NBC Finds New Arena

NBC, less than a year removed from its XFL fiasco, is ready to get back into pro football.

The network announced Tuesday that it has formed a revenue-sharing partnership with the Arena Football League to begin televising indoor games on Sundays in the spring of 2003.

The deal could provide a major boost to the league, which folded four teams after last season and has 16 ready to begin play when the league opens its 16th season next month, one of them the Los Angeles Avengers. The league hopes to have 20 teams for the 2003 season, 23 by 2004.

Most televised arena league games have appeared on the National Network and ESPN2, with a few on ESPN and ABC. This is the first big-time network contract for the league.

“It’s tremendous,” said Avenger owner Casey Wasserman, chairman of the league’s television and properties committee. “We’ve always said, and our research shows, that 30% of the people out there know what arena football is, and, of that 30%, 90% love it. Our challenge has always been to grow that 30%, and there’s no better way to do that than network TV.”

Wasserman helped broker the deal, which does not involve rights fees but allows the league and network to share revenues. It’s a two-year deal, but NBC has the right to extend it indefinitely.

NBC, which lost the NFL in 1998, is in the final year of its contract with the NBA. Pro basketball moves to ABC and ESPN next season. Left in Tthe NBC Sports lineup are the Olympics, through 2008; NASCAR stock car racing, Notre Dame football, and various golf and tennis tournaments.

To help fill the winter-spring schedule, arena football will start its season two months earlier than it has, in February, beginning next year. Besides 15 regular-season games, NBC will televise the league’s entire postseason schedule, and the Arena Bowl, the championship game. The network will televise four regional games each Sunday.

“NBC is the ultimate fan builder, and I believe we have some passionate people who believe what we believe,” AFL Commissioner David Baker said.

Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Sports, said the deal with the arena league is far less risky than was the XFL, a joint venture between the World Wrestling Federation and NBC that fizzled and folded after one season.

“Arena football is a completely developed, legitimate sport,” Ebersol said. “We don’t have to worry about operating teams, finding players, the rules and regulations of the game. They’re all there. They’re there with 16 years of terrific execution.”

WWF Chairman Vince McMahon declined to comment on the NBC-AFL venture, other than to say: “I wish NBC and arena football my best.”

The XFL was heavily promoted, and its debut drew a surprisingly large TV audience. But its ratings plummeted once viewers discovered it was little more than traditional football with watered-down talent. Ebersol, citing the popularity of off-beat extreme sports at the Olympics, said arena football is an entirely different game, one that will be compelling even to an audience coming off the NFL season.

“This is football, but it’s a truly different extension of football,” he said. “They’re not going to be watching the same game as they are August through the Super Bowl.... You’ll have a meaningful option here.”

Unlike the XFL, which encouraged trash talking and had cameras in the cheerleaders’ locker rooms, the AFL plans to market its football.

“This is about the sport,” Wasserman said. “They’re going to provide access, but they aren’t going to be gratuitous about it. Players will be miked, coaches will be miked, all that stuff is good. [But] this is about football.”

Later this month, NFL owners will vote on whether to exercise their option to buy 49.9% of the league. NFL owners Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys and William Clay Ford of the Detroit Lions also own AFL teams, and several other NFL owners are planning to join the AFL.