The Carolina Hurricanes as of recent are making headlines, but not for anything they are doing in the NHL.
Hurricanes majority owner Tom Dundon gave $250 million to the Alliance of American Football, an eight-team league that started play the week following Super Bowl LIII, on Tuesday. The league’s season spans about two-and-a-half months of play, with the AAF championship game taking place on April 27.
The league is split into two conferences: Eastern and Western, and each conference has four teams. Most of these teams play in college football stadiums, and each team plays 10 games. All but one of the Alliance’s teams, the Salt Lake Stallions, are located in southern half of the United States.
Its inaugural season began on Feb. 9, but the league has already encountered a problem: it doesn’t have enough money for payroll.
Cue Dundon.
With $250 million, Dundon has resolved the AAF’s payroll woes — for now — and with that generous sum of money has become the chairman of the league. This could be really good for the AAF, or just really bad for Dundon’s wallet.
Dundon’s ties to the AAF could provide some increased visibility to the league, especially given his existing ties to the Hurricanes. A professional sports team owner such as Dundon becoming the chair of a brand new football league definitely makes me want to check out an AAF game and see what made him want to back the AAF in the first place.
Even just discussing the sum of money he has given to the AAF is enough to spark interest. $250 million is no small amount of money, and sports news publications, such as The Athletic, picked up the story as soon as it happened.
In its opening weekend, the AAF received millions of viewers, showing some promise that there could be a large audience looking to follow this league. But since it’s so early on in the season, there’s not enough data to suggest whether this is just opening weekend excitement or a long-term interest in the AAF.
There’s a potential for Carolina to collaborate with the AAF in some way, such as those classic ballgame T-shirts that include an enlarged logo of the sponsor’s company on the back.
But for this to take place, there needs to be money to sponsor the shirts.
This is just one idea of the many the AAF could use to increase its visibility, but the fact that the league has already experienced issues with money is problematic.
According to the Small Business Administration, 20 percent of all small businesses fail within the first year. This may not necessarily signal emergency alarms, it still illustrates the fact that there is a large amount of small businesses, such as the AAF, that end up failing.
It wouldn’t be surprising to find out that, in a couple of years, the league had folded because the newness factor wore off. The NFL will always be the dominant football league for the average American household, so the number of viewers may drop off after this inaugural season.
If you can watch the best in football from August to February, why bother watching another league?
The AAF does fill a hole in the market: football during the NFL offseason. The strategic planning of the league to start play the weekend after Super Bowl Sunday could definitely be even more of a pull for those diehard football fans that are feeling withdrawals after the Super Bowl ends.
Catering to those diehard fans may be the ticket to keep this league afloat, but the AAF will have to work harder than the NFL does to attract fans’ attentions and keep them.
In the end, only time will tell if the AAF will make it as a league viewers consistently support and tune in to watch, but given the number of football leagues that have started and failed shortly after doesn’t add any optimism to the AAF’s future.
