...by more than 400% in recent years, mostly due to the hard work of Baker, his very talented league office, and dedicated and stable ownership groups at the club level.
Baker, who has shepherded the AFL through these growth years, is a football genius. He has demonstrated, in the development of the AFL, the same level of exceptional planning, flexibility, and patience that the generals on the field use to win games.
He has run a twenty-year ground game that has found a legitimate niche for his league in the very crowded world of television sports programming.
The Reverse
When faced with a dominating defensive line, sometimes you need to call an end-run. Rather than oppose the NFL, Baker has courted them. NFL owners or their families have bought AFL franchises. The AFL gets showcase time at SuperBowl events. Some AFL clubs, like the Dallas Desperados, even share some front office resources with their NFL counterparts.
From their perspective, NFL owners see the AFL not as a threat, but good business. Arena football is a continuation of the passion for football that drives deep into the once-sacred turf of Major League Baseball. Coverage of the league also extends ESPN’s football-dominant radio and television schedule.
The AFL established its own minor league, arenafootball2, developing a feeder system for its member clubs. The af2 has also improved the market for indoor football by making their version of the game widely available live nationwide.
The popularity of the indoor version of football is also marked by the proliferation of independent indoor football league operators trying to cash in on the groundswell of enthusiasm for the sport. AIFL, IPFL, WIFL… While they are a fraction of the size, these indoor indies indicate that there is a substantial market for the alternate form of the game.
Fly AFL, Fly…
A fledgling football league it is no more. On its twentieth anniversary, Arena Football can truly be called a major league, not an ‘independent,’ sport.
Some NFL-centric die-hards may disagree. The AFL meets 95% of what MLN defines as a major league:
- Clubs in markets nationwide;
- Professional players where this is their dominant or only line of work;
- Large, high-capacity venues like arenas or stadiums;
- Dominance in its level of the sport. Is bigger than all other leagues;
- Wide availability to the public beyond the venue. Must have regular television presence;
- Ubiquitous placement of news and icons of the sport in merchandising and the media.
It is the last point where the AFL is continuing to build itself. While not a household name in SI or at gear shops like Lidz, the ESPN deal promises to continue raising AFL awareness to a point where the brands and players of the league begin to really take off financially.
Plucked by the Peacock
Some skeptics point to the NBC deal, and the relatively low 0.9 and 0.8 ratings which AFL football drew, as a weakness of the AFL format of football.
The NBC deal was shaky though, and NBC did not approach their coverage of the AFL wholeheartedly. Worse, NBC took on the XFL, which tried to give legitimacy to wrestling-meets-gridiron. That poor marketing move for alternative football did more harm than good to their AFL coverage, and the league’s rep.
ESPN, by virtue of its weight in the sports world, and by its public investment in the AFL, is providing a level of legitimacy that even the most die-hard NFLer or shock-jock sportscaster will have a hard time refuting.
Indoor professional football is its own sport. It has arrived, and it owes no apologies to anyone.
See Also: "One Football. Two Games," MAJOR BLOGS, 01.25.07
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