USFL-XFL merged league teams, size, season speculation

[4th&long]

To elaborate a little further on why market size doesn't matter as much, especially in the context of these leagues:

As I noted, it's a national brand, and a fairly new one. These teams don't have, in general, strong connections to city culture. St. Louis managed to do that quickly because there was a void there to exploit. But especially with the Arlington hub model and the centralized ownership, there isn't much "glue" per se "sticking" a city to any particular team. The USFL tried to achieve that with their heritage brands, and in smaller cities like Birmingham and Memphis, that can work. But in a city the size of New York, with so many other sporting options, they're not going to give two flying whatevers about whether or not there's a team in that city. If they like the XFL, they'll root for a team of their choice... and if they play there, great, but there's no real attachment. There wasn't much mourning over the Guardians leaving during the hiatus, and the Generals were never even there.

And yet XFL 2020, with teams 7/8 teams in major markets was able to do just that - connect enough with locals in 22% of TV households covered. That translated into the best TV ratings in winter-spring FB 2019-2023. Of course it wasn't just in those markets but across the country. But even smaller mkts have many people who have connections to bigger mkts. THere's a reason teams are in big TV markets. Its attractive to media companies.

[GDAWG]

This could be interesting:

[LetsGoBrandonSilvers]

Please let me dream for a bit.

4 USFL teams are in the UFL. There were 8 USFL teams. Vegas and Houston are not joining the UFL. Arlington is a given. I would assume DC and St Louis are givens as well. That leaves one team between Orlando, San Antonio, and Seattle.

Seattle had good support in 2020. A crappy schedule time and weather wise in 2023. They are a bit of an XFL2 legacy team. Maybe Seattle gets in.

Let's Go Brandon Silvers.