Can the UFL survive long term?

At the moment it doesn’t appear so, but there may be a master plan in this league somewhere. It seems that this league and its leadership is willing to wait it out, spend zero dollars on marketing and wait for the NFL’s Collective Bargaining Agreement to end in 2011. Then they may stock their roster full of NFL caliber players who are without work and make a go of it.

There are two problems with that plan, the first being they are betting that Roger Goodell, the NFLPA, and 32 owners will allow labor strife to derail their license to print money. Secondly by 2011 many fans may have already forgotten about the UFL. Through eight games and according to League attendance figures just 76,835 fans have seen the UFL games live. Since this league has routinely lied about its TV numbers, we must assume that these figures are inflated.

For a league who hoped to attract 20k fans pr game they have fallen way short. Not one game has approached that goal, and for the most part the main stream media has ignored this league. While Florida Tuskers Head Coach Jim Haslett was on ESPN’s Mike and Mike in the Morning this week, there has been virtually no coverage of this league.

Of course this league is backed by big money, and they may be willing to wait it out and see if the league catches on, but with no media attention, a wide gap in talent among their four active teams, it doesn’t seem likely that they last long term. With each game that draws five thousand this league becomes a bigger joke. Eventually that joke you will just become sad, and the public’s attention will shift to something else.