Well here we are. Welcome back to the Mark Cast, your special live
Friday edition. I do prefer to do these, although I have learned from
our CFL pregame show last night that a hard scheduling that sometimes so obviously,
and you can do it here today. We can get on that, but
I do prefer the live show. We can take some comments and all of
that stuff. Back in the office today raining in Seattle, a little different
Seth. The listener said, this helped me have this whole new standing desk
situation, so it looks a little different. But we're back here. I'm
gonna pull up all my notes and everything, but I'll bring in my co
host here. I have my BC Lions have on raise your hand if you
are an undefeated team in the CFL right now. Huge win over the Calgary
Stampeters last night, Andy, how are you doing today? I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me on last night. And yeah, a resounding victory
for the BC Lions and just an outstanding performance for Vernon Adams Jr. I
mean, he was really on fire from the get go. He was really
crisp, his passes were accurate. They moved the offense with these two out
of the first three drives. He had a big touchdown run in the second
half, and they looked really solid. I think that was a great solid
wind for them on the road at Calgary. I'm curious to see how it
goes going forward with him and obviously see if he could keep that consistency going
into the into the remaining games. But yeah, really really great signs so
far for him. Yeah, you know, and the CFLs us in this
a marathon, not a sprint. So I mean I got all excited last
year. I'm like, hey, we're going through the Gray Cup, like,
let me go buy light scenes yo, and then a Nathan Ark and
all of that. We all know what happened. But here we are today,
Max's checking in JK here and the news and retaining we want to retain
quarterbacks. We are plotting the XFL twenty twenty fours course today. So I
was really proud. I have by little roadmap if you know this. On
the roadmap, it leads to Saint Louis, which is where the XL championship
game should be next year. So that was a little easter egg in that.
But we are plotting the XFL twenty twenty four course today I have our
dissertation of notes from you know, Max and everything else that coming off.
Andy and I were here last week talking, you know, we had the
layoffs and kind of the Janet Dukes of the world and all that. What
do you have any fallout from that before we get into our exercise to that.
Not much since we discussed it last I mean, again, it's a
new banner for the league, it's their ideas going forward. Again, I
haven't really he's seen much activity from the social media pages. I think there
was that one from the Arlington reradicades that you know, the Disney themed a
little a little posts that they made, and I don't think there hasn't really
been much activity other than that that's been worth a note. So for them,
I'm sure there's a lot of backdoor planning and trying to assess where their
staff is and what they're going to do as far as who is going to
be in what role going into the offseason. I'm not sure when we're going
to see any sort of results from those moves. Maybe perhaps after the draft,
maybe in July. It's really not accurate as to what timeline there is
now for the social media staff. Although we are going to talk about the
timeline in general today. Yeah, I feel better now. I don't know.
I think that we've talked to expectations and you know, what did we
want going into you know, I've asked Mike Mitchell was xtfl was the memory
of xtral twenty twenty? Was that too heavy on this? And people?
And I had told people for you know, years now really like, hey,
this could be their own thing, but yet we're still holding them to
these expectations. Now, I do think, okay, we've Danny, you
know, Danny Garcia's words, We've gotten the monkey off our back here,
we're moving forward kind of all of that stuff. I will say on the
rookie draft, so scheduled, you know, for next Friday. I would
really like to know when that's going to be. I have to work in
the evening, so I heard the afternoon the evening for thereafter. For that
we would like to do a show. So if we could get the information
on that, not a lot of information from the rookie draft. Maybe I
was hoping that would come down today here, you know, a week out
from that. But figuring that out, I think that's a good place.
I think that having a couple tent pole events and we're going to talk kind
of local marketing events, but a couple of tent pole national like okay,
we can post about this, get a little bit of pub you know,
the rookie draft and then the supplemental drafts and all that. Anything else like
high range, you know, social media, but anything else you would like
to see the EXO working on right now. Right now beside recruiting players again,
is just trying to get more efforts into local markets and trying to be
able to maybe get back on the horse of getting people into the loop of
renewing season tickets for next year. I know we've seen that in a couple
efforts, say for example, Orlando, I know is one market we looked
at. I think Seattle. I'm not sure if we've seen Seattle do that.
But I want to see that from all the teams in the league.
I don't want to just see it from like individuals who happen to be on
the ball and really know what they're doing as far as their strategy and getting
people involved in trying to get people renewed for season tickets. There needs to
be a league wide effort and I can't just be something you can wait and
tell Fall to do. Yeah yeah. John lewis here checking and got to
fix that Vegas stadium. Woof. And then we have Louis here. I
really think Orlando benefited with the benefit from believing or you know, leaving camping.
We're all going to next where the soccer CEM seats twenty five thousand,
and we've got to get this situation figured out here, especially with you know,
the Vegas of it all. We'll see where that ends up. I
mean, we're taking season ticket deposits for that, you know, it certainly
seems like that, But then we've also laid off a good portion of the
Vegas marketing, you know, a sales staff, so I'm not quite sure
about that. Maxis put together this incredible dissertation for us today, kind of
going through it talking about everything, all of this stuff first and foremost,
and I really like this. So he has this broken down a national marketing.
We need to come up with the stronger identity than just opportunity. People
don't buy into sports just because they exist. They buy it because the passion
of the players and the coaches. I know, like the player of fifty
fourth thing, and obviously that was an easy kind of kicking off point for
the Rock, and like, what did we bring the Rock in? And
he's gonna talk and he's kind of got his bullet points and now he's off
doing you know, Fast eighty seven or whatever in the Milana sequels. But
I think we need to figure out what the XFL is now than just it's
a stepping stone to get somewhere else. What do you make of that?
I agree in a sense, I understand why most of the people are here.
Okay, I'm I'm not a stranger to the idea of most of these
players and coaches going on to the next level, because quite frankly, that's
kind of how they pitched this league, and I'm not opposed to it.
I do think there is a space for people who want to come back and
play and maybe become, in a term, spring football lifers. Now,
this isn't something that's really been around for that long, and obviously some players,
I think, prefer to play in the upper level because there's more financial
stability, there's a lot more consistency. Obviously, having a league that exists
beyond you know, three years as a novel concept that we're still working on
right now. Even the USFL players feel that way too, I'm sure.
So there's not this ideal of like say with the CFL, where you know
that's going to stay around. The brand is there, the tradition is there,
the history is there. You can stay there and at least feel comfortable
if you're resigned to the fact that you're not going to be playing in the
NFL. So it's I guess in a way, it depends on if Danny
and the Rock and I suppose Rush Brandon want to start pushing it that way
where they say, hey, this is actually a long term proposition for our
players at coaches if they want to be able to stick around. But to
be honest, I don't know if financially they can say that with the utmost
confidence. It's not that they don't want to, but they just have to
be careful about where they're treading and what they're promising along the way, right,
So you know, I think in that sense, yes, I would
like them to maybe change their messaging slightly in saying that this is something that
people can latch onto and stay around for a long time if they wish to.
But I don't expect that messaging to change at least for the next couple
of seasons. I've said this a couple of times and just on here as
well, just because as we're doing all of this today, I want to
be redundant. But I'm talking with Greg Parks a couple of weeks ago.
I think the w w E NXT model of what that used to be,
they kind of when Vince came back and he had left the company and they
came back, they kind of it's different. Now it's like n x T
two point zero and it's like this Tide multi color. Back when NXT started,
NXT was the developmental brand that was in Orlando that the WWE would train
their talent and get them to go up and it was like Ohio Valley Wrestling,
and then it became NXT. They decided, Hey, you know,
let's film this right, let's get the guys used to this whatever. Then
they realized, hey, this could actually be a really viable TV product,
right, maybe we'll get one hundred thousand people two hundred thousand people to watch
this show. And what they did a phenomenal job of doing was balancing we're
going to have storylines here that you want to see every week. We're going
to pay a little bit more. We're not going crazy, We're gonna pay
a little bit more. Hey, you can be here, you can live
in Orlando, whatever, We'll spotlight you. Other people want to go beyond
the main roster, get their big paycheck and do all that. But they
balanced having compelling storylines and people wanted to see week in and week out,
while also knowing that a good portion of those people weren't going to be there
come nine months later or six months later, a year later. And I
think that I think they you know, with the Rock and what they know
with w you need to look at that as a model of we have to
create. The XFL has to be compelling on its own. Someone in the
chat with the YouTube comment like two weeks ago said, if I don't,
the XFL would not exist. It seems if it weren't for the NFL,
because it really seems like the XFL's only purpose is we want to get players
to the NFL, where at least USFL seems to exist a little bit more
of like we are our own minor league, and we've got people in Birmingham
or Memphis, like we're coming out and hanging out. It seems like if
there was no NFL, there would be no XFL, and it shouldn't be
that way. The XFL should be able to stand on its own, especially
as we found out there is no NFL on the academy, you know,
discussion anymore. I know we have some big partnerships with testing rules and all
of that, but I think the XFL needs to figure out how can we
be compelling on our own well, and maybe that begins with maybe not mentioning
the NFL as much in the broadcast, But that's something that they have to
talk to ESPN about and be able to communicate that with their broadcast partners as
far as what they want to be known for it. Now again, like
you know, ESPN's gonna do what they want. Obviously, they're gonna just
say and kind of presented the way that they want to. But there at
least has to be some sort of cohesiveness or understanding that goes between them and
the XFL. But you're right, the USFL at least seems to be in
a holding pattern of well, okay, it's cool if you go over to
the NFL, but we are establishing our sales as a viable league and an
entity. I feel that way for several leagues. I don't like, you
don't see this messaging in for example, the IFL, I don't really see
that so much. I don't see that in FCF. Certainly that's not the
that they're not like saying, hey, we want to we're trying to study
this other league. I think for the XFL, I get why in terms
of again the whole idea of you need to present an opportunity or a chance,
a step ladder, right, being able to ascend as a player and
a coach or as a personal member that can get greater opportunities. That's fine.
But maybe if there's a way to show that rather than say that right,
instead of being your messaging and just being implied saying like, hey,
look, we know you're probably gonna move on, but we're not trying to
push you out the door. If you want to devote more of your resources
to certain people in covering their stories because you know, say, like for
example, Benda Nutrie, who we all knew was trying to go back to
the NFL, if you don't want to put as much resources into that,
that's fine, right, Like that's okay, you just don't have to make
it obvious because the players are kind of already telling you that in their own
way. So it's the same thing like you know, last year with the
TfL with Nathan Mark, I'm sure like if every Canadian would have loved to
just have him around forever and ever and ever, I certainly wouldn't have minded.
He was phenomenal to watch last year, but we all do what his
intentions were before he even put out his statement at the end of it his
tenure with the BC Lions. So yeah, it's it's a tough line to
straddle, but you have to know when and where to kind of like put
your resources as what you're trying to promote, because you have to. It's
hard to just say like, yeah, we know you're going, and we're
gonna tell everyone else we know that you're going. Like that. I could
see where that maybe is a little bit in a way just crediting your product
in your league. In Maxil's sensor, you know, maybe if you are
going to focus on the opportunity, maybe have a little bit more like last
chance you or something like this is their last opportunity. I don't like that
because I would like to think like these players, you know, we can
thrive in the XFL, like this isn't a do or die situation, making
it back to the NFL. But but I get that. In terms of
social media, it seemed to me at least they teams have been active here.
And maybe it's just my Twitter timeline. How how would you rate the
last two two and a half weeks kind of following the XFL Championship game,
Like, how how has the XFL social media has been? I mean it's
pretty pretty quiet. Aside from the announcements that came out I think a week
afterwards with the draft, I haven't really seen a whole lot. I mean
the showcases as well. Like I said, they announced the showcases, but
as far as consistent activity, the only other thing I noticed a lot is
the YouTube keeps posting highlight videos, which is good. Like, that's that's
what I asked for, right, I think about a week ago or two
weeks ago, I said, please continue to post highlight videos and maybe even
post like, you know, extended plays of games like I guess you could
say classic games, which is hilarious because it's only been around for so you
know, not for so long. But maybe something of that nature where you
could sort of really attest to, like certain great moments during the season,
keep pushing out content like that. I think we had we had a highlight
video of one of the players the other day. I can't remember which one,
but we've had a few. Yeah, we've had a few that have
come out. A Max Porgy, that's right. I was watching the Max
Borgy tape and kind of really looking at like some of his best runs of
the season. Jayalen McClendon, who you know, didn't get a lot of
play. But maybe maybe you start to put out players who maybe you know
we're going to come back. Or that's the thing, like which which which
highlight videos? Do you try to highlight more the people that you know for
sure have moved on were the ones that you think might be coming back.
Though that's also another strategy you have to consider it. But yeah, these
highlight videos have been good. That's on their YouTube page. I like that
they've been pushing those out. It's just more of like the Twitter sphere that
I haven't seen as much on. So that's that's one thing to consider.
