Goodbye NFL Europa, We Hardly Knew Ye

[BallHawk]

BERLIN (AFP) - NFL Europa, the European development league for American football, has folded after 15 seasons with US National Football League owners disbanding the six-team circuit after heavy financial losses.

"Together with the management of NFL Europa, we have decided that cancelling the NFL Europa games is the best business decision," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said.

"From now on, we will concentrate on regular-season games and use new technology to make the NFL more popular worldwide."

NFL Europa had five German-based teams and the Amsterdam Admirals. Just under 50,000 people watched the Hamburg Sea Devils beat the host Frankfurt Galaxy in last week's World Bowl championship game.

Various reports had the league losing between 30 and 54 million US dollars a season.

Found as the World League in 1991 with US and European teams, the league was always designed to spread gridiron's popularity and develop talent for NFL clubs.

The league folded after two years and returned as a six-team, all-European affair in 1995, but clubs such as the London Monarchs, Barcelona Dragons and Scottish Claymores proved unsustainable.

NFL owners have also shifted their strategy for pitching the sport to European audiences, having decided to play two regular-season NFL games a year outside of US home markets.

The first of those will be staged at London's Wembley Stadium on October 28 between the New York Giants and Miami Dolphins. Future games are planned for Mexico, Germany and Canada.

"With the agreement of the NFL team owners regarding the staging of regular-season NFL games outside the USA, the time has come to change the NFL strategy for success on an international level," Goodell said.

A pre-season game planned this year in China was scrapped but the league is expected to bring a game there in the future, likely not until after next year's Beijing Olympics.

[Freak Out]

Not a real shocker.

[HarveyWallbangers]

I actually watched it occasionally.

[gbgary]

damn...it's been around 15 years? i'd have guessed 10 maybe. shows you how much i paid attention to it. don't think i ever watched a complete game, no...half, no...quarter.

[Harlan Huckleby]

N.F.L. Pulls the Plug on Its League in Europe
By RICHARD SANDOMIR

National Football League officials bet in the early 1990s that the world — or at least North America and Europe — would embrace a brand of football that was of lesser quality than the one the league’s 32 teams play in the United States.

But N.F.L. Europa, born 16 years ago as the World League of American Football, lost money, ran through television partners, narrowed its trans-Atlantic focus largely to Germany and finally was shuttered yesterday. The N.F.L.’s strategy will shift to playing some of its own regular-season games overseas.

“If we can present two or three games a year, and fans are engaged in that experience, we will grow exponentially overseas,” Mark Waller, the senior vice president of NFL International, said by telephone from Frankfurt.

Despite its domestic power, the N.F.L. has struggled to export its game.

The National Basketball Association has deep roots in Europe and Asia. More than half the traffic to its nba.com Web site emanates from outside the United States, and more than one billion viewers watch league programs on 51 Chinese stations. Last season, 83 foreign players were on N.B.A. rosters, including stars like Yao Ming (China), Tony Parker (France) and Manu Ginóbili (Argentina). The sixth player chosen in the league’s annual draft Wednesday was the Chinese 7-footer Yi Jianlian.

Major League Baseball had a record 246 foreign-born players on opening day rosters, including 98 from the Dominican Republic and 13 from Japan, including Daisuke Matsuzaka, whom the Boston Red Sox signed to a $52 million deal after spending $51.1 million for the right to negotiate with him.

The Yankees, whose pitching ace is the Taiwanese right-hander Chien-Ming Wang, recently entered into a working agreement with the Chinese Baseball Association and subsequently signed two Chinese players.

And last year’s first World Baseball Classic — a 16-team tournament that was played in San Diego, Phoenix, Tokyo, San Juan, P.R., Anaheim, Calif., and Orlando, Fla. — was more successful than initially expected. It will return in 2009.

“No question, the N.B.A. is the most successful American sports league overseas, because basketball, unlike football, is played throughout the world,” said Neal Pilson, a sports industry consultant.

Waller said that N.F.L-style football was difficult to translate to foreign fans because of its complexity and because audiences knew they were not seeing the best talent. “In soccer, there’s global recognition that the English Premier League and Champions League generate the most appeal,” he said. “In our sport, the regular season, the playoffs and Super Bowl are as good as it gets.”

