Washington Post: Scott Tainsky on new spring football league
David Dixon tried it in 1982, Vince McMahon tried it in 2001 and now Charlie Ebersol will try it in 2019. Entertainment entrepreneurs have long been convinced professional football was a sport not just reserved for fall, and fans would take to teams and a start-up league that provided football outside the NFL and college football seasons. Ebersol will lead the latest attempt at professional spring football with the American Alliance of Football, an eight-team start-up set to kick off in 2019.
“I live in Big Ten country,” said Scott Tainsky, who studies sports economics at Wayne State University. “On any given Saturday, you’re looking at hundreds of thousands of fans who are going to games and tens of millions more watching on TV.”
So is there really a market for more football? Maybe, Tainsky says, but certainly not the kind of football spectators are used to seeing.
