NBC and AFL: A Renewed Partnership
Tim Ball
Friday May 21, 2004
Another two-year deal for the AFL and NBC should see the wrinkles ironed out and the league dressed for success as the future looks bright. NBC is right on this programming and the renewal sends a message ten times louder than the initial agreement: The AFL is worth watching.
There are few experiences in the sports world that can inspire us anymore. Arena Football is a game that has emerged as one with something very special to offer a sports fan looking for inspiration.
It’s clear that Arena Football is under the skin of many fans in this league. The fiery wit in voices sounding off in Internet chat rooms illuminates the issue with perfect clarity. Many are embracing NBC and have confidence in the league office to take this sport where it deserves to go.
Still, the league is eighteen years old and has weathered many storms only because of the shelter built by fan base and fan base only. Nothing happens without a ticket being purchased. Many tickets in fact. The most important bottom line is the one they scan going into the Arena.
Freedom isn’t free
Everything starts with a ticket being purchased and seats being filled. I buy tickets for San Jose games and scold anyone getting in with a free one. I’m right at least on this: a promo ticket or one received free from a “friend of a friend, who knows someone who works for a company who has corporate seats” is a bigger enemy to the league than NBC not renewing.
“OK, wise guy, what are your ideas?” Fair enough question indeed.
Arena Football cannot be sold by an ad executive trying to grab the attention of a couch potato or an NFL fan with ads that have no chance of making any sense to them. The players, in the AFL and the style of the game itself, is where AFL fans find their motivation and that is the only place it will ever exist. And AFL fans spread the word better than a 30-second promo.
I would rather my children grow up to be like James Roe or James Hundon, Clevan Thomas or Dan Loney, than anything resembling Kobe Bryant. Content of character is not a slogan for a parent.
Those AFL names, except maybe Loney’s outside of San Jose, jump out to fans and can only have worth in the context of getting new fans into the league. We all know that many NFL fans have and will embrace the league and are of paramount importance for future growth and success, but the process many NFL adherents, and I am one, went through, took AFL fans to guide us, not hype, smoke and flash.
Men like Mark Grieb are whom good parents hope their kids will emulate, but let’s not take for granted that Grieb is an outstanding football player.
Once it gets through to a football fan, that Arena Football is football played by excellent football players, the difference of the games style, format and playing surface, becomes a valuable asset and not a bizarre X-game. In baseball, disappointed parents have to fork over a days pay to see some whining “major leaguer” jog around the diamond while two hang from his earlobes. In the NFL, players move from team to team so fast that game programs should be made with peel off stickers. Ask a child wearing an NFL team jersey to name five players on the team. In the Bay Area, Steve Young is still a Niner.
In the summer as a youth, I used to get up at 6:30 a.m., slam down my Wheaties and fly off to meet my friends at the park. We didn’t talk about how much money we’d make some day or who would have the toughest agent. When it comes to baseball, if I want to watch Wiffle Ball and temper tantrums, I’ll go to a day care center. I’m certainly not going to pay for it at what-ever-the-heck they’re calling the park where the Giants play.
Safe or out, heroes used to be there in our dreams. Now, the stars in our sports are nightmarish thugs with arms like the Hulk and scientifically derived anger control problems to match. The only thing we can now rely on is that they’ll take the biggest deal that comes their way and blame others for their choice to leave.
Eli Manning was allowed to bring the NFL down to a level of fast food franchise where a person can “have it their way.” The biggest shame is that it was onto a team known for grit and determination. Now the royalty of NY football fans will be paying sickening ticket prices for the right to make a selfish child more self-centered.
The only value in outdoor football is Pop Warner, where the tears in a player’s eye are for mom and dad and are not shed for realizing a championship would bring untold endorsement deals. “I’m going to Disneyland… ‘cuz they’re paying me.”
The inexperienced viewer perceives Arena Football as strange when channel surfing, but that does not qualify it as second-rate football. Too many players coming and going from the AFL to other leagues and doing just as well, proves that. Effort to draw NFL fans to AFL games needs to be a major quest for the league office but there are many other places to look as well.
Does it take an MBA from Harvard to know who needs to pitch the product? If a football player can sell Campbell’s Soup how hard would it be to get the fans that trust them, to try an Arena Football game? Mr. Elway has earned his pay in Colorado and many seats at Crush games are filled with his fans, so it’s safe to say that NFL fans will come to Arena Football games more than once. They just need to be reminded and re-invited by the people they trust.
