This past weekend saw the debut of a new professional football league, the XFL. Nobody knows how it will go, but this led me to a bigger question: why do major sports leagues have no competition? For example, there is no major competitor to the National Hockey League or the National Basketball Association, yet we just got one for the National Football League.
In fact, if you want to find non-major league sports teams, you would probably find them as developmental or minor league teams for those major league sports teams. To examine why there are no major league competitors now, we should take a look at previous attempts to create competition.
Starting in basketball, the National Basketball Association (NBA) has not had a major rival since the American Basketball Association (ABA) in the 1970’s. The ABA was a very popular league, introducing many features in the current NBA like the three-point line and the slam dunk contest. They also had a healthy amount of teams, eight in the final season and 11 in total, all spread out across America from New York City to San Diego, California.
So what doomed the ABA? It was two big things: lack of a national TV deal and bad financing. This caused the ABA to dissolve in 1976 and allow the NBA to absorb most of the good aspects from it, including several teams.
Heading over to hockey, the National Hockey League (NHL) has not had a major rival since the World Hockey Association (WHA) in the 1970’s. The WHA was a very player-focused league, allowing more freedom of movement for players alongside bigger contracts than what the NHL was paying them. They had 12 teams in total, stretching from Hartford, Connecticut to Los Angeles, California. In the end, money doomed the WHA, as most teams were teetering on the verge of bankruptcy by the time the league folded in 1979. The NHL took in most of the league’s teams and their rules towards player movement and contracts.
Finally, we come to football. The National Football League (NFL) has always had competition breathing down their throats, from the American Football League (AFL) of the 60’s to the Alliance of American Football (AAF) in 2019.
I’ll focus on it’s biggest one, the United States Football League (USFL). The USFL was founded in 1982 with the goal of giving football fans something to watch during the NFL off-season. However, they soon became the NFL’s biggest competitor, mostly thanks to signing some great talent like Steve Young and Herschel Walker.
Their downfall came thanks to an owner who heavily pressured the USFL to go head to head with the NFL in the fall. This failed spectacularly and the USFL folded in 1986, while the owner who originally pitched the idea later went on to become the 45th President of the United States.
So, what can we learn from the failures of the past?
Essentially, in order to survive as an alternative, you need to have stable finances and have something that can really set you apart from your competition. The new XFL seems to have both, so it will be interesting to see if they can survive and thrive or if they end up following the same path of nearly every other alternative sports league.