Startup sports entities such as the United States Football League, Premier Lacrosse League, LIV Golf, Big3, 3Ice, American Cornhole League, The Basketball Tournament, Athletes Unlimited, National Women’s Soccer League and Ones Basketball League have hosted multiple games and events this summer. However, history suggests that some of these emerging ventures will eventually disappear.
According to former XFL President & CEO and current McKinsey & co. senior advisor Jeffrey Pollack, these startup leagues will have a better chance of long-term success if they meet four principles. The rights owner should deliver competition that makes sense, focus on storytelling for a new generation, have a commitment to co-creation and innovation, and deploy patient leadership and capital.
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JWS’ Take: While having a significant base of passionate fans is a must for a startup sports league, it does not guarantee success. (Investors continue to pour money into spring football, driven by the idea that American sports fans can never get enough pigskin, despite the various failed non-NFL leagues.) Therefore, the product still needs to resonate with the target demographic.
As Pollack said in an interview with Sportico, it all starts with the action between the lines. The competition on the field creates the foundation for a gameday experience that must be enjoyable, memorable and shareable.
“The competition must be full of energy, integrity and meaning for the contestants and the fans,” Pollack said. “It’s the connective tissue between your fans, players and the stories they have to tell.”
An example of a sports property that delivers competition with meaning is the OBL, at least for those who compete. The OBL is a nationwide one-on-one basketball tournament to determine who is the “Ruler of the Court.” Former Texas A&M Corpus Christi player John Jordan, the champion, won the $250,000 top prize.
“It was life-changing for our players,” said Pollack, an adviser to the league. “We created a new opportunity for their talent to shine and dreams to come true.” The league still needs to prove that the one-on-one, winner-take-all format matters to basketball fans. Fewer than 1,500 people attended the OBL Finals in Las Vegas.
On the flip side, a criticism of the LIV Golf tour is that there is relatively little at stake per round. event because the players were paid so much up front. Even the player who finishes last takes home six figures, which could also be seen to undermine the competitiveness of tour events. But LIV President and COO Atul Khosla strongly disputed that notion on a recent Zoom call with JWS. “We are not the only concept that has guaranteed money in sports. … At the end of the day, they’re competitors, they’re athletes, and they’re connected in a certain way.”
Once sports properties deliver meaningful competition on the field, they should focus their efforts on storytelling and connecting with audiences. Conveying who the contestants are and why fans should care about them can go a long way in generating interest in the property’s live events. The content needs to be fresh, engaging and snackable across a variety of platforms, Pollack said, and “geared to the viewing habits of a new generation of sports fans who are frankly more interested in athletes and personalities than they are teams.”
Premier Lacrosse League co-founder Mike Rabil said ESPN’s ability to deliver content broadly was a differentiator for the league during its latest round of broadcast rights negotiations. “ESPN+ carried over 250 men’s NCAA lacrosse games, in addition to 450 women’s NCAA lacrosse games, illustrating that there is now more synergy within the sport than ever before,” said Rabil. “ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 offer both broadcast and linear windows that allow the PLL to reach net new fans in an environment and attention economy that is increasingly difficult to break into.”
It is also crucial for athletes to connect authentically with the fans. For example, PLL holds clinics during the regular season and regularly brings families to the field before and after games.
Athletes Unlimited has taken a more radical approach to connecting athletes with fans by designing the league to be athlete-based as opposed to team-based – and the league’s storytelling is focused solely on individual players. The teams are reshuffled on a weekly basis, and the points leader at the end of the season is crowned champion and takes home the most prize money.
“If you’re a new league, it seems clear that instead of creating teams overnight and expecting fans to become fans of a team with no history or set values, it makes a lot more sense to lean into the connection between the athletes and the fans.” Jon Patricof (CEO and co-founder, Athletes Unlimited) said.
A commitment to co-creation and innovation helps sports properties win favor with employees, partners and fans. “We live in a world where everyone expects to have a voice more than ever before,” Pollack said. Allowing each of these parties to participate in the conversation and feel a sense of ownership will help an upstart league build a vibrant culture and stand out in a competitive landscape.
The NWSL has made it a point to include fans in the conversation. “As a challenger property, [we] have the opportunity to take some risks and really innovate the way we engage our fans,” Commissioner Jessica Berman said. For example, the league was the first back from the sports break, playing its games in a Utah bubble. It was also an early adopter of OTT technology, streaming matches worldwide on Paramount+ and Twitch.
LIV has brought the team concept to a golf tour and cut tournaments down to 54 holes and three days. It has also changed the on-field experience for fans and players alike. “We play music on site. That’s not typically common on a golf course. But we surveyed all of our players and the overwhelming response was that this is how they practice,” Khosla said. “It doesn’t bother them, it relaxes them in a way, and it completely changes the atmosphere on the pitch.”
The final tenet necessary for long-term success is patient leadership and capital. “It takes time for a new league to connect in a deep, meaningful and sustainable way. Nothing long-lasting happens overnight,” Pollack said. Remember, the first Super Bowl didn’t sell out.
The good news for these upstart properties is that technological advances and social media have shortened the timeline for achieving mainstream success. “You can now achieve in five years what used to take 15,” Pollack said.
A new sports property is likely to evolve before it becomes successful. So it is an advantage to have agile leadership that is able to adjust on the fly. TBT founder Jon Mugar explained that his league was launched with a vision that bears little resemblance to the product people see today.
TBT’s most notable creation is the Elam Ending. Originally, league matches consisted of two halves of 18 minutes, but this did not work. “We found our team was getting into the bonus and shooting free throws midway through each half, so we went to quarters and zeroed team fouls at the beginning of each quarter,” Mugar said. – It was better, but it still resulted in the end of the match. Then we put in the Elam Ending, which we named after a guy who randomly emailed us the concept one day.”
The format, which ends a game by playing for a score, has been so popular that it has since been adopted by the NBA and used in the NBA All-Star Game.
“We’ve gotten here by experimenting every year in capital-efficient ways and slowly steering toward what works,” Mugar said. “It’s how we find ourselves hosting events across the country on college campuses beyond Rucker Park. It’s also how we’re heading into our 10-year anniversary in 2023.”
(This article has been updated to reflect the correct name of the Premier Lacrosse League.)
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