Written by: Grant G.
The Alliance of American Football was a professional football league that blew through hundreds of millions of dollars and shut down in 32 days. This leads to the question of why did it run out of money that quickly?
They started their season after the NFL season was complete causing no competition. They had over 6 million people watch the first week of the season with thousands of people in attendance to these games. They even had a $250 investment by Tom Dundon, owner of the Carolina Hurricanes of the NHL and owner of TopGolf. With all of these things working in favor of the league, what caused it to fail?
Many fans believe that the lack of talent and big names made the league go bankrupt. Although many of the players had some talent they were still not good enough to play in the NFL causing less highlight plays and less interest. Another reason could be an oversupply of football causing people to stay loyal to the NFL with a better product and the teams they have supported most of their lives. It was rumored that the AAF tries to form an agreement to make the AAF a developmental league for the NFL, but the NFL wanted to be the only football league to maximize profits and have a long offseason to build excitement for the season. This causes the NFL to keep their monopoly going and keeping high prices for attending games and buying merchandise. Many other leagues have tries to compete with the NFL, but cannot compete with the funding and fanbase loyalty the NFL has established.
Works Cited
“Alliance of American Football.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 15 May 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_of_American_Football#Business.Wakefield, Kirk. “Why The AAF Was Doomed To Fail.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 4 Apr. 2019,
www.forbes.com/sites/kirkwakefield/2019/04/03/why-the-aaf-failed-before-it-started/#34060d91b70c.
That’s very interesting, As a result of this overarching monopolies like the National football league. They are able to completely dominant the market for whatever service or product that they produce. This is similar to how companies such as Coca-Cola, Costco, and other companies are able to buy out the competition and control the market. As a result of the consumers becoming familiar with these iconic brands, they will begin to stay loyal to those companies. Which will result in other businesses or competitors in general to make a difference, and startup in those fields. Like you have stated in your post, about the AAF getting no support due to the overarching influence of the National football league rejecting other league to start up. Resulting in their league to achieve the maximum amount of profit without competition.
ReplyDeleteI think the AAF had a good initiative of starting their own football league and making rules that the people love, but it is impossible to compete with the NFL giants. It is nearly a monopoly, as none of the leagues who attempted to start up were met by the high entry barriers.
ReplyDeleteWith many businesses and organizations there needs to be a group of administrators that know how to properly run the league. Without the responsible and knowledgeable people involved the business or organizations will become messy and bankrupt within a few weeks to a few months. Unfortunately The Alliance of American Football, a professional football league, experienced bankruptcy, blowing through millions of dollars to a shut down within 32 days. This is because of the people involved in making this league didn’t properly support the league with proper money management, with the revenue they were receiving for their high paid games.
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