But as far as YouTube goes, I actually have been pretty pleased at least
in the last i'd say a month and a half of them really starting to
actually use and push out that content. Because that's one thing I wasn't crazy
about in twenty twenty was their YouTube page. I didn't think it was very
organized and I don't think they properly utilized it. I know they're getting they
remember when we had the promo video whatever with the new and it was like
leagued on YouTube. It was it sat there whatever posted about that. I
do laugh and when the exit out because it does seem either be getting more
consistent in they're in their posting. The first ever when they did their Coach
Just Roundtable, they posted it like right at the same time on Friday that
we post our episodes. I remember Max like texted me, it's like,
this is the end of the mark cast, Like you're gonna have to You're
gonna have to. You can't, you can't go live it said, you
know you can't do it seven. I said, let's just let's just see
here. I think the thing ran three episodes or I think they did the
North in the South and who is at Woodson didn't even show up, Like
it wasn't even on there. But I did. They're gonna getting more consistent
because, like, here's the deal. You have a lot of that stuff
anyway, so like repurposing that. I mean, you pay some interns sitting
there, you know, fifty K a year, and hey, edit edit
one of these every day. You know. I have many a kid that
would intern for me, that would do that, probably for free, but
let alone for a hour. But yeah, you just pay someone to do
that. He hasn't here. Yeah, managing getting more people hired, I
don't like. We talked about this last week and I have a couple of
shorts to share as well. I've been busy this week with work. But
like the offseason, on season hiring the of the XFL that can't permeate to
like social I think you need to have social people there. I have a
feeling, if you track the way some of the capitalizations of some of the
social media tweets are, I have a feeling there's a little bit of double
dippy right now, which I don't like. I would like to see eight
dedicated people. I understand finances and if we have to move people around or
whatever. Have you noticed that? Am I the only one that's noticed it?
Seems like the arling to renegade social media person now is like DC defenders
are kind of doing that or Houston. Have you noticed that, Yeah,
just a little bit. I think there was enough background commentary that might have
led to that change, but I just wish that there was more. I
hate to use the creativity because that's such a vague term, but there just
doesn't seem to be the same level of kind of understanding or at least in
tuneist to the community that there was with the social media accounts of twenty twenty.
Yeah. Yeah, the content was just it was really fine. It
was really electric, and a lot of ways I really liked they presented certain
ideas or certain things. But you know, I'll be honest with you,
like the same thing happens in the NFL. Like I could tell you a
slew of accounts that just are just really bland, boring, you know,
Mayonnaise, Vanilla Pay Sandwich that just like don't have a lot going with them
as far as their presentation of their content or just seem to be a little
tone deaf. But other the accounts that are great, you know, and
I know I've saying their praises before. One hundred million times. But like
the Charger social media account gets it, like they also put resources then they
devote themselves into having like real like planning into what they do. So with
eight teams, I think it's more obvious because there's so few options. You
notice it much more. With the NFL, you don't see it because it's
like, well, I don't follow sixteen of the teams in the league,
so I don't care. But with the XFL that is more important because you
are seeing every individual team more often. So you have to, for lack
of a better term, just devote more resources to each one if you're going
to really make sure all their content at least has a certain baseline of quality
to them. Yeah, I couldn't tell you, Like what what did the
Patriots tweet? Did the Patriots like Bill Belichick like not not have me?
Not good? Not good? It is funny that, Yeah, We've been
joking a lot online that whoever seems to be writing the Arlington account uh has
a saddin lack of non capitalizing anything in the sense, And I'm like,
that's nearly impossible on the phone, Like you almost have to go back like
an auto corrects it to capitalize so you almost have to go back and like,
no, I'm negating and that like it's a very purposeful choice for that.
I will say, we talked about this before. You know, the
time to maximize the social media is right now where you have all eight teams
under one roof that if you know God Willing the XFL franchise, you know,
in twenty thirty, here we're talking about you know who, I don't
even know who about. EO. Mckamore is buy and he's got the the
CLC Dragons, right, Malcolmore is part of the owner of the Crack And
we've got Ryan here, Ben Higginbogger, right, isn't that his name?
Ben? Whatever? Anyway, we got Malcolmore own in the SEATTLEC Dragons,
Like then hey, maybe he wants to devote a lot more money to the
social media and maybe you know, we have the Vegas team has been relocated
and they don't want to pay any money anymore. Like then you're going to
have disparity. But right now where you have all the teams, and this
really is there shouldn't be a There shouldn't be an excuse for any subpar or
social media across the board. I don't think. Well, Also, didn't
they say they were going to do more content in house in Arlington, Like
that was their whole stick that they were kind of like going through before the
season started. So I didn't really see that level of consistency across the board
because they've been operating out of the hub for most of the season, right,
Like they come back and they do their practices and everything, So don't
I don't really get why there wasn't more. Maybe there just wasn't enough time
for their mediation, like they weren't able to like kind of get everyone in
the same room and like talk about this on a consistent basis. I'm not
sure. And again, you know what's going to be interesting is finding out,
if we can in hindsight, how much time was really spent on each
thing, like the things that had Like like how often were their mediations for
this versus this, or like they think about this before they thought about this.
And I know that's been a conversation we've had a lot of times about
what what are they trying to make sure works first before what works best?
Right? Like and sometimes there's things that with the play on the field that's
the most important. I understand that getting the players, the coaches, people
botted to the league, that's the most important first and also paid right,
everybody gets paid, because that's that's been a very missing key component in the
past with leagues. But in this case still there's just all these like little
peripheral things where I wonder if they could reassess how they spend their time or
what they do with their time in terms of maybe getting everybody on the same
page, because that seemed like it was just kind of, you know,
it was all of the map in some ways. And that goes the same
with the broadcast too. Sometimes on ESPN, like some I think we're just
more prepared than others, to be honest, and some had better you know,
resourcing, Some people had better ways of collecting information, some had better
scripts as far as like how they were going to present each game. So
that level, again, that level of consistency, is something that they need
to really evaluate in the off season. I love all of the ESPN people.
I love everyone that came on the show. I love the exdost partnership
with the ESMB. Yeah, you get you get a feeling sometimes I'm like
I could just talk to myself, right now and probably get a little bit
more, a little bit more access on that. Hailey checking in here in
front the sea has been haggarty. She would gladly work for bad so good
to know if when Ryan when Malcolmore, I think he's coming the Climate Pledge
too. We also spoiler this is a side tangent. We are getting the
pitpull Enrique Iglesias, Ricky Martin tour coming here to Seattle Climate Pledge. It's
called the Trilogy. We did not get four seats for this that I looked
at seven hundred fifty dollars, Enrique, but we are we are upstairs.
We were paying one eighty. We're front row, but we're upstairs. But
I just said seven fifty for that. But anyway, begging that you were
talking, Yeah, the Dallas thing, the content House and all that.
I remember even when I was there with Danny in Arlington, she goes,
you know, we have all the resources here, We're gonna kind of use
all this. I know that separate Like then there was the actual physical content
house. It didn't seem to be worked about too much, but it did
feel like and I know that we went through turnover with some of the teams
and things this year, but did feel like sometimes I would talk with the
team's con person and it would be like, oh yeah, I can get
this person like two seconds, no problem at all. And then other times
you would talk with the like a different team with like I don't know where
this person is. It's like I thought the whole point of being in the
hub was everybody like and again, and I think people did a tremendous job
of this year, but working on that, what did you make of the
content house? I know people said it was like a TikTok thing, or
they went live on Instagram like what was the content house a couple of times,
but again not enough to catch my attention. I know there was some
TikTok videos posted separately from different team accounts, but again I don't didn't really
see any sort of like cohesive like across the board consistency with all those platforms.
I didn't really see it, and that's why I was a little bit
confused about especially on Twitter, Like I said, you know, Twitter,
I think the main account posted fairly often, the XFL account, but again
the individual team accounts I did not see as much as like the posting from
inside the content house. Didn't we get a video about an introduction of all
the social media managers, which but that was that was I think Leah posted
that. I love that. I mean, that was one of the best
things in the Rock retweeted it. But that was. Yeah, you're saying
you wish the league would do more of that. I would like that because
that was I think Leah posted out and then ever went shared that with Jay
and Haley and everywhere else. Yeah, I I enjoyed that because especially and
you know Twitter, you have a lot of like I have an avatar I'm
yelling at you, like I like seeing the people behind the social media like
you, this is the person you're yelling out, Like could you please pretend
like this person? I guess like we come on here every week and people
are crap talking, like I come on here every week and put my dumb
face on here, like at least you know, Yes, I like that,
But that was not the league that did that. I think more of
that and also maybe just a little bit more banter back and forth. I
don't know if you need to do trash talking. I know the USFL tried
to do that with their accounts, and it always just seemed cute to me
because I don't think they really had much to go with and that on that
and sometimes I almost feel like it was the same or two teams that felt
like they were tweeting at each other with the same person with the same handle,
like it was just kind of like a manufactured argument. I saw a
little bit of that with the XFL team accounts. Sometimes it would be a
little bit of back and forth and banter on certain things, especially when you
know, during the season once there were teams that actually played each other and
the results that were being add But I want to see maybe more of that
or just just again more transparency as far as who are these people, what
are they doing, and also like what's going on in the content house,
because that seemed like that seemed to almost set up like a reality TV kind
of esque scenario in a way, like kind of you know, Days of
our Lives, what's going on here, what's happening in the in the XFL
hub, And you don't have to wait for you know, Player of fifty
four to come out, you know, a week or and a half after
like every single results, you know, maybe can we have more up you
know, up to date kind of timeline stuff and you're really able to see
it as it's happening, right, So maybe more of that would have been
perhaps a little bit more connected for the fans. Again, if you're talking
about connecting to the fans, there's one way to do it. I like
to the where the actually seemed like a conscious I think Mike Mitchel at least
reporting this to us. I don't know if he reported it like actually made
a more conscious every like we're gonna retweet fan tweets here, right if you're
you know, could be you know, Mike tweet or it could be you
know, like I know, Evan whatever. But we find random fans with
ever tweeting. They're like Emory Hunt would be at the game and tweet.
I like seeing that. I like seeing the league account do that. I
don't know if they could do more of that if you did have someone like
Haley or Leah or Jay or someone like, hey, I'm posting the social
media stuff here, like highlighting more of that as well. But I like
that. I like feeling like, you know, the NFL is a very
hard you know, we we have it's the shield and we are the NFL.
We don't need you. I like seeing the exit, Like, hey,
it's more of a party on here, Come on here, We're gonna
share your stuff. We're gonna interact with that. I like that. You
know, I think you could, you know, I think you can benefit
from having two three four people running that main XFL account on any given day
and no game days and stuff like that go crazy. Uh yeah, I
see, this would be cool. Haley live tweeting practices. That would be
cool. Do a little too. Is periscope still a thing? Can we
do periscope? Remember parent? Was that? Like, didn't twitter by periscope
or periscope was twe thing? But but that, like, I like that
because it was the conscious effort from the XFL for that last thing on Twitter.
We got a couple more things here, but we need to figure out
what is the long term plan for the XFL's Twitter handle. We cannot have
it be XFL twenty twenty three anymore. I believe at XFL Twitter is available,
And this is a major issue when you have even DJ himself has done
it, uh, you know, tweeting the wrong handle. We're tating Xavier
F. Lapage and getting him involved in this. I don't know if we
can buy that. But it's a major issue because when you have people tweet
it out and it's not going do you like XFL Twitter? Would you have
a better idea? Well? First of all, I like them to get
back to the original handle that they lost to Lapage or whoever that gentleman is
that apparently just holds it over their heads. He must have gotten it first
because Twitter didn't exist when you know when Vince's XFL came. So I think,
I mean, I technically I think Lapag gets I mean, he has
first DIBs on the XFL Twitter handle. He does, but let's let's be
real here, is he really gonna use it now? So let's let's go
ahead. Let's let's start working on that one or that's that's that's my first
mad date. Second of all, I think they're twenty twenty three. I
mean, you're gonna keep changing the year, right, and as long as
you don't do anything like XFL season two three, like we talked about,
we don't want that to happen. But I don't know. X FIL Twitter
just doesn't really vibe with me as far as you're just posting the same platform
that you're already on. Anyways, I mean, I guess you could,
but it doesn't to be that's not something that other companies do or a lot
of other places kind of are in line with I would rather that you just
either have does the year or again trying to find that old handle. If
you can be able to kind of comment year and get that back, that's
that was one of the only two options. Other than that. There's not
really much else I could think of that you could change the name or make
it more appealing. I also I tweeted that out a couple of weeks ago,
like, hey, elon, you know, while you're fixing Twitter,
could you get could we kind of nudge Lapash here? And I think people,
you know, the USFL stands of the world like, oh, you're
trying to take away his civil rights read I'm like, I just I just
I just just just the suggestion. It would be fun MaTx as your offer
more in depth coverage of incoming players and offseason events with Lewin or others.
Why do you fans have to wait to January to get to know the new
rookies? I like that, and I think once we have the draft next
week, we're gonna have the slew of that. I had a couple of
players reach out to me already like hey, can I come on or I'm
in the rookie Draft? Can I get in the ball at this as well?
We're kind of doing all the CFL stuff right now and then we're going
live, like, you know, maybe we can work with the league once
you're brought in, but I don't know if we're bringing it back in Josh
for that. I don't know what his schedules like, but yeah, could
we could we bundle together five ten minute player interviews a couple of weeks or
pick you know, do do two teams each podcast? So you do four
podcasts and a couple players. What would you like to see following the rookie
Draft in terms of social content, Yes, I would like to see more
profiles done, and I would like to see them being done on each prospect,
or at least somebody who's picked and has a great potential to be part
of the league, and maybe using some of their college tape or using some
of the just some background information on who they are as well. And I
really want to see that kind of attention done from multiple people in the league.
Maybe if you get Josh Lewin in like you said, if you can
come in and maybe they have him do his like one on one interviews via
zoom or Skype or whatever technology he uses, and try to get people to
if you get people to try and be more involved that way, I think
if you have maybe more posting on YouTube again you really utilize those YouTube highlights.
That's another thing, making sure that you have those little short snippets on
the NFL graphic designs. I want to see if they have like some nice
graphic layouts for all of these players when as they're being drafted during the actual
draft itself. But yeah, maybe if you can get if you can get
an interview or maybe sort of more just again a presentation on their profiles after
the fact, that would really help people start to kind of get to know
them and understand where they're, where they're from, and why they're doing this
and maybe why they could be a potentially good fit for the league. That's
I think that's not a bad idea at all, and maybe do that for
a couple or three weeks out after the draft has concluded. I also know
that you know, Rick Sartell has been on here before we did our Thanksgiving
I think it was like the post draft kind of grading of the teams.
