well. Now what the XFL needs to do is add a third announcer who actually knows a lot about football who can explain what all of the arcane calls and terminology actually mean to the casual fan. Unfortunately, I suspect as time goes on the XFL is going to focus more on the spectacle rather the on-field game in an attempt to try to replicate this weekend’s high ratings.

A new web site I’m really impressed with is Plastic.Com. It’s sort of a pop culture Slashdot that picks up a lot of cool stories around the web that even I miss.

Anyway, today someone posted an item digging at the low salaries that the XFL is paying. The only problem is that XFL salaries are pretty high, as I pointed out on the Plastic site. The XFL pays a straight $4,500 per game fee to its players.

Compare that to the Arena Football League. Keep in mind the following salary structure was put in place only after the AFL players threatened to strike. Rookies receive a minimum of $900 per game. Two year veterans earn a minimum $1,250 per game, and three year veterans earn a minimum $1,450 per game.

$4,500 suddenly looks good. It looks even better when you consider that a lot of players in the AFL actually earn less than the minimum. The contract the AFL has with players allows for players to sign with a team at less then the minimum in order to help a team stay under the salary cap limit (and why the AFL then insists on calling these pay levels “minimums” — since obviously the aren’t — escapes me).

One person replying to my post did note that a straight up comparison wasn’t quite fair since the rules changes in the XFL make it much more dangerous than the AFL, but it’s hardly a secret that in any venture rewards are often commensurate with risk.

A bigger problem with the XFL that another person pointed out is that the XFL itself owns every team. In most professional leagues the individual teams are franchises which have to follow certain rules but for the most part are quasi-independent of the league itself. In the XFL, however, the individual teams are essentially just brands for different products owned by a single corporation. The track record with such ownership structures is not good because decisions tend to be made for the good of the league as a whole rather than for the good of an individual team, not to mention there isn’t the same intensity level for a team to win when it doesn’t really matter to the ultimate owner of that team how well the team does so long as the league in general is succeeding.

Finally, I forgot to mention the single best rules change that the XFL is introducing, which is its method of resolving overtime. I detest the NFL version where whoever scores first wins. The XFL uses a modified version of a system used at lower levels of football. In overtime the ball is placed at the opponent’s 20 yard line and the offense has 4 downs in which to score. Then the opposing team has the same opportunity.

In the XFL version, a team has to match or beat its opponent’s success. For example, suppose Team A throws for a touchdown on its second play in overtime. Team B also has to score a touchdown within two plays or be declared the loser.