A new football league kicks off on CBS — and no one is talking about it

Daniel RobertsSenior Writer,Yahoo Finance•February 9, 2019

American professional football on TV doesn’t have to end with the Super Bowl.

That was the thinking behind the Alliance of American Football (AAF), a new league co-founded by NFL Hall of Famer Bill Polian and TV producer Charlie Ebersol, son of NBC executive Dick Ebersol.

The league has big football names involved (Troy Polamalu, Hines Ward, Dean Blandino, Mike Pereira), big financial backing (Keith Rabois, Peter Thiel, Chernin Group, and MGM), and big television partners. It kicks off on CBS on Saturday night, and from there its games go to CBS Sports Network, NFL Network, and TNT.

But the average NFL fan is completely unaware of it.

Luckily, Ebersol tells Yahoo Finance, “Our business model doesn’t require Day 1 success.”

Not trying to compete with the NFL

Super Bowl 53 was the lowest-rated Super Bowl since 2009, with around 98 million viewers. But a disappointment for the NFL is a ratings bonanza for any other live television event. 98 million people is a massive number. And Ebersol has a stat he likes to cite in every single media appearance he does: an estimated 80 million people stop watching live sports on TV entirely after the Super Bowl.

If the AAF can get even a small piece of that pie, it’s a start. Ebersol talks like he’d rather the numbers not be massive right off the bat. CBS announcers have given brief verbal promos for the AAF during NFL broadcasts in the playoffs, but otherwise the AAF has not done aggressive marketing of any kind.