I can't remember. And then Rick's obviously been on for the kickoffs and all
that, but I don't know what the Rickie drafts is going to look like.
Next week. I said, we're going to be god willing. You
know, I have this wonderful lady that books me a year out to do
these hey read and I got you know, and it's paid. It's a
good gig. But it's always like the worst days. There's always like Dorothy's
friends getting married, or we like, hey, do you want to go
there Barbados? It's like, oh no, I got this dance before us.
I gotta go do but it's that Friday. So I hope that we
can figured that out. But when it comes to that, you know,
I've talked with Rick and Rick goos. It would be so great as opposed
to just and I know this takes a lot more time, but like as
opposed to just posting on Twitter like hey we signed this guy. Get together
a couple of people they can talk about and I don't know any of these
people, and I you know, I'm the dummy. I just make the
platform her and bring on Andy and all these smart people. But like you
know, when you bring on like Evan, we bring on John Vogel,
bring on Rick Saratela. You can come on like you know, and we
could build it were there would be enough of you guys that would know all
of these players. Right. I could not believe when Evan was on two
weeks ago we were doing our XFL players that still deserves a shot to the
NFL, the amount of knowledge that like Evan knows about all these players and
oh yeah, this guy and he played at this college and he was,
you know this for a cup of coffee. Then he went here and here,
like you could get as opposed to just posting the roughneck sign, you
know, round two whatever. And I'm not volunteering either, what I mean,
I'm volunteered, but like you have, there's ways to do it where
you just get a couple of guys that have tracked these players for the last
four or five years. They could talk about how exciting that is. I
know that's that's a step above all this, but I think it could help
give what I think it's already going to get some good juice just because it's
a draft in June, and I don't think that the draft. You know,
there's what are you doing? It's a pretty dead time for the NFL.
But I think you could get more juice out of the rookie draft if
you were able to get some people together that know about all this stuff.
Right, you have designated people who do their homework, and you've had people
who do their homework on for free, free, free, exactly. And
that's I know you. You screamed from a mountaintop about this, about saying
I'm here, I'll do this for free all day long. I get it.
I understand it. There are so many people in this network who really
do so much fantastic work and do their homework on these players, these coaches,
these leagues, the sport, everything like, there's people who really put
in the dcation. They need to go get people like that. Again,
maybe there's orders from high on up, from mister capital. I get it,
I get it. I get it. I get it too, But
they've got to have you have to have that kind of coverage. Look,
and I know they've been around forever and they have the capital to do and
I understand, but the NFL has this down to a science, right.
They have all the people who do this and listen, is it media members
who maybe do it on their own volition and don't aren't employeed by the league.
Yes, but those are also people who have jobs that are with other
media outlets that allow them to do that. We don't have that right.
There are not designated media outlets who are giving opportunities and work to people who
do this. This is all done by pure passion for people who really just
care about these leagues. So when you don't have that from an outlet standpoint,
when you know there aren't other people who are being paid to do this,
I think it's your job and bring those kinds of people in because otherwise
you're not going to get as much exposure as you wouldn't normally otherwise until you
start to convince people, hey, this is a viable thing that you could
do for maybe not a living, but at least you know, in a
sense of being recognized and compensated for your hard work instead of it just being
on your own free time, because that's essentially what it is right now for
all you know, for most of these leagues. But I don't get and
I haven't gotten this this whole year with this, and you know there's certainly
no love loss between you know, Mark Perry and I over a new stud
but you know, we hear this reported right XFL and you know the marketing
budget and we were so low. You know, we're really trying to conserve
and it's a start up and all this stuff, I would be not not
every right sometimes Mark a right like salacious articles, but but any article like
your guys is you know, the team breakdowns and the roster previews and the
looking forward to the weekend and the game recaps and the power I would be
retweeting every one of those, every one of those. You have people that
are working, you know, like I said, don't I'm not talking here.
This is because I know we come on here and we talk the XFL
failing on that. I'm talking like real media websites. I'm not. This
isn't really trying to plug you know, get the Mark Castle, like Mark,
you know, if Stefan's got the good one, if James whoever over
there, like if they're writing good stuff like bere retweeting all that stuff.
Because what I don't get is like all see oh the Seattle Times, like
they win and wrote the story about you know, the NUCI or whatever like
that'll get a share, But like Matt Lyons is, you know, team
breakdown whatever the the c Dragons won't get and I don't get that delineation there.
I'm like, well, why, like why can we retweet? Is
it because it's the Seattle Times? Because you know, I feel like the
journalistic credibility at least of New Stubb And I know you gotta kind of vet
and you got to figure out all your different stuff, but you know why
you can't be utilizing some of this, I mean all of you. Like
the amount of free content that is created about these leagues is astounding and especially
just good like journalistic content, Like you're not even take the commentary out of
it. Mike Mitchell. This is the DC Defender's preview coming up. They're
taking on the Roughnecks. Here's the depth charts, here's the injury reports,
this is what we know, all that stuff, like retweet that out,
Like I just don't understand that, Like I get, okay, we don't
want to tweet out it is the XFL bankrupt, like they're laying off everyone.
I get that, but I think that there's a line there, and
I would just utilize more of that free content that we have or just like
you know, I guess in a way like with news Hub. Also,
maybe one of the things of the advantages that the NFL has is the network,
right, NFL network, you know, a thing that has all these
people and these personnel that kind of talk about all these things on a regular
basis. They have just content that's being generated all the time just by this
one entity, right, you know, you know, the NFL account could
just retweet like, oh, this is Adam ranks, like, um,
I don't know player rankings, and it's not are like we're not endorsed,
this is not yes, but you can retweet that out and be like this
is not necessarily what you what do you put what do you people put on
there, like retweets to not equated endorsements or whatever. It's like, it's
okay to share stuff that other people are creating that as long as it's not
like f bombs and stuff exactly. Just I mean, you know, yeah,
you curate as far as like, okay, let's see what is this
all right? Is this gonna be you know, in line with is it
just gonna get people talking, but not talking in the way that we don't
want him to talk about. You know, that's the kind of thing that
you have to be careful about. But you're right that content is just being
generated all the time. I mean, Mike Mitchell's putting out his power rankings
left and right, and I mean he's doing it from multiple leagues. And
that's another thing Like the CFL doesn't do that as much either, which also
just drives me crazy because it's like there's people all over the place who are
making this stuff constantly and they're not even taking advantage of that. And they've
been around much longer. So you have to be able to to like,
you have to be able to gravitate to that stuff because this stuff is being
done for you for free. Take advantage of it. And like I said,
I get I get there. There there's like that. Well, and
we have media because I've talked a little bit about the CFL, Like Darren
Bollman came on and Darren does his Winnipeg Sports show and he's talk to me
about this and he's like, know, like because there's like they have media
partners like the CFL, Like, Okay, they don't want to do I'm
like, I get that, But it's also like it's Twitter. I think
Mike puts out five articles a week during the XFL season, like you know,
talking through you know, the preview and the breakdown and the recap and
the power rankings, you know, pat stuff. I just don't get like
we have Josh and Josh this his stuff, and I think that that's a
tremendous product. They had like another rider that was kind of doing some recaps
since or like a press release, he kind of stuff. But I just
I don't know, you don't I don't think you need to have someone on
salary for all of that if you were, if we're trying to cut costs,
we haven't here an now, seeing the TV schedule earlier, selling tickets
earlier, I think that's great. I don't want to go too early because
we now in the CFL have a world where they announced the CFL schedule last
like the second the Great Cup was over there, like here's our schedule,
and then we had all this free agency movement in the off season, and
now you look at the schedule and not all of the teams are playing like
we got quarterbacks have traded and they're not playing their old team or their moves
cities and they're not going back to the old cities, So I think there's
a point to do that. Max wants to see it kind of maybe around
combine time end of July. What would you like to see the travel schedule?
Oh man, Yeah, you guys brought that up TV schedule. You
guys brought that up on the on the stream last night, and it really
got me to thinking I would at least like to see it again. Sometime
in the fall, that would be nice. Maybe September that would be preferable,
if you could get that organized. I mean, at least try to
plan it. Look, these venues all are going to make plans and you
have to start scheduling this out. It really depends on how long you've been
in that venue, and obviously you're you're footholding as far as what kind of
priority do you get with those those events. Now, since none of those
venues are obviously owned by the league or by the individual teams, they don't
have as much um positioning or power. Case in point, so, like
what earlier this year or last week, I saw that the so my team,
the organ Ducts are actually playing in the Super this weekend in the uh
in NCAA baseball. Well, they share the stadium with a minor league baseball
team. I hope that's actually about calling you for a writing job. I
think they are. I think I'm on the hotline right now actually asking for
my ideas. I know, but but no, so UH. One of
the things that I noticed with UH They're they're scheduling though, is because so
they got a super regional hosting this weekend, which is great, like that's
never that never happens, like that's happened twice. Um, and since they
came back out of uh not existing. But the problem is is that the
minor league baseball team that they shared the stadium with now has nowhere to play
because they get priority for their for their series, the Oregan baseball team,
because they owned the stadium. The university owns the stadium. So the other
team, the minor league team, has to go play in Washington now because
they have no other stadium to play and in the state of Oregon, like
there's no other place to go for them to go play. They had to
go all the way to Washington to play their series. So when you don't
have that priority, it's hard to the schedule. I get that. That
being said, the XFL has to be able to at least get in online
with these venues and say like, hey, look this is what we're looking
at. Let us know what are these dates way far at advance. Because
they're gonna schedule concerts, they're gonna schedule you know, ceremony events, they're
gonna schedule other sports, they're gonna do all those kinds of things. You
have to be able to get out and out in front of this because they're
just going to fill up the schedule. You know, you really have to
be on the ball about that. So yes, I would prefer if we
could get maybe the schedule out in September, that'd be awesome. But you
know, maybe that's just watchful thinking. We're talking here at TV schedule or
TV schedules and network slots and all of that stuff. I want to talk
about our idea of either are rolling by week kind of around March Madness or
kind of the mid season by But before we get to that, really,
you know Max is talking here, we need to get better time slots,
better networks, right obviously, we want that. What really struck me and
I just you know, we've done all this and we get caught in the
minutia every week of these USFL ratings and all this stuff, and here we
we pounded all season. If you're an XFL family, we want better,
We want better. You know, we need to be on ABC, We
need to be on better time slots and kind of all that stuff. USFL
this year did that right. Last year they were, Ay, we're Friday
on Peacock and we're you know, Sunday night on you know whatever it was
FS one or all that stuff. They're on far more network windows this year,
and their ratings are actually down, I mean ay compared to last year,
but also compared on game average to the XFL. I believe it's not
even close. They don't. I'm sure Mike I can pull up the numbers
try. That's not the debate today. But the point is simply getting on
better networks. Isn't like, oh, this is a golden bullet, like
we if we just get on ABC every night at eight o'clock, like it's
going to be better. Yeah, that's gonna help. What do you want
to see in terms of the actual realistic positionings, because the XFL we're not
going to be ABC, you know, eight o'clock every Saturday. Sunday night.
So what would you like to see for that? And I do you
want to talk about the bye weeks? They need to increase the number of
ABC games for sure. What would they last past season seven? That was
the number of the seven make it thirteen. If you can maybe double at
fourteen? Can you get that number up? That would be great. There
are gonna be a lot of games on ESPN. I understand that that's fine,
there's nothing wrong with that. Get as many games off of ESPN two
as you can. Just try to get it on the main network as much
as possible. The FX thing, it's cool, but I don't think it's
going to be the launch term answer. Maybe have one or two games on
FX, but don't have so many like USA Network with USFL. You need
to get those games off that and you need to be able to have them
in consistent time slots. Again scheduling with ESPN in the spring. Just try
to finagle it around other other events, but keep it at least to a
point where I think if you have Saturday, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening and
then Sunday morning and Sunday early afternoon, I think that's really ideal. I
think those are the best time slots, and those are the ones that seem
to draw the most attention and are maybe the most accompatable for people as well
as far as their schedules go. Because it's it's the weekend. You don't
have to worry about traveling during game day or or some some of that nature.
Now, I did travel on a Sunday for the Arlington game, the
Arlington and San Antonio game I went to. That was on a Sunday afternoon,
and I flew back that night. But it wasn't so bad. I
was fine with that. So I think you have to be congressed of these
people's lives and what's going on in their lives. Now, if you get
the local market involved, you get the people and the kids involved and the
families involved, that's great. And again I think those times slots, those
earlier time slots are great. Just you can't have the seven o'clock West coast
times like that just cannot happen. That's that's killer. That's like Pac twelve
football. It's just you cannot have those reason then yeah, you're not hitting
the national market at that point. They have Your dragons have to not be
basically the doormat for the scheduling this time because they got absolutely hosts this past
season. They cannot have that happen again because it just it was very inconsistent,
and it was all the map and it was just poor times. Honestly,
it was just really really poor times. I mean that Thursday, that
Thursday night against Houston, that should have been a big deal, but it
was during March Madness. It's March Madness that it was a late start.
It was like, no one's gonna watch this. I'm sorry, this is
really just horrendous timing on this. The March schedule. Like I said,
this goes back to what I was saying about hopefully putting in the bye week,
which I'll get into in a minute, if it's going to transition there,
but like that would actually help you try to create a schedule around March,
because March Madness is going to be there privately no matter what. So
maybe just focus more of your programming in late February and April. If you
can get the little bit of bye week action going in March. Maybe that
way then you don't have to worry about as many games and where they go
and their time slots. Something interesting as well. Luis brought this up,
but we'll get to the bye weeks and Max and I have talked about this.
