New Football League Comes to Las Vegas to Draft Its Teams’ Quarterbacks
By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
Somehow, the sports world’s trails of dreams seem to always find their way to Las Vegas, where promoters, event organizers and league founders launch all types of new sports industry competitions and venue proposals.
On Tuesday night at a Luxor casino-hotel venue typically used by elite video game players — i.e. esports gamers — some of the sports media and football world’s biggest names like Charlie Ebersol, Bill Polian, Hines Ward and Mike Singletary were on hand as young promising quarterbacks were drafted by eight new football teams in a new football league called the Alliance of American Football.
TV producer Ebersol, who directed the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary, This Was the XFL, told LVSportsBiz.com that he is well aware of the football league graveyard dotted with everything from the USFL to that XFL (which was co-founded by Charlie’s dad, Dick).
But he said this league’s business model will succeed because it’s a single-entity business model where players on the 52-player rosters will each be paid three-year, $250,000 salaries paid out by $70,000 for year one, $80,000 for year two and $100,000 for year three. That’s just for starters. Players’ spouses and dependents will also receive health benefits, while players will receive free housing and access to a financial literacy program. In fact, the alliance’s business model, Ebersol said, was built from the models of tech start-ups, where several hundred million dollars of funding from venture capitalists and high-worth investors are launching the Alliance of American Football.
An Alliance co-founder, Ebersol said the old model of billionaires starting new football leagues did not work. “They had no idea what they were getting into,” Ebersol said in between quarterback draft picks at an event broadcast by the CBS Sports network from the esports arena at Luxor.
LVSportsBiz.com shared a few words with the NFL Hall-of-Famer Bill Polian, who is a co-founder of the Alliance with Ebersol. Polian showed a list of the young quarterback names that will help launch the teams in the cities of Orlando, Atlanta, Memphis, Birmingham, Salt Lake, Arizona, San Antonio and San Diego.
MGM Resorts International, the official gaming partner of the NHL, NBA, MLB and NFL New York Jets, is also the official sports betting sponsor of The Alliance under a three-year deal.
The Alliance will play its 10-week season in a window after the Super Bowl starting in February and before the NFL draft. The new football league will stage its championship game the weekend of April 26-28, 2019 at Sam Boyd Stadium.
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While former Steelers wide receiver Ward announced the QB picks.
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