Word: afl
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Baker hit the road to tap NFL team owners with deep pockets and experience. First on board was New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson, who paid $3 million for an expansion AFL team that will start playing next season. Three years ago, Baker met Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones in Oklahoma City, Okla., for a game between the AFL's Wranglers and the Orlando Predators. By the time his return flight landed in Dallas, Jones wanted in. The AFL now has nine NFL owners with stakes in its teams, and during Baker's reign the average franchise value has increased...
...team in Vevey, Switzerland. After returning to California, he became mayor of Irvine and a real estate lawyer, but he never lost the sports bug. In 1996 he bought an arena football team, the Sting, and moved it from Las Vegas to Anaheim, Calif. By that time, the AFL's high-scoring games and hockey-style hits along the boards had caught fans' attention and helped the league expand to 15 teams, mostly in such smaller markets as Albany, N.Y., and Des Moines, Iowa. But further growth seemed stymied by the lack of a broadcast outlet and by squabbling among...
...they did. The average price for a ticket to an AFL game is $22, in contrast with $50 for the National Basketball Association or the NFL. And AFL games are promoted with the kind of stunts minor league baseball has used to build a fan-friendly image. Before a recent game between the AFL's Avengers and the San Jose Sabercats, more than 15,000 of the Sabercats faithful shook cowbells and, like Larry Bird-era Boston Celtics fans, chanted "Beat L.A.!" as 16 bikers carrying cheerleaders stormed the field on Harleys. San Jose quarterback Mark Grieb, perhaps the league...
Once Baker had spread his philosophy, he was ready to enlist help from the big leagues. In January 1998 he arranged a meeting with NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. Unlike another football start-up, the U.S. Football League of the 1980s, the AFL was not competing for the sport's best players. (It couldn't afford them.) So Baker figured both leagues could benefit from a partnership. What was scheduled as a 15-minute meet-and-greet in Tagliabue's Manhattan office turned into a two-hour briefing on the AFL's business plan. Tagliabue was so taken that he quickly...
This growth, along with the new economics of sports TV, brought the AFL and NBC together. After losing $300 million on the last two years of its NBA contract, the network exited the major-sports business last summer. To fill the weekend space, NBC offered the AFL a slot in its schedule, on the condition that the league waive a rights fee and let NBC broadcast games in perpetuity. Under the arrangement, NBC this year got the initial $10 million in advertising revenues to cover its production and promotion costs. The next $3 million went to the AFL. Both figures...