This Rider's track right now is really interesting. And obviously I am in
full support that the Riders is someone that's grown up in you know, arts
and brought you know, content creation all of that, and then wanting to
get paid more and then one to get like we don't want AI people not
even so much like it. I think it gets not even so much like
writing scripts right like obviously we're not going to have like AI at least right
now, right in an episode of The Parks or Wreck or whatever. But
you know, even just doing like translated close captioning or like dubovers for TV
shows and movies and stuff like that's a job that now you're, oh,
the AI can just spit that out. You know they're used to. You
know, there's people that sit there and like, you know, do the
overdubs or do the do the translations kind of all that stuff, protecting all
that stuff. But not having writers now means and I remember the time back
in I think it was oh nine after the last writers strike, but we
had a lot of sports and we had a lot of really bad TV shows.
We had opposite worlds where two different sets of people. One lived in
like caveman times and one lived in future times and they were separated by a
glass wall ot of if you remember that, and then there was who done
it? It was like a murder mystery, and we had this guy named
Giles that was the host that would like scream at the people they would get
killed, and it was very fascinating. But I think that Sport to Reality
is going to be big time here coming into the fall, going into the
winter, depending on how long this lasts because the machine has to catch up.
Right. What are your thoughts on the writer's strike affecting XFL next year?
Can I give you a conspiracy theory? Yeah, I think it's a
methodology from Hollywood to not have to get into the business of green lighting different
ideas, and they want to cut that from their time budget schedule. So
I think I think that's really what it's about. They just don't want to
deal with Okay, well I have to argue about this idea and this thing
and this, so it's like, no, I'm just gonna give it the
AI and I'm just gonna improve it, and I don't have to think about
I don't have to negotiate creative creative differences with an AI bought right. That's
that's something that I'm sure a lot of those exacts were like, well,
this just saves me a lot of time. Might not just do this and
money? Of course, that's what it always comes down to, right,
cutting corners, and so yeah, it is, but it is a good
point, and it's something that people have to stand for and be able to
say, hey, no, I'm not willing to put up with this.
This sucks, Like I don't want to get either in this content because it's
it's you know, it's a lot of words that I can't say here on
error, but like it's there's a lot of things to it that don't it's
it's very inhuman, and it's inhumane in a lot of ways because it's not
something that appreciates what people have done before this and what people are doing now
in terms of like creating content and entertains us. And is that something that
like really especially our country is all about as being entertained is just being involved
with people's lives and being involved in content that really engages us. That's I
think it's just it's it's a mistake to try and think that that could just
be immediately replaced by AI technology. Right now, it's not sufficient enough,
and I don't know if it ever will be, because there doesn't have that
human element to it. Can you simulate humanity? Like that's the thing I
wonder about. I know that's really deep like logistical stuff that doesn't really mesh
with our audience, But like that's just kind of stuff I think about with
the writers Guild stuff. But yeah, with with U and in terms of
creating content for you know, the xpl if you're going to tie back into
that, Yeah, like do you want an AI bought to write player fifty
four? You tell me? You know it's send that, sending that in
the chat, make that a voting poll. Has a good comment here?
Girls are Martin has been on the writer strike since twenty eleven. I appreciate
that. I appreciate that. That was good. That was good. We
have a comment here, act by age. I'll pull it up at the
end. I'm saving viewer comments. Well we'll throw up all that stuff,
so act to age. I got yours there. In terms of yeah,
I do think sports high profile here Max pointed out the actress are on strike
and there it's like all in support, We're all in support them, all
that stuff. The rolling by. So I want we're either team just midweek
hearts or mid season hardstop or team mid season rolling by. So I don't
think the unless we're going to do a real media week, which we did
not do the week by between the championship and the playoff game. I understand
we want to accommodate people traveling. I don't think that's beneficial. Andy is
the team team, Hey, you take those first three weeks in March,
two teams off, they get rolling by one eat, you know each week.
That way, there's only you know, three games we have to schedule,
so I guess it would be four weeks, right with you? Four
weeks we're rolling by all three March. I say, just at least hard
stop the first week in March. Take it off. It's a mid seat,
you know, midwinter break, and then we come back and we do
it. Give your pitch here for the mid season rowing break, rowing by.
Well again, I think it's not only integral for a rest for the
players, because I know it's a you know, I get spring is not
a long season, but it's still long enough that there's still attrition involved with
these players in these teams, right, and you want to have time to
be able to account for different things that happened. Again, can you have
a week four, five, six, seven where two teams take it by
every every once every week, and then that way they have time to kind
of reevaluate, maybe do some players signings as well. Maybe go out and
get some players signings, get people more integrated. Like again, what happened
if Arlington made that trade or Luis earlier in the season and then they said,
hey, we're gonna do it before bye week. We get him in
here, we start kind of recommendating ourselves and then maybe their season actually turns
around even faster than it did last year. Or you get a team like
maybe maybe just get Orlando to kind of settle down and be like, Okay,
what is going on here? What's happening with dormity, what's happening with
our quarterbacks? What's happened? You know it's Rrell Buckley is not trying to
you know, run around with his hair on fire for one week and he's
trying to figure out what's going on. Like maybe just that way you sort
of calm the waters a little bit for your team. And again, it's
integral rest, it's it's kind of reevaluating. It's sort of stepping back and
seeing, well, what's what's working, what's not. That to me,
from a strategy standpoint and from a player safety standpoint, I think makes a
lot of sense. But again for the TV schedule, it also makes sense
because because again, if you do it in that month of March, now
it's like, Okay, you just have to worry about scheduling three games around
March Madness. We don't have to worry about this. And again March Madness,
I mean there's two weekends that are four days. Right, There's the
first two weeks are Thursday through Sunday. So if you want, maybe you
can experiment with having a Thursday game again, but not during those first two
weeks. Maybe the third week, maybe at the very end of March,
when there's only I think it's the Elite not or the Final Four, like
the Final Four itself, which actually kind of goes more into April. But
my point being is that now you can if you want to put a game
on Thursday. It's not a detriment to your your ratings like it was with
Houston at Seattle. So that's that's my pitch for it. So it's players
safety, it's strategy, and it's TV ratings. So those are the three
reasons why I would want to have that adjusted schedule. And the bye weeks,
the rolling by weeks. You have a lot of people on here the
want the rolling bye week. Here's my idea, and this is I am.
I just thought about this. I kind of chuckled here. Sometimes if
he wants I can get to see me start to grip with. I think
it dumb stuff to talk about. What if we do we take kind of
the best element of Fanker tro football? Right, So you know we were
drafting the teams every week. What if we do I'm a survivor fan.
What do we do the mid season bye week and we do a tribe swap?
And what do you mean by tribe swamp? We we do a team
week. We read rout the teams, but they don't know. I'm kidding.
I'm good, I'm kidding. That was just the read show. Do
you want to flip the field too? You want to do that? Let
the field? We get a fifth down, we get all that stuff out
here. I have looked at this weird that we're very off pace to get
done with this the reasonable time. We'll do our best. Andy like petitioned
about two hours here, so I think, well, we'll try to hit
at least that. But this is a lot of stuff here. Last thing
on this, and then we're gonna get to local marketing because this is all
kind of national stuff. Connect with local sports media everywhere, even without xml
teams, you know, try to get either on the radio, on TV.
Connect with people because I know people in Seattle that don't know that the
XMLC Dragons exist. So we're gonna get to that. But how do we
get the national how do we get that national spotlight more? Again, I'm
mean it's not just TV times. I mean the TV schedule does help because
I know people started to kind of warm up to it once they started,
you know, this games were on TV. But I not not with Survivor.
She doesn't watch Survivor, I guess, or if she's watched too much
Survivor. I'll tell you the tribes on that that's a raining thing. You
know, Hey, I actually found their coming in here. We got there,
We got there, we're hey, FCF did it every week? It
was, and they you could like then the second season, you could like
save certain players so you could be like, well, we're not like they
would just change O lines. They would just go this like this O lines
is set and we're just we're gonna send it to the Glacier Boys and then
their D lines gonna come. It was. I mean, it was at
least in the event every week. I'm sorry, FCF season one was top
notch. Yeah, I wonder, like, does do the CFL fans know
that FCFS exists? Because I want to know what they would like, would
they like faint if they knew that there was a leak that had five downs?
They think they think it's raight to four as a radical idea, wait
till they get a load of them. But I just yeah, so as
far as like, as far as like getting more exposure though for the for
the for the games, yeah, I mean, like again, there's not
that overall presence of what's going on even in the in the markets themselves,
right, So I wrote down a couple of things. First of all,
you need to have more community events. You need to be able to get
people out and be able to do more meet and Greece uh more, maybe
raffles or or like little events of like, hey we're having this thing going
on, here's an offer, like a package you could win for winning in
this game. Like do more like local promoting, Like I know it's like
super old school, but but like you know, radio or TV, uh
local marketing. I see. I saw ads for you know, the San
Diego IFL team last year, the San Diego Fleet, you know, and
or the Oh my god, wow, that's how that's how much I care
about the strike Force. That shows you no. But like like my fleet
love dies hard, it really does. But you know, for the Strike
Force, they got all of this local marketing and they have like TV ads
I've seen like postgame shows and pregame shows for them. And I just didn't
really see that with the XFL markets. Again, I wasn't in those specific
markets, but from what I was seeing from the periphery of all of you
being involved in those markets, I didn't see that as much. The more
community events, that's one that I wrote down. Another thing I wanted to
see more more banners. That's that's another thing. Can you get more billboards?
Let me tell you. Since the MLS team gout announced Sandre, I'm
seeing banners left and right for that thing. I'm seeing like billboard announcements.
It's like gotten around town. The word that website was posted, checking in
information. They already had like a fan event for the team, like I
want to say, like a day after it was announced that the team was
coming in. And so you need more stuff like that. You need to
say, hey, look, especially then, especially the XFL has to take
advantage of this. Right they're actually in the cities, they have to take
advantage of that because otherwise people if people don't know you're there or aren't made
aware of that, they're not going to show up. And that's they have
to put more emphasis on that. So just more banners, more community events,
and more meet and greets and local TV spots, those are the things
that I really look at. Yeah, well but and so we will do
that as well. Local step i'd bean I'm talking like if I'm if I'm
living in Boise, Idaho, like you know, and and the CFL they've
championed this as well, like hey, now we're on CBS Sports Network.
It's like they're going to promote more of this and it really is like Jim
nance talked about it during the Masters or whatever the golf thing was, and
then they've had some like little local banners and stuff. I just don't know.
We have to convert more of those fans unless you're living in those markets.
I will say, can we get I know we've we've long championed Dwayne
the Rock Johnson social media prowess on here. Can we get Messy to tweet
about since he went to the Miami team. I've read this that they now
that that Miami INNERFC team has more Instagram followers than any like MLB, NHL,
NFL, any mls like they have. I mean, can we get
Messy tweeting about this? Can we get him talking about I don't care about
the Rock tweet I want Messy doing that. Also, in terms of under
armour, I think there were like things this year and supply chain, so
we got to get that because the most frustrating thing is seeing coaches and people
were cool under arm or stuff on the sidelines and not being able to purchase
that. I think there were issues with that, but obviously we need to
work on that. All the jerseys just like like quarters zips, nice sweatshirts
kind of all that stuff. Yeah, I mean I like the idea of
designs, but as far as the execution, I think it left much to
be desired and there's a lot more where that could have been presented. Also,
again, just like getting it sold and the stadiums didn't seem to be
very consistent, and trying to find it was also difficult. Like in the
championship game. I mean I saw jerseys for sale, but they were kind
of like tucked away in a corner somewhere like one end of the stadium that
you had to like find specifically if you wanted to go buy one. And
Arlington, I don't really remember seeing much gear around. I maybe I didn't
look hard enough, but I walked around the stadium on the on the lower
concourse level and I didn't see much there either. So they need to be
able to present that a little bit more forwardly and be because you're not gonna
have a team store, right, you're not going to have that at this
point, but at least trying to find a way to like get that that
gear out of that merch out in a more present fashion and be able to
have it right there. Because something I mean, there's there's like lower level
leagues, you know, or at least leagues other leagues I've been to that
I don't have as much camaraderie or as much fanfare that do a better job
of getting their products out or at least presenting their gear right. Like there's
the way there. I've been to places where I'm like, oh, there's
they're selling a scarf, or they're selling this jersey, or they're selling the
shirt, or they're selling that. Like there's always something that I'll see where
somebody's presenting their products more forwardly than some of these bigger leagues, like the
XFL for example, they need to just put it out there more. Is
this shirt I didn't even mean to put this, Oh I just put this
on because I need something to wear today. Is this shirt better than like
any of the generic XFL, Like I think generic XFL twenty twenty is still
better than generic XFL twenty twenty three in terms of like that just the seattle
with like the whatever, the X two the two arrows. Yeah, that's
I think as far as athletic gears goes, Like I actually like my sweatshirt,
my XFL sweatsherd actually train in it sometimes like that. But see,
here's the thing though, they need to be careful about, like what market
are you peeling to? Are' appeeling to the people who like, are like
the the athletic market where people are like training all the time, or are
you feeling to the fans? And I feel like sometimes it's more of the
people who are like going to the gym as opposed to not that our fans
don't go to the gym, but saying like people who are like gym lifers
and people who only focus on like their fitness as opposed to people who are
engaged in the product and engaged in the lifestyle and talking about the sport.