But N.F.L. Europa had none of that pizzazz, just six teams at the end (five in Germany and one in Amsterdam) and the World Bowl. And it required an overall investment of $400 million to $500 million, Waller said.

N.F.L. teams each sent a few players a year for seasoning abroad — and stars like Kurt Warner, Jake Delhomme, Brad Johnson, Dante Hall and Adam Vinatieri played there — but Super Bowl-quality talent was not standard issue.

“It had some useful purpose in developing players,” John Mara, the co-owner of the Giants, said in an interview from Turnberry, Scotland. “And at least we were able to find out if there was interest in our product. And there was some.”

In the beginning, as the World League of American Football, the league had 10 teams — six in the United States, three in Europe and one in Canada. The structure was maintained for two seasons, after which operations were suspended for two years. A six-team, all-Europe version emerged in 1995 and was rechristened N.F.L. Europe. The name was changed again, to N.F.L. Europa, in 2006.

By 2005, the London Monarchs, Barcelona Dragons and Scottish Claymores were gone from the league, which consolidated around its most ardent fan base in Germany. For the 2007 season, average attendance reached a high of 20,024; the league’s final game, World Bowl XV on June 23, drew 48,125 fans.

Waller said there was hope for years that the European media market would help bankroll N.F.L. Europa with rights payments. But in the end, German networks carried none of the league’s games live; the World Bowl was shown on tape a day later.

Waller said league approval to play two regular-season N.F.L. games a year overseas will better attract fan and news media interest. The Giants will play the Miami Dolphins in October at Wembley Stadium in London. “All the tickets we’ve put on sale so far for the Wembley game have been sold out,” Waller said.

[LL2]

This might open the door for the Mark Cuban league. It will not be long before another league tries again to compete with the NFL.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Cuban's UFL: No Dumb Bet
By Mike Fisher

Wanna make a dumb football wager? Then bet against Mark Cuban's new pro football league. I know, I know. It’s insane. It's fool's gold. It's a pipe dream. It's egomaniacal. Rich people thinking they can do whatever they wish. Some sort of sporting equivalent of Paris Hilton’s “Get Out Of Jail Free’’ card.

But I’ll tell you what (or who) else I know: I know Mark Cuban. And I wouldn’t wager against him as a football owner. Nor would I wager against you as a football fan.

“I’m not worried,’’ Cuban tells TheRanchReport.com. “If we get good ownership, the right ownership, it will be easy.’’

Easy?

Cuban and I go back 14 years. And it was way back then when he told me about his broadcast.com idea, and I joked to him that he would need some luck trying to convince people to convert their $2000 computers into $20 transistor radios. Then came word that the business was about to be sold to Yahoo.com, and I scoffed about speculation that Cubes would become a billionaire. Then Mark confirmed to me that he planned to buy the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, and when word arrived that he’d spend more than $250 mil to do so, I advised him that he’d be overpaying for such a downtrodden franchise in such a struggling league.

So you think now I’m going to joke? Or scoff? Or advise? Or bet against him?

The facts: Wall Street investor Bill Hambrect is gathering up some wealthy chums to compete with the NFL with something called the United Football League. Cuban will likely be an owner. Action to start in August 2008. Teams in available markets like Los Angeles, Mexico City and Las Vegas (where Cuban might be the owner). Games on Friday nights.

Conventional wisdom – and every newspaper columnist, TV foof, radio voice and blogosphere typist – is insisting it cannot work. For fun (and because in my time with Cuban, “conventional wisdom’’ has rarely been applicable) let’s take another tact: Let’s discuss 10 reasons why it MIGHT work.

10) Each owner will put up $30 million to own half the team. No group ownerships. No divergent levels of commitment. One man. One team. Commitment.

9) The other halves of the franchises will eventually be sold to fans. Your shares will make YOU an owner of a pro football team. Tell me you haven’t always wanted that!

8) Critics cite the failures of other pro football leagues (like the silly XFL). Many even cite the “failure’’ of the Arena League. Newsflash: That is not a failure. I told Cuban I think a league competing on that level can succeed; he doesn’t want that. He wants to shoot for the top. OK, but for now. … Arena League-level football during the NFL season in non-NFL cities is worth a shot.

