A tendency exists to compare new football leagues to the leagues from the past. This, of course, is not always a welcome comparison and the United Football League tends to state that they have learned the lessons from the old leagues and that comparisons are invalid. This week Dusty Sloan pulled together data from old leagues to show how attendance varied from year to year and from team to team. This data is relevant as the majority of alternative leagues have had attendance in the same region the UFL is seeking to draw in year one.

One of the recent debates on the UFLAccess.com forums has been over the news of Wednesday games for the UFL. It seems as if the majority of UFL games will be played during the week at this juncture, although we’ll know for sure when the UFL schedule is released in the next week.

This generated a heated debate as to whether weekday attendance would be sufficient for the league to continue to exist. Minor league sports tend to suffer during the week. Womens Pro Soccer has drawn roughly half of their normal attendance for weekday games and MLS draws between 8 and 12,000 versus 15,000 or higher for weekday games. The major leagues and college sports tend to draw roughly the same during the week as on the weekend, but you could argue that they are “more important” to people due to their long term existence as part of the community and the fabric of life.

The last league to play in the fall with mostly weekday games happens to have been the World Football League, a league which has other comparisons to the United Football League, including the fact that international expansion was spoken of from day one of both ventures. The WFL put a team in Toronto which had to move due to a variety of issues, and spoke of expanding to Rome, London, and others. The UFL has spoken of international teams including the possibility of Monterrey in year two, London in the near future, and others.

The one comparison that can not be made, at least it doesn’t seem to be a likely comparison at this juncture, is financial instability. The WFL suffered extensive financial difficulties from day one. The New York Stars moved in-season, the Detroit Wheels filed for bankruptcy, and the Jacksonville Sharks had to be taken over by the league. Why did the WFL suffer so badly?

An old Sports Illustrated article holds the answer:

Gary Davidson got the WFL off the drawing board and onto the playing field in less than a year by sidestepping most problems of capitalization. Realizing that it would take ages to locate and interest “12 Lamar Hunts,” who could sustain losses for years, he settled for finding 12 people or groups with enough money to get the product on the field. He then hoped to sell the product so hard that the promise of success would bring the Lamar Hunts out into the open, eager to buy. In effect, he put the cart before the horse.

For a time Davidson’s plan worked beautifully. He found backers, although he admits, “We made mistakes in ownership selection. We let people come into the league because of the time frame that we might have held back on if we had decided to start play in 1975 instead of 1974.”

…

Here, unfortunately, Davidson’s plan ground to a halt. The Lamar Hunts did not materialize. “The timing for the WFL was right and wrong,” moaned Jacksonville Owner Fran Monaco, who quickly began to take his lumps. “It’s right for football, but this is the wrong time in the economy.” Monaco was resourceful. He managed to meet one payroll by borrowing $27,000 from his coach, Bud Asher, whom he then fired. And now Monaco is gone.

“Any new league is going to have problems,” said John Bassett, the Canadian who owns the Memphis Southmen, one of the few WFL teams that seemed to have no financial worries, and the man who signed Csonka, Kiick and Warfield. “The only thing that scares me is something I never anticipated, the general economic condition of the country. Money is tight, whether you’re running a shoe factory or a football franchise. A couple of years ago people were lined up in droves for the chance to finance a professional team, for ego or whatever purposes. Those people aren’t around anymore.”

The franchise difficulties ended Davidson’s talk of worldwide expansion to an intercontinental league. “I’m more for consolidation and solidification in 1975, rather than expanding to new cities,” he said last week. “We probably should have started with 10 teams instead of 12 and made them all solid in ownership and funding.”

Those who have criticized the UFL for beginning with just four teams should make note of the dangers of under-capitalization. The UFL likely could have began with eight or more teams had they let less capitalized ownership groups into the league, but they did not. From day one the league has only acquired ownership groups that could support the league and the UFL model.

The UFL and WFL both started in a poor economy, although the economy seems to slowly be turning around for the country with the UFL’s kickoff.

Perhaps most importantly, 2010 will mark the full scale launch of the United Football League with six to eight teams, higher payroll and other expenses, and likely more talented players. This gives the league additional time to acquire new investors and for the economy to improve.

Why are these factors relevant? The WFL achieved some measure of success, although that has been forgotten by many as the decades have gone on, and had their ownership groups been able to go through the rough times then the league could have worked.

Relatively speaking, the WFL still seemed a success story. Its television contract with TVS achieved highly satisfying results: during its first 10 weeks approximately 10 million people tuned in WFL action every week. ABC’s Monday night show attracts four times as many viewers, but it charges almost six times as much for a minute of advertising. WFL telecasts drew larger audiences this past summer than the National Hockey League did on NBClast winter and had about 75% as many viewers as CBS’s NBA telecasts. Advertisers were pleased, and TVS said it expected to pick up the option year on its contract with the WFL—at an increase in fees. Even if WFL ratings did not measure up to the NFL’s, they demonstrated to potential investors that football is king.

Moreover, not all WFL teams were drowning in red ink. The Birmingham Americans, in fact, hoped to finish the season in the black, which would be a record of sorts for a new team in a new league. New cities greeted dying franchises with open arms. Charlotte gave the Stars a sweetheart lease on Memorial Stadium and long lines were reported at the ticket windows. Shreveport welcomed Houston with a picnic, two beer parties and a parade.

Notice the bolded line. Football was king then and I would argue it is even bigger now. The UFL can achieve success on television and in sponsorships – that success may take longer than originally planned due to the economy.

As for attendance, the UFL will have to be patient. Unlike the WFL their teams are well capitalized and they are starting small. The WFL began with average attendance of over 40,000 in their opening weeks, a figure the UFL is unlikely to match. The problem with the WFL attendance figures was that they gave away a lot of free tickets and never disclosed that to the media when they bragged about the numbers. Most sports leagues give away freebies but you have to be truthful when you do so.

The WFL was the last fall football league to challenge the NFL and it offers a number of lessons for the UFL. As long as they learn from those lessons then we might see the United Football League play for years to come.