I feel like there's less that the xfil twenty twenty was very much about that
that was all they cared about. This one's kind of more a little bit
more trying to appeal to both markets, and I think it's more of appealing
to one side than the das the other, So that in my opinion,
Yeah, the Seattle one that you're wearing, like, for example, is
just again it pops, it's more vibrant, it's it's noticeable, especially like
that that logo is going to be hard for them to erase from people's minds
because I think it really was in a lot of ways iconic, and it
was colorful, and it stood for a lot of things, not saying that
there's doesn't right now, but it stands for something different than what people had
from their vision three years ago. Anything else where I want to talk here
at local kind of getting some of these events we want to see in the
fault, like tangible stuff here, anything else attracting, because I still don't
think we've cracked this code of like if you don't live in one of the
eight, because we were going to stop down here if you live in like
if you live in San Antonio, But if I live in Nebraska, what
are we doing to reach me? Is it just because I do feel like
I have complimented many times. I think XL Twitter for what they've had this
year. I think they've done a tremendous job right and then they've been getting
on to TikTok and Instagram and everything else. But if I'm not on Twitter
following XFL or the Rock, like, I don't know how I learned about
this. So how do we get Joe in Nebraska to figure out about the
league this year, besides TV exposure, I think you have to appeal to
maybe certain players that are from that area. And I know now as far
as like those players playing in the actual markets, I don't think that really
does a lot of things. Like you know, last I checked, you
know, Brady White came from Memphis and he plays from the Memphis show Boats.
Okay, cool, I don't that's not really something that appeals to me.
But as far as like maybe taking players from other places and then them
coming into your league, maybe you appeal more to that, right, Like
what if someone like speaking of Nebraska, or if someone like Taylor Martinez showed
up in the league and somebody who Nebraska fans are very familiar with, maybe
then you can start appeal to the like, hey, you remember this guy,
he's gonna start playing for this team. I remember yesterday I was watching
the BC game. I saw an Oregon duck jersey or sweatshirt in the crowd,
in the Calgary crowd, and gets very It's very vibrant, like it's
a you know, bright green and the sea of red. So it's like
it's the easiest thing to notice. But like, I pretty certain that's because
Vernon Adams plays for BC, right, like he's he's a Duck alumni and
Eastern Watching alumni of course, but like the Duck fans, it's plutting me
remember him very fondly. So that's something that you can appeal to, saying
like, hey do you remember this guy? He was pretty you know,
you can really start to appeal to players that came from certain colleges. Maybe
that's something that you can talk about, or players that are from that,
you know, maybe a really renowned high school area, maybe in Texas for
example. I think that's something that they have to appeal to as well.
Other than that, I mean, if you don't have a team, how
do I mean it's the same thing you ask it yourself with the NFL.
It's like, well, the NFL has fans everywhere, even if there's states
that don't have fans, So how do you get them to maybe choose a
team? Do you think the us and I don't know if they are or
not. Do you think the USFL is doing a better job attracted a national
market or because I don't, I don't know, I don't know if that
Fox like it just feels more familiar, right, like, oh, like
what is this, Oh, it's ful, like I don't know, and
maybe just the way their product looks and kind of sounds, because it does
feel like I go back and forth, like how much can the casual viewer
really tell the difference between the XFL and the USFL. But when you watch
a Fox, especially the Fox ones, when you watch the Fox broadcast,
like, you know exactly what this feels like. I mean, there is
a level of familiarity with it, certainly with the broadcast presentation, but as
far as like the teams, I mean, they clearly are cornering the market
on the Midwest, like and the Upper East Coast. That's the that's their
strategy. So for me, I mean there's kind of disassociation with that as
far as there's no West coast teams, so that that does add into it.
But as far as the presentation goes, yeah, I mean it's something
that a fan could immediately recognized, or the NBC broadcast too, It's something
that most casual NFL fans could immediately recognize. It's just a matter of well,
I don't really know these markets very well, like can or you know,
Memphis or some of these other markets that people are not as in tune
with but also again not seeing the play their markets too, because then people
are starting to wonder, like, wait, where are they right now?
Okay, they're they're the hub, but like you know, but then you
have like you have. We we had an interaction we we witnessed from a
person that was trying to watch the New Orleans Breakers from New Orleans and uh,
let's just say his his um his curiosity was not met with the kindest
gestures because he was trying to figure out why is there a New Orleans team
that's not playing in New Orleans. You know you're going to have those questions
from people. I'm sorry, like you're gonna have to deal with that.
Why why the teams are not playing in their home markets. You're gonna hear
it over and over again. It's it's a weird um USFL and I don't
you can please correct me, and I don't want to be the XFL like
stand here, there's a level. Certainly, the CFL has its level of
gate keeping, right of um you know, we've been around forever. We
feel like the NFL's a little brother in Canada. And I say, having
spoken to Canadians is recently it's two weeks ago with John Hodge. They have
an inferiority complex. I mean that is John Hodge's where's you know when when
it comes to this, we feel very protective about that. The USFL has
it kind of a similar where it's like, yeah, we know we're in
the hub, leave us alone. Like it's it's a similar like thing.
And it's really where I don't I've never and send me tweeted me like I've
never seen an XFL fan like, well, you're just a big idiot.
You don't realize. And maybe there are, and you know when I know
some people get a little passionate. I just it feels like it's a different
level of gate keeping on there, at least with the USFL and the XFL,
because it is and I firmly believe it's in the USBL and inferiority complex.
A lot of the interaction as they have both the next and fell and
with other fans, I think it's just a little level of hostility that is
really unnecessary. And I see it from just a little bit like look,
you get it. Here's the deal. Every league is going to have things
that they are not going to be able to do. And things that they
want to do better. And I think, look, I think it's still
channeling from fans if I'm going to be honest, for if you're talking about
inferiority complexs of what maybe the higher ups are not understanding, Like it's like,
it's so funny, how how like tribal people can be with like the
their likes and dislikes. And yet I think in some ways maybe it's already
channeling some of their own frustrations from what's not happening at the higher levels of
Okay, well, I've complained about this a lot of times, but they
don't get it. So that's never going to change. And maybe it's that,
But you have to you can't just attack people who are like, don't
know about this, because that's not how it works. You know, you
just can't. I I've been learning the CFL game in the last three years,
and now I finally get to a point where I'm feeling comfortable talking about
it and really starting to understand it a little bit better because at least you've
done a good job of getting people involved that but you have to do work.
You should I wouldn't have to do work to watch it, like I'm
Watchington Commanders fan. I've never been to be watching Commanders football game ever.
About I don't have anyone on there, like, well, why are you
tweeting about like I just I'm a fan of the team I enjoy. Well,
you shouldn't have. I shouldn't have to do homework to be a fan
of like I should be able to enjoy if I like it. I mean,
listen, I had to start somewhere too, you know, Like,
should I have been spending seven hours a day watching NFL network when I was
fourteen? Probably not, But you know I did that because that was on
my own volition and I wanted I was curious. I wanted to know something.
There wasn't some But there wasn't some like NFL fan, you know coming
after me being like, oh, why are you want to be a Chargers
fan or what? What? What do you want to learn about our league?
No one did that Like that. That wasn't a thing, right,
There's no gate keeping there. You know, maybe there would be in like
certain message boards, but like that, that wasn't a thing in my life.
You know. That's I just became part of the league and that was
it. No problem. The transaction's done, you know, like I don't
that. That's just what baffles me about these leagues, especially players or people
who I feel like they have this thing that they really care about, but
it's almost like they don't want it to change sometimes but they don't want it
to be different because then if other people get involved and you know, too
many, too many cooks in the kitchen. I like, I get it,
But at the same time, it's like, if you want your league
or your your thing to survive, you need to be able to adapt and
change and you need to understand that. And that's what we talk about all
day long on this show every day. It's like I remember back with like
the Ataris when they were like kind of they were like so ky right,
so calpunk band, and they had so long a story. It came out
and then they were like to sellouts and everyone wanted to know about him,
and then they were warped tour and people were chanting like you sold out.
The guy like literally exposed himself on the stage. It was quite see it
was quite the see the World tour. Yeah, you know, like you
hold this pressures. I remember that, Like even when Danger Show Football was
coming out like I think Paul and I felt like we really had that market
like kind of covered, right, we have like Patrick D's on the show
and stuff. And then yeah, they start going and they ramping up through
promotion, they kind of like you get a lot more people kind of involved
in it, and it is just weird, like, well, how do
we balance this thing that maybe we believe in? But I don't know.
I think extvel Fans has kind of wanted to succeed. I think in general
they do. I think it's more of just they wanted to grow and they
wanted to get better. They and they're they're more open to change because it
is it's kind of like a startup in a lot of ways, right,
it feels more like a startup. The USFL doesn't feel like a startup.
It just feels like, you know, resting on its laurels and it has
kind of an old brand that it sort of keeps itself in line with.
But as far as the the XFL goes, I think there's more responses and
opens to change, you know, with the rules or with you know,
moving teams around and with being in different markets and different social media presence,
I think there's more willingness to change because it ultimately the ultimate goals survival,
because they know that survival has not been a thing for a lot of these
leagues and it has not gone well in that regard. Whereas the CFL,
I mean, they know they've survived, they've been around forever, and change
is scary because it might mean their survival is cut short. But I personally
think that there are things that they can work on that aren't going to completely
cripple their entire fan base. I do think there are adjustments that could be
made along the way. Last comment here and then I got it. We
got a little bullet points to get through. Jonath Lewis Wisaga. I put
this up before. I want to make sure we stopped down this, he
trains in his ext aren't sure as well? Perfect for the twelve ounts curls
if you know what he's talking about, drinking beer. When I studied abroad
in Italy, I did like a monthlong video project over there, and this
guy named seven Mountain of a man owned the local bar town. I think
he was seven because he was like the seventh child or whatever. Committee was
like Italian for seven. We call him seven. He was in this mountain
of a man and we're like seven, like, what's the deal. He
goes, well, I used to be a weightlifter and I would I would
lift weights every day. He goes, so I bought this bar and now
I just I drink comparrass every day. So similar vibes with John Lewis and
seven on there. We're talking local marketing. Max has here. You know,
fall draft parties in the local markets, engage Exevillo staff more closely in
local and local media and sports media. Get out to as many high school
and college football games as possible, you know, give out T shirts and
kind of all that stuff, especially Texas and FIDA. I would also say
on that I know they were doing that with the Kraken last year. You
know, we have kind of year round sports down in Seattle, but but
get out to that, you know, get out to the Seahawk games.
I think we'll see more of that now, right that we have some people
and staff. Again, that's why I don't want to see too much ramp
up or ramp down. My last point and obviously toss you when I did
the Seattle event show, this would have been in twenty nineteen. This was
I was there showcasing and hey, I'm a videographer. We do what you
know, weddings and events and kind of all that stuff, even things like
that the XFL. How the presence out in terms of you know, you
want to find out about season tickets, you want to find out this stuff,
like anywhere we're like, hey, a bunch of people are coming to
this. Hey the Home and Garden show, right, or we got these
trade shows anything that's an expense. I mean you're paying to be involved in
that. But but I think you know, even standing outside in front of
the cracking game trying to do that. But but figure out you know,
cracking starts in preseasons in September. I mean you got a long roll up
there. And tabling events too, right, just like being able to go
to like tabling events and be able to get your name out. There has
to be a way that they can find avenues where they can appeal or like
push out more of their content and more of their stuff. I mean,
I've gone two events where people are trying to get you know, just just
to get get their name out and get the word out. I never when
the Fleet existed, they had a partnership with some of the players. Uh,
there's a there's a fitness center. It's called Orange Theory and they have
like a bunch of different a different places across different regions, and there's a
lot in San Diego County and they had like some sort of partnership with some
of the players from the Fleet for them to come in, like hey,
you can come in and like train for free and come in and hang out
at Orange Theory, and like there's like, oh, there's like a football
player here. Wait, you do one for a living. Oh you played
for this team. Oh we have a team to Okay, So like that,
you know, that was cool. That was cool. I was like,
oh that's nice. I mean I I got a promotion through, actually
my mom got in promotion through for them to get sideline tickets, Like you're
like sideline access to one of the games. It was against it was against
Birmingham Iron, it was against Louis Perez and we got to see like the
sideline action. I watched Terrell Thomas and a couple other players practicing before the
game. And so yeah, like again, this league, this other league
that quite frankly was very poor on promoting its own product until like the last
minute and had all of its priorities, maybe in the wrong spots, still
had a level of notoriety and exposure that got people involved even with how mediocre
the presentation was sometimes and got people to go to the game. So,
yes, the XFL can do this, they just have to be willing to
do it and put it into the certain right spots that, like you said,
where the people are, where there's people that would be engaged in that
product, because people will care if you show that you care. A couple
of notes here and we'll get thoughts on this talking you're giving out the T
shirt. It's not that you know it's hard because you know we're ramping up
ramping down, so you need to have enough kind of you know, keep
one or two people need to these markets. Selling South can educate people all
of that stuff. He says, any significant local event where there's an opportunity
to market be at it. And every market have some sort of the fan
event at least every three weeks during the fall season. It's really tough.
USFL benefits. One of I think they're rare benefits of the later start time
is we have some breathing room after the NFL NFL is encompassing there. The
last thing here is find ways to make players and coaches more accessible to fans
during the offseason and during camp. If bogal mini camps are happening, make
fans aware of it and make it accessible to them. I will say anything
if I'm if I could channel you know, Danny Redbird, anybody here.