7) Put it on TV, somebody will watch. We’re watching Spelling Bees. We’re watching dating shows. A few of us are kind of still watching hockey. In this day and age, TV makes events vibrant. Football on TV ALWAYS works. Oh, and by the way: Cuban owns HDNet. He already OWNS a TV network.

6) There is talent available. I’m around Texas high school football a lot. I was at an NFL-eligible free-agent camp the other day. There are a limitless number of athletes worthy of a look. (Which makes for a limitless number of stories to be told by the media.) And that’s not even counting the guys who get a cup o’ coffee in the NFL, or maybe even established NFL people who get the boot. Remember when the “scabs’’ filled in? Was the level of football, altered or not, impactful in your watching habits? No. I haven’t asked Cuban about the UFL’s interest level in the Pacman Joneses of the football world, but. … that’d be good TV, huh?

5) If local teams are able to add local talent, the franchise will be immediately adopted by the home folks. It works on one level for LeBron James in Ohio. It works on another level for Gary Kubiak coaching not too far from College Station. It works even for Tyson Thompson playing in Irving. You put a Mexican player on the Mexico City team, and boom! That team is a marketing success.

4) It will make the NFL better. Competition IS better, right?

3) Do you have ANY complaints with the NFL? Salaries too high? Owners too invisible? Players’ behaviors troubling? The NFL is, on many points like that, well past the point of no return. The UFL? Here’s a chance for all those errors to be rectified in a giant football test tube.

2) As long as it’s not MY $30 million, there’s no reason NOT to try this … or at least not to encourage someone else to try it. I don’t understand the venom directed at Cuban by some football fans. If you’re a traveler, are you AGAINST the idea of a new airline? I have a Sprint cell phone. Do I get mad when “Jitterbug’’ ads come on my TV? I like Target, but if Mom and Pop want to spent the money to put in their Original Mom-N-Pop-Mart across the street. … why would I get angry at them?

1) Football is, far more than the other sports, weaved into the psyche of the U.S. fan. And I don’t mean the NFL (as much as I love most everything about it); I mean FOOTBALL, the game, not the sport. Come to Lewisville High School when the Fighting Farmers baseball team is playing a playoff game adjacent to Max Goldsmith Stadium, where the football team is practicing, and count heads: More people are watching the football practice!

If Major League Baseball disappeared, would hordes of Americans suddenly show up at Little League games, just because they need a taste of baseball?

Nah.

But if we didn’t have the NFL, it wouldn’t kill football. We’d watch more college. And if that was taken away, we’d grow addicted to high-school football. And yes, if it were the only way to get a fix, we’d buy tickets to Pop Warner games. Done right, to us, opening up another football league should feel like God opening up another source of sunshine, or oxygen, or maybe tapping another keg. Gotta have it. More is better.

[Harlan Huckleby]

BTW, there already is a semi-pro league called "the United Football League", and they have a team in Queens, NY called the Queens Vikings. This is their logo:



I don't make this shit up. This is the real shit.

[Scott Campbell]

BTW, there already is a semi-pro league called "the United Football League", and they have a team in Queens, NY called the Queens Vikings. This is their logo:



I don't make this shit up. This is the real shit.

Two teams can't have the same logo like that. I think the first one of them to win a title should get to keep it.

[MJZiggy]

Well, that could go on indefinitely...

[Fritz]

Apparently they're going for the smaller markets. I heard they were putting a team in Leftwich, Connecticut. Fro what I understand, they're going to call them the "Leftwich Lawbreakers." Looks like four or five former Cincinnati Bengals have already signed on.

[BEARMAN]

Too bad, so sad, see ya later ! No great loss.

[esoxx]

I always got a chuckle out of those that would get all excited when a player the Packers held rights to would lead the league in receiving or something and they'd be all excited like it meant something.

Junk league.

[Scott Campbell]

I always got a chuckle out of those that would get all excited when a player the Packers held rights to would lead the league in receiving or something and they'd be all excited like it meant something.

Junk league.

Like when Warren Moon tore up the CFL?

[HarveyWallbangers]

I always got a chuckle out of those that would get all excited when a player the Packers held rights to would lead the league in receiving or something and they'd be all excited like it meant something.

Junk league.

Like when Warren Moon tore up the CFL?

Or Kurt Warner did well in NFLE. Or Bill Schroeder. Or Brad Johnson. Or Jake Delhomme. Or Marco Rivera. Some good players benefitted from the league.