Get Buzzed

If you have ever been a part of a start-up anything, you know the complexities and challenges of what might lie ahead. Personnel issues, procedural polices, legal impacts, marketing strategies, budgetary constraints and so much more.

These issues and more were all in play as the United Football League (UFL) officially launched their season this fall, playing their inaugural game in Las Vegas on October 8th. More than 12,000 fans filled Sam Boyd Stadium to see what was coming from this fledging but equally determined league. The game, much to my pleasure, was won by the team that I represented – the Las Vegas Locomotives. One down and five games to go to get to what every team aspires - the championship game.

Barclay Communications was first contacted last May about representing the UFL, an assignment that was initially limited to handling just the public relations and community relations in Casa Grande, the league’s west coast training facility. Soon thereafter, our agency was called upon to also represent the Vegas franchise for all of their in-city, in-game publicity and promotion.

While the basic responsibilities of this client assignment were quite familiar to me, the notion of having to execute them in a long distance manner was a bit daunting. Essentially, we were representing a team that was located in another city from ours and then to another city 350 miles away. Can you imagine having the media very interested in your “product” and then not being able to deliver because your coaches and players are not readily available for interviews?  Thank goodness for the advent of emails, voicemails and text messaging!!

Some of what I was most surprised about throughout the UFL season was just how quickly fans took to the league and their teams. Having spent most of my sports marketing career in the NBA, this reminded me (once again!) that football is still king! Football fans, especially in under-served markets, love having their own team and don’t take long to adopt them as their own. Testimony to this was how quickly merchandise evaporated from sales booths. Of course website traffic is another leading indicator and that showed amazing growth over the two-month-long, six game season.

As it turned out, the quality of football played was quite outstanding and that is testimony to the league’s football personnel, the many scouts and of course, the team coaches, all of whom are NFL veterans. As there are many more outstanding players out there that either once played in the NFL, or could but didn’t get the chance due to roster limitations, the UFL will most likely expand to eight franchises next year.

What a great first season this was and further proof that “if you build it, they will indeed come.”

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