I agree. It’s a (relative) bargain, compared to an NFL ticket, though a little bit of digging suggests to me that tickets to major conference college football games aren’t that different from the AAF prices.
They aren’t paying their players a lot, compared to the NFL (about $80K a season), though the simple facts of roster sizes (and the coaching and training staffs) means that the teams likely do have pretty significant payrolls. Plus, as you noted a few posts ago, they’re playing in pretty nice stadiums, and the rental fees for those are probably also pretty steep.
Mrs. Cups and myself opted in for season tickets when they came out, but after putting the down payment in we realized we could only go to two of the games. I tried to back out but the ticket sales guy converted my 100 down to two 25 dollar tickets for both games.
They were in the endzones (as was mentioned upthread) but seeing two games for 100 bucks isn’t bad at all IMO
Sure, but would you rather see two unknown teams of scrubs play football in San Antonio, or go see a couple of Spurs games?
For my $100 and a weekend in San Antonio, there’s no contest- I’d see the Spurs. Top notch NBA basketball is far better than backups for the same price.
Now if it was a Missions game vs. a single Commanders game for the same price, I’d choose the Commanders because I prefer second-rate football to second-rate baseball.
Same thing- if I had the option of watching Alabama play a SEC team vs. scrub football, I’d watch the Alabama game hands down.
I could spend the same amount of money to see a shitty Magic game too, but what can I say? I like football more than basketball. Not to mention I like pro/semi-pro football way more than college football anyway. I fully understand that an Alabama team could probably beat (or at least give a run-for-the-money) an AAF team, but college football kinda makes me sick to my stomach…so I’d choose this.
Colin Kaepernick was reportedly approached about joining a team in the AAF but he wanted $20 million. If true, this guy is not serious about playing football. Not that he necessarily should have taken the $250k or whatever the AAF offered, but $20M is insane.
ETA: Tim Tebow was also approached but would rather focus on baseball.
As I’m sure you know, many of these came about organically, which I think is the key.
One example you omitted is the Chicago Cubs, who were named that somewhat derisively by a local paper and it stuck. The “Cubs” moniker being a criticism of the team’s youth during a rebuilding process following a couple decades of massive success.
I don’t know the history, but I’m betting the Phillies were probably called that because back in the day it was easier to say and type than Philadelphia Baseball Club. Not because anyone *chose *the name. This is essentially where the “Sox” came from, lazy newspaper typesetters.
Something that sets them apart from other attempts is that they aren’t focusing on making money from football. They imagine themselves as a tech company that’s trying to get their network speed fast enough to do near real time play display on mobile devices. That ties into now legal sports betting including betting on the results of the next play. The app could potentially gather data for marketing and serve up advertising as well. That open up options to be the backbone for other sports or the NFL. They even see the efforts to process, compress, and deliver data in near real time having impacts in transportation and “physical therapy.” (I have no idea about the PT but it’s in this cite.)
It’s a tech and gaming company that is using football as a loss leader and development environment. That does set them apart for other attempts IMO. Whether it works any better is a different question. Lots of tech startups fall flat on their face.
Kaepernick just settled his collusion claim with the NFL. Terms are confidential of course, but reports are saying that he’s getting $60 to $80 million.
I believe that’s plausible but I’m also very wary of any report I read about Kaepernick that’s not totally verified (either positively or negatively). He’s such a polarizing political figure at the point that “reports” and “rumors” are likely embellished or even invented by people with an agenda. So I take this with a grain of salt.
That said, I recall when he tried out for the Seahawks (because I thought he’d be a great backup; his athletic running QB style would mesh well). But they ended up not reaching an agreement because both the team and him concluded he should be a starter somewhere. Which I took as code for saying he demanded starter money.
I’m watching Memphis and Arizona right now. My first chance to catch an AAF game. I like it, it feels a lot like the NFL but with much fewer (and shorter) breaks. And I recognize a lot of the players. It’s much better than I thought it would be.
Helluva comeback by my Apollos yesterday. I had to work this weekend so I only caught the fourth quarter, but the team definitely has resolve and will be a tough challenge for anyone in the league to match up with.
Sure, there are lots of examples like that. “Giants” came organically from them being called that as a nickname, as did “Dodgers.” “Cardinals” and “Reds” were references to uniform color. Allegedly, the Pirates got that name when the American Association’s Pittsburgh team accused them of being “piratical” for stealing a player from them. The Yankees (previously Highlanders) got their name from the press, who got it from who knows where.
It is perhaps instructive that names that teams stumbled onto accidentally are just as popular as ones carefully selected by marketeers.
Yeah, I saw that this morning – that really doesn’t sound good. It seems likely to me that they had a pretty good handle on what their costs were going to be, and the income they were going to get from TV / media were already established, so this suggests to me that overall attendance was substantially below their projections.
The infusion of cash from Dundon will probably keep them going for a while, but if the league isn’t able to improve their income, I can’t imagine that he (or other investors) will be willing to keep throwing money at it for long.
I suspect that they didn’t lose a quarter-billion that week; while the article notes that they needed a cash infusion in order to make payroll, I would expect that the $250 million that they received from Dundon wasn’t just to make that weekly payroll, but to keep the league solvent for long enough to (they hope) get their feet under them.
If I’m mistaken, then, yeah, I can’t see them even making it through the season.
Lots of tech startups fall flat on their face.