“NBC has done a good job,” is the overwhelming consensus of AFL fans. This is ArenaFan Online and we are in this together. We also need to be ambassadors for the sport. When was the last time you urged people to attend an Arena Football game? During the NFL season it is just as important to wear your AFL team T-shirts as it is during the AFL playoff run. Your pride in Arena Football captured my entire family. My three-year old yells “Touchdownnnn SaberCattttttssss” at the sight of any kind of football game. Within minutes I’m talking Arena Football with everyone around us.
Friends, NBC is no different than the any other cable channel in that they more often than not search for ratings in shallow titillation. If they want overnight success, in TV terms, in a game that has survived for eighteen years without major media support, then they are not the right business partners. But, their willingness to renew is a good sign.
Sports in general no longer stirs much interest in the youth that fill more than half the households in America. NBC is no more special to a tattooed and pierced, latchkey youth, than one of 350 other channels that can be surfed at their fingertips. Go to your local park and prove it yourself: 20 kids on the basketball court, 10 on the field throwing around a ball, four on the tennis courts, 50 on skateboards and bikes, and the rest of the thousands of kids in the city are doing something else. They may be looking at a monitor, but it’s not the TV.
NBC and the AFL will have to put out effort towards building fan base outside the bubble. No better place to look than the American family. It still exists no matter how bizarre the definition is being stretched, and its influence is powerful.
And what about
“Where was Tim Ball when Al Trautwig was in this chatroom asking for advice,” says one post on ArenaFan. That hurts. Trautwig is always mentioned with praise in any piece I’ve mentioned NBC. Though he needs better stat guys, Trautwig shows a genuine excitement for the game and I have rarely missed an NBC telecast no matter what teams are playing. That’s a compliment. Team him with Eli Gold and we’re talking AFL excellence.
On the game-time promotions I stand firm. If promotion’s can be put on during the game —which kills a team’s momentum and the flow of the game—then offer them to families coming through the turnstiles or do it in the stands during the game. Better yet, have the players hand them out to kids during the autograph session after each game!
We already know that the players genuinely appreciate us, imagine our children getting a souvenir handed to them by Sherdrick Bonner or Barry Wagner. I’m no marketing pro but I know what a fan wants. I am one. “Hey Barry, make it out to, uh… To, my best friend Tim.”
Stopping the game for some promo makes no sense and, again, this can still go on in the stands during the game. And should be a major theme before the game.
The league and NBC are in a partnership of revenue sharing and have a contract that says so. So, go get the business guys! We’re already here and you have a solid core of devoted fans to build on. I agree that the league office is filled with a great staff that is there for the league and nothing else. They have labored hard to get the league where it is and deserve our support.
Where they are
Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCA’s, schools, churches, and so many other places and organizations do not watch much television. There are the fields of dreams to plant the seeds. I know. It is where I came from.
NBC has little right to look towards ratings points to set the path for the future of the AFL. They are partners in this venture and need to promote this sport with the influence they posses. The future of this league has no boundaries in established sports fans, but also lies in the outreach to the children that care about sports. You get an eight-year old hyped up about Arena Football and you get parents and his friends along for the day. Do the math: as the child grows, so does the future of the league.
Much energy needs to be put into reaching the masses that do not watch commercials. The money and time spent on clever ads for a league that thrives on being seen in person is a waste if seats go empty.
After seeing Arena Football live, all of the quirkyness of the field and the game disappear and you’re left in awe of the performances of the players on that amazing field of excellence. What helped my family embrace the AFL after years of avoidance was not a TV network but was an excited fan showing me a photo album of favorite players during a game.
AFL Commissioner David Baker, who could restore anyone’s faith in a corporate professional, is an ambassador without equal in any sport. We’ve all met Baker as he rarely walks by a hand held out, and there are but a handful of people that can take issue with him on anything.
The job of NBC and the AFL has to be to fill the empty seats that appear on the TV screen. A crowd draws a crowd. It’s as natural as going to the Prom. No one wants to be left out of a great party.
NBC is right in renewing. They actually give increased value to their own decision about the league and in standing up for the choice they made.
That choice being the AFL.
Tim Ball is a writer in the Chicagoland area. Married and father of three, his opinions on Arena Football reflects the positive aspect of the game as a family event second to none in pro sports.