Anything that you think people don't care about this, they absolutely do. These
these showcases you have coming up, and I understand, like the Arizona one
we went it was in like the bubble dome kind of thing in Arizona,
so that might not be conducive to doing that, but like, just put
up a barrier fifty yards out let people stand there and take like anything you
think that they don't the combine, I get, we gotta staff, we
gotta deal with all that stuff. But fans absolutely, like you are in
the most diehard of anything fan bases here of people that are watching this stupid
spring football here, you know, talking ballot Hawks forever. Like anything that
you're doing, people absolutely want to be there for. It's the same.
But there's rookie draft next week. Like I kind of thought we would getting
an email today at some point about this is happening next week, this is
this is how you can watch or follow along, or this is what's going
on. Any thoughts on any of those points. No, fans absolutely do
care, hundred percent agree. I mean again, like there was a fan
of it for the MLS team that was announced here and we don't even know
what the team colors of the team name is, Like, we don't know
the players, we don't couch, we don't know anything. All we know
is where they're playing and we know the owner. That's it. And yet
people already showed up and they're showing you this event and they're you know,
they're running around, they're you know, throwing their hands up and all that,
and it's like that that shows that people care. And I think that
you can get that engagement if you are willing to put in the work to
do it and just putting out anything, anything for people that gravitate towards you
know, but I don't know, I'll put up a cut of a cardboard
cutout of day in front of the stadium. I don't care, Like just
something that like get people, I mean people whilst their minds. When Dwayne
showed up at the Championship game. People have flipping out because he's doing the
flex scam. People thought that was great, you know, like anything to
appeal to the than like the people care about that stuff you have and you
have to understand that. I think, yes, you want to build your
fan base and you want to be able to build it and cultivate it,
but like you have to also recognize that they're already Again, there are people
like us who are here from the beginning. There are people who were there
before that started and really got themselves involved in this from the outset that really
care about the success of the league, the success of the players and the
coaches build on that focus on that. You have to understand that and hopefully
that messaging comes across a little bit better in the next season and the season's
going forward. This is interesting here we're talking about Danny Garcia. I think
this is a good note. I will say that Danny posted her like I
can't do this job from an office, like I'm going to be on the
field, which I've always a tremendous Instagram video. It was like the real
and she like broke through the wall and then her has been sitting there like
I thought that was great. Like every single shot of her in the championship
game, I'm like barely out of frame because I was there, Like we
did the media scrumbling all that, like they're showing all these kind of I'm
like, I was right, I was so close to me and like I
would have died if I would have to have my face in that. But
it says you're communicate with fans and local residents. Better offer a clear and
obvious voice for the league and each team that speaks consistently with no distractions.
Danny is great, But Danny doesn't have time to do with all of her
like did for the pr and back in twenty twenty. Without that, it's
difficult for people to keep up with what you know if they aren't dedicated.
We don't have like presidents of team operations anymore, right, Like we don't
have the Ryan Gustison's of the world that are like doing our Seattle check ins.
I thought Russ Brandon was going to kind of be this role. I'm
talking. I like Russ a lot. He did that, but maybe his
schedule whatever doesn't. But do you agree with that, Like we need to
have I love Danny as the owner in the visionary, but we got to
have someone Danny Light that's doing stuff. I agree one percent. It needs
to have somebody who's your cheerleader. And I mean, well, The Rock
is a cheerleader, but he's not going to be able to do all the
promoting and all the you know, like you got to get people on like
Radio Row right, you need to get Luck at least, you know,
was showing up on shows left and right. You know, he showed up
on Coward, He shows up on all these different outlets of like explaining why
what they're doing and what the purpose is. And I think maybe he can
be get somebody who's a little bit more nuanced in terms of not just using
the same bullet points that Danny and Dwayne us on every single time, and
maybe have a little bit more fluidity to how you present that message. It's
not gonna be Russ Brandon. I think Russ Brandon likes to be a little
bit more behind the scenes. And so can you get somebody else who can
communicate that, who's at least in a high position of power if Danny and
The Rock and Russ are not going to do it or do it in a
way that's more consistent, get somebody else to do it. You need,
you need that because that way then people are more exposed to it. And
you know, again seeing Oliver Luck drinking with the beer snake in twenty twenty
was great because people had already seen this like this man present the league and
being involved in the league and really be involved with it with the fans,
and that was something that people could really connect to. You need to have
more of that, And I think if you're going to do that, then
at least get somebody who's going to be able to put in the work and
presenting that idea and that product. I mean, I know someone like in
UFC. You know Dana White. Say what you want about him. He
gets out there and he brings his product all the time. He is very
vocal about it all the time, constantly, he's everywhere, And you need
people like that if you're going to try and build up your entity and your
product. Because and it's not that I don't want Danny and The Rock to
do it. I just I understand that we have eighteen hundred different things we're
trying to operate it as you know, The Rock, you know, I'm
off doing Hobbs now and I'm off. I've got Milana and we're doing like
I you know, a death the XFL. We've talked about this can't be
a seasonal business and you can't you know the wrong Okay, I'm you know,
April whatever, Like I'm off now and I'll be about seeing. I'll
see in December, like we'll be back on the clock. And I know
he had his tweet this week about like the health and safety and you know,
promoting that kind of all the good work that they did. But you
have to I don't know what it is. It needs to be someone high
profile enough that like if you book them on like fallon or whatever, it's
a big deal. Like I don't know, I think the USFL could have
benefited from, Like let's can we bring Doug Flutie in on the retainer?
Like can we send him out? Can we can he do some like late
night shows? I don't know. You know, you need someone, you
guys, like we need to get like a B list, you know,
um, someone that can be on this or someone Dan this is the spokespersonnel.
He was the one that had the the the quote last week when all
the layoffs happened, Like I don't think that's the right idea, but we
need to have someone that can do some more public facing stuff. I agree
that somebody who can just who has enough clout, who can be able to
talk about it right, Um, And like, even if the Rocks showed
up at one of these talk shows, I don't think he's going to talk
about the XFL if I'm gonna be honest, I think he's going to talk
about other things that a wider audience cares about, if I'm just gonna be
honest. So with that said, then yeah, maybe you have to find
either I mean either one of either Danny has to drop all of her stuff
or you have to get somebody else involved that has enough clout and maybe bring
in another part owner of the league. I'm not sure who that who that
would be exactly, but just there's got to be some more synergy here as
far as what person comes in and is able to present the product in a
more consistent fashion and is able to like tell people about what's going on,
and maybe before the season starts or you know, get more appearances on ESPN.
Again, ESPN programming is going to be you know, moving along like
clockwork and going on in the next thing, So can you get people that
like kind of keep him evolved to be like, hey, remember we have
this league by the way that we repromote and that we're broadcasting every spring,
so just letting you know this is the person's going to talk about it.
You got to have more stuff like that too, And we talked about that
as well, like promoting. I mean, they've done a good job with
the signings and stuff, but like, can we get can we get some
interviews with even those guys like Josh I'm there with, you know, like
Darrish Shepherd and and I understand and I don't know what contracts like that,
like once you go under contract with you know where Darius signed that, we
see what the Chargers? Is he the one that went to the Chargers?
Yes, Darius Shepherd with the sign of the Chargers, So like I don't
know them, Like, okay, can we not do that because we gotta
deal with chargers pr and stuff like I don't I don't know how that works,
but it would be great if there was a way, like can Josh
or whoever, can we get five minutes to just talk and like what does
this opportunity mean? Just things like that. Uh it says here, Uh,
the collective boys and EXCENL fans and local residents are quite smart, even
if many of them have bad takes. Take a page out of what was
done with Redbirds other stops and to lose where there was a disconnection between ownership,
but the community just like there is here and get to know what EXCEL
fans want and continue to is them just a couple? Oh? Do you
agree with that? You agree that there seems to be a little bit of
a disconnect XFL ownership and what the XL fans, but the XL ownership things
fans want, what the fans want. Slightly, I think it's more of
again, just not devoting the resources that the fans expected from the first time
around. But I think there was a lot more listening than there was interactivity
between the two sides this season, and I think there was a lot more
the XVEL trying to accumulate information and trying to understand what exactly it is that
the fans are trying to gravitate towards and what they're looking at, media members,
what they're trying to do, broadcasting crews, what they're trying to do,
trying to just get as much information as possible without trying to overstep their
boundary. So, yes, there was a bit of disconnect in terms of
that a level of familiarity. But I think in a way, in a
weird analogy, I feel like it was like kind of like dating, Like
the league was trying to redate its fans and think, Okay, is this
like a long term proposition? Is the kind of people that we want to
have around for a long time, and like what do they want? Like
what's just what's their expectations? Kind of felt like that a little bit,
And so I wouldn't say like it's an intentional disconnect. I think it was
just more of feeling each other out in a way. The parties were trying
to figure out, Okay, what are you about, what are you doing,
what's your goal, what's your set? And if they can figure that
out and come to an agreement on that in the future, then that's great.
That's I think that's more of what it was about, rather than an
intentional or just very uncohesive relationship between the two. I think so too.
I agree with you. I think there's a slight disconnect. I think I
would love to give truth sirum to you know the eight, you know Danny
and the Rock and you know Russ and never like to get the eight.
Like, what really were your expectations coming into this year? Because I have
a feeling that although like, okay, we succeeded metrics and all that,
I do, you know, I don't think this is a failure. I
mean, I think we've done a tremendous job. But I've given them compliments,
like I think even if you take L twenty away, like this is
tremendous in the first year league and successes across the board. But I think
they probably thought we're going to get a little bit more exposure outside, you
know, in more mainstream or more traditional things that maybe we got. And
you know when the Rock has Zoah come out and everything picks it up and
it's in Vanity Fair and it's in vogue and it's like whatever, all these
different things and the X of bel is a really niche, really really niche.
It's really niche. We're building that, we're working towards that, but
you know, I just I'm curious what the expectations were for that and if
we're going to reevaluate that. I don't think, like you said, it
wasn't that they weren't listening. I think they were listening a lot. I
think we're working through that now and trying to figure out what works and what
didn't work. But yeah, I don't think the disconnect was intentional. I
think it was more just maybe we you know, we're not going to be
a top four or five sport, you know, but we're going to be
like top you know, five and a half. And I think it's a
wind No, it's like top twelve or whatever right now. You know,
it's it's like we're you got to work your way up here. Yeah,
no, I agree, And I that it is interesting to think about what
the original expectations were from the outset of the buying of the league. And
again, that was such a different era, right, we wouldn't know,
I mean, we didn't know if we were going to have fans ever again
at that point when they bought the league. So at that point, it
was such experimentation as far as what's going to happen going forward, what is
horror sports going to look like going forward, what's our relationship with the CFL
going to be? There was so much nebulous uncertainty with so many things.
But now kind of looking at it, it's obvious to be that there wasn't
maybe as much homework done on maybe the previous league and as far as what
fans wanted, like again the beer snake, you know, there wasn't really
much familiarity with that on their end, and some of the traditions, and
I know they weren't very long traditions, but they were traditions. Donetheless that
we're being established by those fan bases from those eight teams before, So maybe
there wasn't as much homework or a much diligence that was done in that respect.
It was more about like the financial aspects of owning the league and what
was going to be done with it. And I understand that part. You
know, again this is coming from a very business minded aspect with Danny and
the Rock and Redwood Capital, and if you're going to survive for a long
term, that's what it's going to have to be. But you got to
balance it with research and with understanding of what exactly the people want, because
if you understand what they want and you give them what they want, that's
going to help you a lot more in terms of sustainability, not just trying
to generate revenue, because fans are the lifeblood of any league and have any
entity, and if you don't have them on your side, you're not going
anywhere. John says, let's be thankful. We're We're thankful, John,
We're thankful. But this is this is the exercise today. This is where
we're doing our homework. We're doing our exercise there. I want to say,
Andy, when you're talking about, you know, the potentially XFL ownership,
not knowing about the beer steak, you wouldn't be gatekeeping, would you.
We're not doing any gate keeping over here. Yeah, it could be
if I really wanted to, I could No. I no, no,
no, because I no. But you know it's uh. We don't have
as long as a history as the x as the CFL here, but the
XCEL does have some mature last thing on this, and we have some action
points moving forward. I think we'll be good time here with the two.
Furthermore discussed with fans would they want to hear from a broadcast. We've talked
a little bit about the broadcast. Stop making a broadcast based on what own
on what on an ownership vision, and start making it based on what fans
watching these games actually want to hear. So they don't want to hear about
X Y player trying to make it to the NFL. They want to hear
about play schemes and storylines of the game. Max would also looking, I
would agree some of the broadcasting duos maybe get a little bit more homework than
others. Like I said, I'm friends with every single person I've had at
the ESPN as we're grant on this show, but anything else from the broadcast
narrative or the booth before we move on, No, I agree there needs
to be more emphasis on the individual stories. I mean, like, you
never hear about that at all in the USFL or the CFL. You hear
only about the storylines of the players, where they came from, why they
do this, and how they got here sometimes and maybe what their skill set
is, and really focusing more on that than just talking about like, oh,
well, here's where they're gonna go next. No one really talks about
that. I don't even think the CFL broadcast ever mentioned that once. With
Rourke, even in the middle of his renaissance last year. That wasn't something
they ever brought up, right, They were like, okayn't wait to see
him play, you know, a third string for you know, the Oakland
Raiders or somebody next year hopefully, and the like. They never talked about
or sorry, the Las Vegas Raiders, that's what we're gonna die. But
they they they are never going to like bring that up out of their own
volition. Whereas the XFL left and right was just talking about you know,
we have our example on our notes here, but I already vividly remember it
is Luke Barkou, that quarterback for the Brahmas. They kept just going over
and over and over again saying like, oh, if he defends Josh Gordon,
he's going back to the NFL. Okay, we get to understand again,
what as I saying earlier in this broadcast. You can do things but
maybe not have to say them all the time. You can show it without
having to speak it right, and your audience can understand that. You understand.
