(02-04-2019 10:50 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(02-04-2019 12:02 AM)MissouriStateBears Wrote:  

(02-03-2019 03:33 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Call me crazy but I really think there is a market for spring league football in the off season in football crazy regions of the country, particularly if they feature local talent.

Local talent and you need NFL team affiliation for those fan bases to tune in to certain teams.

If you go to an affiliate system, you have to think much smaller in terms of stadiums. You need 15,000 to 25,000 seat stadiums because that's roughly the ratio you see in capacity between top level leagues and affiliates.

The challenge of spring football is the markets you want to be in to attract the what the heck I'll give the local team a tune-in or maybe go out to see people in notable numbers have a dearth of facilities of appropriate size.

That means you need cheap ticket prices to try to get more of the capacity used.

Affiliation drove fans in Little Rock for baseball for decades. When the Cardinals pulled out and the Travs affiliated with west coast teams it took some time to change the reason to come see a game in the mind of central Arkansas fans.

The problem for affiliation in spring football is based on past support levels for spring football, it is likely to skew heavily to the south. That's wonderful if you are affiliated with the Cowboys or Saints or Falcons or Dolphins, not so wonderful when you are affiliated with the Browns, Lions, Bills.

It is one thing for Memphis to be prepared to sell their QB to Bills, it is an entirely different thing to be the Bills affiliate.

My personal belief is NFL affiliation for reason to tune in for tv purposes. Gives the games a little more juice.

I think 15k to 25k is the goal for attendance already.