Fans Will Be Owners in New Football League

A recent sports survey shows that most season-ticket holders would like to own a piece of a pro football club if they could buy in for $15 or $20 a share. So Louisiana promoter David Dixon said he has decided to launch a new co-op spring football league next Feb. 19.

To be known as America’s Football Teams (AFT), the league will be controlled in 1989 by the eight founding owners, who have agreed to sell most of the stock to their fans in 1990, Dixon said. Only one team in the National Football League is owned by its fans, the Green Bay Packers.

All AFT season-ticket holders will be offered shares in the clubs that are planned for eight cities--New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Detroit, Houston, Tampa and Miami. The founding group will be named this summer, Dixon said.

According to Dixon, the ill-fated World Football League demonstrated two positives and the one negative that killed it.

The positives: There are enough good players and fans for spring football.

The failure, he said, was in WFL leadership, which couldn’t decide whether to grow swiftly or gradually. The AFT will mature gradually, Dixon said.

The survey was conducted in 13 U.S. cities by Frank Magid Associates. Some of the findings:

--Fifty-six percent of pro football fans would follow the game, spring or fall.

--Eighty-six percent favor fan ownership of the teams.

--Seventy-nine percent would own stock.

--Sixty-one percent say NFL ticket prices are too high. The average NFL ticket costs $24.

--Ninety-five percent approve AFT ticket policies: fans buying two season tickets at the proposed regular prices, $14 and $10 a game, can buy two additional, adjacent season tickets for $2 a game.

--Eighty-seven percent approve AFT plans to limit player salaries and keep clubs from overspending.

--Thirty-two percent would watch spring football on TV and another 64% would at least sample AFT games.

--Twelve percent will attend and another 61% will sample games in person.

--Seventy-six percent favor a best-of-three Super Series for the championship.

--Ninety-four percent approve the AFT concept of shorter games, always under three hours.