MLS fans aren't going on about like, boy, it would really suck
if we lost some of these players to another club for a little more money.
Like they know, if somebody improves enough, they're gonna move on somewhere
else like that. The soccer that happens all the time. That's not something
that people, you know, flip out about and be like trying to say,
you don't have to pound that message into people's heads. So you don't
have to do the same thing here either. I think maybe I think ESPN
one thing I'll say the last is ESPN maybe takes a little bit too much
from the college aspect. Yes, we know the college players are gonna move
on, like it's obvious. They still say they're like, you know,
we're going to see this guy play on Sundays. Okay, fine, that's
that's that's fine presenting it that way. But with the x L there doesn't
need to be that same messaging. I agree with that. And I as
someone that lived through the Nathan Rock experiment. So a few people haven't followed
the CFL. You know, Nathan Work, Canadian player, you know,
came back started from the bc Lions, played the greatest, you know,
probably one of the greatest single seasons ever in the history of the CFL,
got injured. Now he's with the Jaguar, is probably going to be the
third you know, third string quarterback there. Uh it was I think week
two, Oh my god, Oh my god, oh you know, and
it just that was the media landscape the rest of the season until Nathan got
hurt, was He's gonna go the NFL and can't you believe this? And
people care about the CFL now because they Nathan. It didn't like it got
so tired, like can I can we just watch the games? Can we
just enjoy the games? Wolder here? Like it's such a distraction trying to
watch the game and knowing like, yeah, Ben da Nucci probably isn't going
to be the CLC Dragon's quarterback next year. Like I understand that, but
I don't need to know that every single second that I'm watching these games.
Oh yeah, Ben, and when he gets in. I think there's a
balance. I think that again, this was the talking points this year.
I think we need to like, you know, develop the talking points further
with the XVl outside the player fifty four. All right, we have our
action items here and then we're gonna get out of here. Then we did
good. We did good. This wasn't a scary I thought it was going
to be, so I appreciate everyone's sticking around here. This is particular changes
for next season and beyond number one, we need to do a better job
with sports betting and fantasy communications. We've talked about this transparency. Do a
better job sharing the hard information about football on leagues social and publicly archiving on
the league's websites, inactive lists, injury reports, depth charts, etc.
Get a real fantasy football partner. Why not ESPN. We've talked about transparency
all of that. I mean, I'm happy to gain followers sharing out depth
charts and stuff like that. USFL now they'll tweet them out from their main
one. CFL the teams do it. What do you want to see the
XFL do? Yeah, that is bizarre that ESPN does not do fantasy on
their own app, considering that they broadcast the league. That is a little
strange, isn't it, especially if they're getting all this information anyways. And
yeah, as far as sharing reports, one of the things I have to
give the ESFL credit for is that they post those reports, those inactive reports
consistently on their Twitter page. So like and the player movement too, of
people who are put on the suspense of the inactive lists, like that needs
to be more consistent, and that has to be something the XFL absolutely needs
to do more of if people need to have that information, if they're gonna
make like lineup changes, or if they're gonna understand all right, well,
all this guy's probably not going to play. He hasn't practiced all week.
I'm not going to risk it, right, you know, you make those
kind of educated decisions like you do with your NFL rosters. So for this
case, yeah, I want to see maybe a partnership with DraftKings or somebody
who can have more fantasy fan duel or somebody who at least you can say,
hey, we'll give you the proper information so you're not left in the
dark. And then here's the information that's going to be put out to our
fans and they can make their you know, their educated guests as far as
like what's going to happen or what they think is going to happen, and
then you can go from there. That needs to be done more so and
that that engagement is going to be so much more crucial for people who really
want to be involved than you know, people might want to watch the games.
Right, so, because people start to go on it, because people
always want to bet. People are going to bet all the time. And
if you start to have things that like you realize, oh I have this
player or this you know, this team maybe I'm betting on. Okay,
well I want to kind of check out some of their games. That's great,
awesome, then you can really work on that. And so that's kind
of what I agree with too. I agree with the ESPN point. I
agree with making a partnership with a betting book. It's good what I feel
like with in the USFL too, with these spring leagues when they talk about
fantasy sports, betting all this stuff, and I I know nothing about any
of this, but I have brought on either Eric Eager and you know,
Justin Freeman and get to run the sims guys all Like it feels like when
I used to work in news, and you know, because famously I was
verified on Twitter before you know, Elon came in and ruined the world.
But when I word to qute thirteen, they go, all right, you're
we're getting everybody here iPhones. You have to install Twitter and you need to
go out and you need to tweet, you know when you're out covering news.
And so we go out like I gotta do this, they say,
we say, we got Like what the hell? Okay, we go out,
Okay, car accident, okay, whatever, like we have to do.
This feels like with with the same with XFL and USFL, like they
know in their head like okay, we have to talk about this, like
this is such a big thing, like like but we don't know and I
don't understand why you don't get any of these guys at Mark Drumheller that works
for y'all who sports, Like this is okay, this isn't like if you
don't want to deal with like run the sims or one of these, like
I think they're all legit, but you know, if you don't want to
do if you're the XFL, like we don't have a partner Mark works for
yah who sports? Mark? Can you come in here? Can you do
a six minute? You know? I know Stormy does it a little bit.
I think Stormy is better doing the interviews like can you actually talk about
like the fantasy lineups here and what's going on? Can you actually talk about
the betting odds? Like again, keep Stormy. Stormy is great. Utilize
that different bringing someone that's all they do is do this and figure out what
the hell we're supposed to talk about. Because I'm tired of Ian Fitzimmons standing
on the sidelines at Cashman Field holding his over under ticket and cheering that the
team missed the field goal because they preserved his under, Like I don't know
of it. Like people that really care about sports betting aren't really giving as
about the over under there. They're betting like they're playing fantasy and they have
our lineups and all that stuff, like that's the most basic thing. And
I almost think it's insulting the people that really want to pay fantasy to play
fantasy when you have people like Ian, Oh, got'm my under here,
like I'm sorr like that, that's like level one of a thousand and sports
betting like you're that's you're catering to. You're almost dumbing down to the people
that actually want to pay your product play with your product. At that point.
Yeah, it feels so vaudeville in a way, you know, like
this really old style of like you know, go the horse races and be
like I bet on you know, the horse named Lucky Shoe. I don't
know, something like that's good. Yeah, yeah, guys, that's exactly
what it sounds like. So I agree with you. I don't understand why
there's not a designated person that comes in just talks about betting lines they have.
Networks are getting that all the time. Fox has that with the like
the USFL. Fox is getting that with the USFL they're doing. They there
was a guy who's they had I can't remember his name, but they presented
it last week where he gave like, oh, here's the you know,
the overunder I'm looking at. This is why he's the the spread I'm looking
at for this reason. He gives us fix and he's out like that's cool.
That's that was like a you know, one minute spot. They don't
need really much emphasis on those kinds of things, uh like all the time,
but at least get people involved in terms of like having a guy who
knows about this stuff and as they to explain it to the audience, a
little bit of fantasy here, a little bit of fantasy there, you know,
get more of that involved, because if you don't talk about that,
people aren't going to be engaged in that part of your product, and that
disengages them from it overall. So you need to get somebody who can talk
about that on these shows. I mean the XFL preview show that you've you've
you've highlighted like they need to do more of that on there too or so
somewhere anywhere then thinking get somebody that more involved and be able to explain those
things also currently and again, because this is the things we can build too.
I think we need to generate more sports betting and gambling and fantasy.
I bet you right now there are far fewer people actually doing this than the
XFL things because, like I'll talk with who is in it was the guy
from Run the sims on two weeks ago, the Ferbie guy Ferby, and
I'm like, like, how's this going? He goes, well, you
know, like week one, you know, it was pretty hot and the
pot free, Like we're talking to USFL and the pot was like a one
hundred thousand. You could go on and win your part pot of like one
hundred thousand, right if you're playing whatever DFS or whatever on this site last
week or whatever, it was like a thousand dollars. Because it just wasn't
enough to like what we're not gonna We're not you can't give that, you
know, we gotta figure out how to do this, Like if you're gonna
do fantasy really do it. But otherwise, talking to at nauseum about all
of the over and unders, there are not that many people doing it currently,
and I don't think that they realize that. Like, I think there's
either a disconnect, like we either need to ignore it because no one's doing
it, or we need to build into it and do a better job not
insulting the people that they're doing it. I think they need to build into
it. I really do think there are people that are engaged with it and
want to be engaged with it. Like again, trying to do it rogue.
It's just really tough. I look, I love that Mike Mitchell has
his team and he talks about you know, he comes out and he goes
like, oh, I'm really glad that Alonsomore is doing really well, and
you know, I'm happy for him. I'm glad that he needs to getting
those points. But Mike can't be the only one doing max. You know,
I can't just be this inner circle of people who are doing this.
You need to capitalize on this interest of people who can actually get involved in
the product. The CFL needs to keep doing a better job of that too.
By the way, they need they need to push their chips in more
on the table on that, because like you have the infrastructure to do it,
you have the players. You need to be able to give people reasons
to put more into that. And I know it's kind of a slower build
for them with the Genius Sports and PFF and getting more information out there,
but they have to be able to push that button too, because again,
people want to do that. There are people who want to do that all
the time. Who there are people whose lifestyles revolve around that. Scott Diggerson,
if I can't remember its earlier in the chatt he said, you know
the XFL needs to work with Genius Sports. No, No, that's CFLs
move that's cf CFL and they're working with Genius Sports. We got all this
going on here. We have a lot of time about Vegas here. I
don't want to dive t you deep into that because I mean, obviously people
are unhappy with that. But I think moving forward, I think the XFL
and maxis in here, they need to do far more research about what markets
it stands, will work for spring football, Like going into Vegas. It's
not necessarily having a plan there there orlanda thing we've talked about the camping world,
but then they can't play at the MLS stadium there or whatever like in
terms of market research, and you know, this is a conversation. I'm
sure we'll talk XFL expansion here, you know, for years to come.
But any other thoughts on picking markets. I mean, again, I don't
know if there's going to really be any shifting of markets at this juncture because
they're still just trying to establish themselves in the markets that they're already in and
as far as Vegas goes, look, I mean, there's a lot to
be talked about here, especially with the fact that obviously the entire sales team
has gone. Now you've only had sixteen six thousand people really on average coming
to your games, and the location is not great. You're not getting a
new stadium now because you're not getting an MLS team, so you're not going
to have that venue to really work off of. So what's your alternative strategy?
My thing is like I would really try to appeal to people who one,
I think you need to fix up the field a little bit. That
goes with out saying, but to appeal to people who can spend money on
a product that's good and it's not extortionist price. Let me tell you something.
Read, I just got tickets last night. I have a bachelor party
that I'm going to with my friends to Vegas. Because he is a huge
Raiders fan, he wants to go to a game. We decided we're going
to a preseason game, just a preseason game in August. You know how
much the ticket cost for me, just me alone, to go to a
preseason game in Vegas the Raiders. It costs one hundred and seventy one dollars
for a preseason games. Extortionist price. And I can't believe that the XFL
doesn't appeal to that market more, being like, look how affordable we are
for this product compared to everybody else in college. You know, there's colleges
that spend, you know, spend more money on tickets than the XFL.
And the NFL obviously just has like just flowing out of the pocketbooks. You
have to be able to appeal to that crowd and just be able to do
that, but you can't also do this thing. I don't think the USFL
strategy really works either of the like, oh, we got one dollar one
you know, one dollar soda and one dollar, you know corn dogs,
Like that's devalues too much. That is yeah, right, so you got
to be able to at least keep it at a fair price, but at
least a reasonable enough to say like, hey, look, this is accompatable
for people, Like because here's the thing, here's the psychology for people.
If you don't if you spend money on something that's really not that's can be
a sunk cost where it's just not that much. If you don't end up
going to the game and it's not worth it, then you've kind of lost
the interests, right, you need to at least give it to a fair
amount of price where it's like, Okay, I've spent a decent amount of
money on this, I'm not going to just skip out on this. Whereas
if you devalue it too much, then it's just like, well, I
only spend ten dollars and I don't really feel like going today because I don't
know, I got some shopping to do. Like that's that's just the psychology
of people sometimes, right, that just happens. You know, you have
to be careful about how much something is really worth to somebody, but again,
at least points to something and say like, hey, look, you
don't have to spend this much money on this thing, right, you know,
let's be real that game I'm going to that preseason game, I'm probably
gonna see a bunch of like old football leaking players playing that game like OUs,
like maybe a CFL player trying to make the roster an X ball player
or USFL player. It's gonna be kind of funny, actually ironic in hindsight
and seeing that, you know, people that that I would have seen just
months earlier for a much cheaper price. So maybe appeal to that too.
I've saying, for nine more dollars, you could come see the trilogy with
him, Rega Laziest, Ricky Martin and Piple. There I hear a coming.
Pus No, I get what you're saying. And it's the us VELA
is at that point now where it and the CFL the CFL two things.
The CFLs at the point where their season tickets are not It is that like
stunt costs were last night in the Calgary game, I think they have like
seventeen thousand whatever. It was the record low lowest ever since the turn of
the century for all game. Because you get these people that Yeah, I'm
just not going to go to the game, like it's a Thursday. I
ate too much, I'm full, I'm tired, whatever, I don't want
to go. USVEL is the same way too, Like get a dollar,
hot dog, get the thing, like tell me no, when is coming
to your game? More like please? But yet we don't care about attendance.
But yet all we do every week is like promote, like please come,
please. We don't care about that, like we don't want you to
come, but please care about this. Like USFL is at that point where
I think they have devalued. I think they've devalued the even in just two
seasons. I think they devalued the worth of going to an actual USFL game.
I don't want to see the XFL do that because remember with both the
XBL and the USFL, we spend all this time maximizing the on air broadcast.
Right, Oh, we can see Dean and we can hear all this,
We've got the play call and all that. So why do people want
to come out to your stadium? You need to figure out you need to
make that worthwhile. You need to figure out like well, because we're gonna
be doing like in stadium stuff and maybe we have you know what was the
USFL had Kenny Chesney to play whoever it was come play or was that Tim
McGraw like play between like we need to do things because you've you've almost made
you you're on their broadcast too good now that you need to incentivize people to
come back out because it's way easier to sit on my couch. Yeah,
No, I absolutely agree. And that's always a tough balance, right between
being there in person and just watching it on TV. It's kind of a
tough balance to keep it. And I mean for the XFL, I think
there's enough from the on field product, and the us felt it is like
enough on the on field product that can engage people, but there has to
be other things that go on. There's other bells and whistles that maybe you
need to have that will actually keep people engaged as far as being able to
show up and have some sort of experience, right a fan experience. A
couple of last things here. I was just looking on here, you know,
anyone thinks that like Max who helped prepare the notes to say, if
anyone thinks that Max is like the USFL stand I'm reading here about XFL failing
on a lot of things. So just you know, just keep in mind
like Max's criminal about all of this stuf too, as much as he wants
to do it. I'll ask a couple of notes. Furthermore, you need
to stop assuming that ams will follow a league or any team just because they
exist. This isn't the major league sport. Uh. You know, you
have to build a fan base and people deeply attached like just and this is
always like the usfls thing like uh and like you ask, and I think
it was that it was Danny and Jerry when they were on. It was
that like the Ted Talckey like thing that they had last year where they came
like, hey, they're like asking Jerry Jerry like so why they repperd like
want to get involved in football, and it's like, well, people like
football, we would more football. People want football, we want to air
And when you even ask, like um, CFL, people like John Hodges
was on, Hey John, like so like what's the deal with the American
TV deal? Like what it's like, well, we know Americans like football,
like so CFL like you, like, the CFL needs to market itself
in America very differently than the XFL does, but neither one can just be
like, well, because it's it's football, people like football. The USFL
is showing, I mean, I think demonstrably showing, like just putting football
on, you're going to attract somewhere between six hundred thousand eight hundred thousand.
US de Bellot has not top two million this year save for the Kentucky Derby
or Preakness Game or whatever where they did the two million, But like,
you need to do more than just football on field, Like that is a
Brian Woods model and we saw that in the Spring League for years. I
just think there's a ceiling there. There is. There is certainly a ceiling
at least from a broadcast standpoint. Again, we don't know what the streaming
numbers are. Well that's always the curiosity factor here, but that audience has
its limits. You know, there are people who will watch football no matter
what, but there are also a lot of periphery people who don't watch football.
You know, Like putting it this way, it's it's kind of funny,
like I always put it in context of like, oh wow, this
many people watch this, Like you know this many people watch the Super Bowl.
Well, there are millions and millions of other people who do not watch
sports at all in this country, who just do not care, and so
like you have to count for that factor as well. And as far as
like when you start getting into these niche sections, you're not going to just
pull over all the people from the NFL or pull over these schedule people who
like happen to watch an NFL game, and then they're not going to suddenly
just be interested in the CFL or the USFL, the XFL. You have
to work to get people involved in those products. How it is how many
times have you heard like and Hodge said it? And I don't want to
this isn't like pooping on John Hodge, but this is the mindset, like
X number a million people watch this. If if we just got five percent
of those, if we just got two percent of those, if we just
got ten percent, it's like that's not and that's a failing strategy. Like
you need to you need to like what makes you stand out? And we
said at the top, if the you know the comment I had the really
struck with me. The XFL feels like if the NFL was not here,
the XFL would not have a place, right because like we we put people
in the NFL. Like like if you ask someone on the street, like,
what is XL messaging telling you right now? Was telling me people play
here to go to the other place? Well what if that didn't what if
there was no NFL? Well I don't know, like that is what?
So you just you need to figure out how to if that makes sense.
But I hate this. Well if we just got we just got a sliver
of that large percentage, like we would be I don't know. I live
in the wedding industry here, like oh, you know, thirty thousand people
in King County get married every year. Like if you just got you know,
yeah, But like I need like why do people want to hire me
than anyone else? Like you can't just say oh, because I exist,
like that's enough. Yeah. I think that's like feeding off table scraps.
And that's not the mentality you need to have with attracting people. You need
to be able to build your own interest, not just because oh well it's
kind of peripherally interested from this other entity. You need to actually build upon,
like generate your own interest. I think that's an argument that doesn't really
work with building out any sort of general interest in your product. I agree
with you in that regard. So I think another thing that can be done
as far as attracting other people and other numbers again, is presenting it is
maybe something new, something innovating, not just football as people know it,
but something beyond that, and you know, maybe a more entertaining product.
I mean, I don't understand why. And that's the thing with the CFLs.
What kind of makes me laugh is just like, well if we just
got this percentage of people from the NFL, like, it doesn't work that
way. It doesn't go the other way because, look, no one's familiar
with the game down here. I'm sorry. It took years for me to
jump on the train and I've been watching football in most of my life and
people, most people don't engage with it because there's not really a method or
a reason to engage with it. And that is a big deal. You
have to you have to almost go a different way, like take a different
route. Instead of just the football audience, think about other audiences, right,
and I know, you know, look, I'm sure there's some marketing
exact who's probably typing in the chat right now that's telling me how wrong I
am. But look, there's got to be an alternative strategy to approaching this
besides just saying, oh, person watches football, they would watch this too.
I don't know would they for anyone? And I love the CFL.
I love the CFL. I watched every snap at the game last night.
For any of this the CFL people that Like, so ESPN is winn into
this deal with Disney and ABC and all this, like we're doing the XFL
thing because Fox is different because like they own the USFL outright right, there's
a totally different scenario, like we're going to invest in this. Like if
the CFL and I love the CFL and there was such a hot property here,
why wouldn't ESPN just go this is already produced for like we'll give that
money come here, Like we don't need to deal like they're already Like why
would we go into bed with you know, And obviously it's because it's you
know, American football and Danny and the Rock and like I understand, the
XFL is bringing a lot more. But ESPN couldn't find anyone in the market
half their games too this year. That's why they're giving them away for free
on TV on streaming and that's great, and the CBS Sports Network deal is
great for the summer games, but the CFL was only able to find a
suitable home for half of their games in the United States because half their season
airs opposite the NFL and college But it is interesting with the CFL fans,
it's like, yeah, but yet ESPN decided to go with the XFL when
when they were airing your games last drug, Okay, tell me that that's
a hot product right now in America. And I love the CFL. Yeah,
I mean, And they never promoted the CFL ever, Like, they
never promoted it. It was just there. It's like, oh, it's
on ESPN News today, Okay, cool, Like there's no there's zero promotion
about it ever in any sense, whereas CBS is at least done a little
bit more. We've seen them, you know, send ad promos and nance
promoted it. There's like at least a little more effort on that end,
because maybe there's more skin in the game for them to actually promote it,
as opposed to ESPN, who may have just been like, you know,
kind of a toss away rights fee of just filling programming for that day.
So there's maybe a little bit more skin in the game for CBS to do
it. Last point here and there. This is good and I appreciate that
they need to XL NICs approach every person from the top down who is running
the business side, Like has Rust Brandon? Like what is he what connections
is he pulling in? Now? From the business side, they have the
former Brown's president, Alec Sheiner, right, one of the Breadbard partners in
the firm. Has he been involved? Like if we're doing these layoffs,
restructuring and moving people around, like we are we further utilizing enough to the
matters rust branding, utilizing the maximum that heat can or all these people from
top to bottom now that we've you know, shed the dead way. I
hate seeing people get let you know, let go and all the layoffs.
But are we utilizing all these execs to their highest quality? I don't think
so, And I think Rust Brandon could be utilized a little bit better.
But again, he's doing a lot of behind the scenes work, so I
want him to get out there more. I want to see him more presented,
but it's just not happening. And there's more emphasis on Danny and Dwayne
when they're available but again keyword being there when they're available, not when it's
convenient for everybody else. And so if you're going to do that, you
have to get some of these higher up execs or like we were saying just
a few moments ago, just getting another person involved that can actually present all
this and has the time in the dead ocation to prevent all of it instead
of it somebody just you know, flying in last minute to kind of just
give it a formal announcement. The last thing on here, and this is
I think kind of probably if you want to evolve everything we said in the
last two hours here than this, and then we'll get out of here.
We're do final thoughts. More TV marketing in itself will not be the answer.
More national TV slots in itself will not be the answer. Better scheduling
and of itself is not the answer. The deep problem has to do with
the lack of connection to the product, not the products itself. Awareness is
not enough. That's kind of Max's final thoughts. I feel concurrence with that.
What do you make I mean, I think that they still should do
more of it, Like I know it's not more of it, like,
but I think the connection to the product. I don't. I don't know
what Max is really getting on about here as far as can I to the
product, because I think the product itself connects itself to the fans. I
don't think that's the problem. I think the problem is there's not as much
bridge building between the product and the fans by the league itself. But the
product is not like insufficient in a way that I think doesn't. Yeah,
that's okay, So in that guard I mean, I don't know what the
answer would be then. Besides, I gave my suggestions, as I said,
you know, get the banners out there, get the social media more
involved, get you know, better scheduling, get local TV marketing, bet
are promoted, get more of that. Get people to involve themselves more and
care about the players, the profiles. I think we've covered all of this
in my opinion. See I disagree. I think people have been convinced to
just having convinced enough people. I disagree fullheartedly with that statement. People have
enough reason too when you get involved. I think they are involved. It's
just reaching out to people and literally just telling people that it exists. I
think that's literally what the what the issue is here or not that are not
feeling involved. It's good Max, But if you if you're listening on the
podcast, Max is comment in the chat, people haven't been convinced that they
need to watch the product. I think it's both sides. I think,
like we've said, and I've always said, we'll get out of here.
I think XFL is far more CFL than it is. I think USFL kind
of pretends to do that. Okay, we've got the mascots and we're kind
of like Bandit Pede and we're out and I know they're doing community staff and
just I have a Fox always, I always get b D with them,
and it just never feels the same. I want one of these leagues to
not realize. But I think like at least for the for the short term,
except like like the CFL, we send people out, we're in the
communities, we're in the schools, we're building in the local things. Like
it's more of that than NFL. We just put it on and people watch.
I think you need to. I think it's like we've said, combination
in person, on TV and the marketing and all of that, but it's
far more a CFL, like we're drumming up grassroots support right now than it
is. NFL puts a draft on and you know eighteen million people watch or
whatever. Yeah, No, I mean it's not just gonna people aren't just
gonna flock to it immediately. You have to be able to push and be
able to advertise it better. But once people do, I do believe that
they'll be engaged with what's actually being presented. And in some ways I feel
that way still about other leagues, like the CFL in a way because it's
I think there's there's more that could be said there that could be done and
presented and yet isn't being done. And for the XFL, I think that
they have to be able to push that out a little bit further. Well,
there we go. I think we did it today. We'll get final
thoughts from Andy, but I'll set the stage before we go. Appreciate everyone
sticking around. Don't forget Monday. If you watch our CFL pregame show last
night, Jason Hussey will join me a game. We're going to recap and
analyze CFL Week one. Pat Raffino not to be left out in Nicole.
Pat will be with me on Tuesday. We'll talk through the USFL Week nine
ratings, all the games, kind of all that stuff. Andy highest view
the USFL podcast right now. Wild wow, Pat and I doing that,
and and he's been a part of that as well. I assure me Andy
did that. But wild to think that the USFL Haiti Mark has highest view
the USFL podcast right now on YouTube. But that is what it is.
But exciting stuff there. We're trying to figure out both those will be a
nine am Pacific and then we're trying to figure out the xvel Workie draft.
We will be doing coverage for that, no matter what that looks like,
whether I gotta go be in the parking lot somewhere and do it before I
got to go in and do the show or whatever, like, we'll figure
it out. I want to be a part of that. John Lewis says,
awesome. John Lewis did with us the entire time. We'll all the
work. Appreciate the time and never both of you put into covering these leaks.
John Lewis, and I appreciate that. John a friend of the podcast,
everything else, anything else from you before we get out of here.
Two hours. I mean it probably could have gone three more, but I
appreciate all of the work done by you, and I appreciate all the people
tuning in. My last thought is looks And I say all this in the
past two hours with respect and admiration for the league, and I want them
to do better because I believe it in what they have to offer, and
I think it's just more the overall sense of what are they doing and how
can they present this better? Because I feel very similarly about people from other
leagues who present their product and really feel as passionately about it. They just
wanted to be pushed out more and be able to be presented in a more
transparent fashion, and I feel the same way about this. So this all
comes from admiration and respects for the league, but there's always things that could
be done better. And I think everybody, every fan base, and every
league could always feel that way no matter what. I am a firm believer,
and nothing was ever improved by sitting around and saying this is fine.
I have it. Like you said, tremendous respect for all this, I
will say, there are the same with the USFL fan podcasts out there.
Then sit every week and go, this is the greatest thing. That's great
that's great. I enjoyed the product. I wanted to give me a get
better. Until we have years of success in this, there's always need to
be concerns and we want to do everything we can. I just I don't
like unforced errors. The one unforced errors. Want to do everything we can.
Appreciate everyone. I'll get this out of here. I like and subscribe.
I'm sure anyone that's two hours into this is subscribed at this point,
but if you're not, I appreciate that. We'll see you next time.